3. Debate is a game and we’re both here to win – this means procedural questions like T come first. The role of the ballot is to vote for whoever does the better debating over the resolutional question.

The requirements thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say “no” to—they must reject and limit—some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say “yes” to some things. In particular, they must say “yes” to the idea of rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake in thinking that agreement marks the end of contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no agreement except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one’s target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Registers, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator’s audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.∂ The point may seem trite, as surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be shared before they can be resisted and problematized. In fact, they are often very candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the paradoxical or "parasitic" need of the subversive for an order to subvert.∂ But admitting the paradox is not helpful if, as usually happens here, its implications are ignored; or if the only implication drawn is that order or harmony is an unhappy fixture of human life. For what the paradox should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for resistance; and some ought to be fully supported. As such, it should counsel against the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some basic accord about the terms of contest is a necessary ground for all further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged ambiguists, they cannot admit to these implications, for to open the door to some agreements or reasons as good and some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real business of subversion.∂ Yet difficulties remain. For agreement is not simply the initial condition, but the continuing ground, for contest. If we are to successfully communicate our disagreements, we cannot simply agree on basic terms and then proceed to debate without attention to further agreements. For debate and contest are forms of dialogue: that is, they are activities premised on the building of progressive agreements.∂ Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument about the issue of gun control. As noted earlier, in any argument, certain initial agreements will be needed just to begin the discussion. At the very least, the two discussants must agree on basic terms: for example, they must have some shared sense of what gun control is about; what is at issue in arguing about it; what facts are being contested, and so on. They must also agree—and they do so simply by entering into debate—that they will not use violence or threats in making their cases and that they are willing to listen to, and to be persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of argumentation.',∂ Imagine, then, that our two discussants have the following kind of exchange:∂ Mary Cuns don't kill people; people kill people.∂ Tom: Yes, but guns make it a lot easier for people to kill one another.∂ Mary: That's not necessarily true. There are lots of other murder weapons—knives or rat poison, for instance—that may be just as handy and lethal.∂ At this point, the argument reaches an impasse. Tom has presented i claim that Mary does not accept. Thus, if the argument is to continue, Tom must either find a way to convince Mary oi this claim or he must go on to a different line of argument. Let us say that, in this case, lorn backs up his initial claim with further evidence. Perhaps he has some evidence to show that people are less apt to survive a gunshot wound than they are to survive being stabbed or poisoned. Mary then relents on this point:∂ ∂ Mary: All right, I'll grant you that gun shot wounds an? more apt to kill people. But that's exactly the reason I want lo own a gun—so I can effectively protect myself and my family.∂ Tom: Well I sympathize with that motive, but 1 don't think owning a gun is the best way to protect yourself. In fact, I've heard that people who own guns are more apt to get injured or killed them¬selves than to protect themselves against an intruder.∂ Mary: What?! I find that very difficult to believe.∂ Here, again, our discussants reach an impasse. If the argument is to go further, they must either find a way to agree on the disputed claim, or move on to another claim (if there is one). Thus, if Tom has some further evidence that Mary will find convincing, they can continue this line of reasoning; if he does not, then they must move on to something else or give up the argument completely.∂ This is the ordinary ebb and flow of debate. Argument continues .is long as there is some hope of progress in coming to agreement or as long as there are other lines of argument to be explored. But if there∂ ∂ comes a point a I which the two sides run out of new claims or cannot igree about the facts supporting claims already made, the argument is effectively over. The participants may continue to shout at one an¬other, as they often do, but there is no longer anything positive or informative that can come from their interaction. There is nothing more to be learned and nothing that either side will find convincing.∂ The point here is that in arguing—and the point holds equally for other forms of contest—we assume that it is possible to educate or persuade one another. We assume that it is possible to come to more mutual understandings of an issue and that the participants in an argument are open to this possibility. Otherwise, there is no point to the exercise; we are simply talking at or past one another.∂ At this point, the ambiguists might respond that, even if there are such rules of argument, they do not apply to the more subversive or radical activities they have in mind. Subversion is, after all, about questioning and undermining such seemingly "necessary" or universal rules of behavior.∂ But, again, the response to the ambiguist must be that the practice of questioning and undermining rules, like all other social practices, needs a certain order. The subversive needs rules to protect subversion. And when we look more closely at the rules protective of subversion, we find that they are roughly the rules of argument discussed above. In fact, the rules of argument are roughly the rules of democracy or civility: the delineation of boundaries necessary to protect speech and action from violence, manipulation and other forms of tyranny.