After many, many long hours and dedicated work from 25 different people, the full lineup of preseason sourcebooks are available to purchase. Remember if you’re a member of Ethos Legends, you get a 10% discount on all Ethos products!
This is my first large endeavor as the owner of Ethos Debate, and I am so excited to see this project finally complete. Editing the sourcebooks, I saw such a wide variety of cases and ideas from our authors, expressions of creativity and skill through research, of all things. I also saw each individual sourcebook take on its own unique identity. NCFCA LD has fantastic variety and creativity, the authors approaching this tricky resolution from all angles. On the other hand, in the Stoa LD sourcebook the authors embraced the resolution head on, with subtle differences in approach. The policy sourcebooks flipped that script. Here, the NCFCA side tends to be a bit more modest, choosing smaller, more “common sense” plans. Stoa TP has the bigger, bolder cases; the kind that set up both large advantages and disadvantages.
Even with those differences, all of the sourcebooks are valuable in their own ways. No matter what league and what style of debate you do, Ethos has a quality product for you.
Some Numbers:
Number of unique authors: 25
Number of unique cases and briefs: 109
Total number of pages: 1,929
Days since first all-hands sourcebook staff meeting: 70
Years since I last wrote a full policy case before the one in the Stoa TP sourcebook: 14
Approximate number of hours I’ve worked finalizing the sourcebooks in the past week and a half: 100
Number of arguments from last year’s sourcebooks that the Nationals winning team/person ran in finals: 2 (that I’ve heard of)
The number of people who should buy a sourcebook and immediately print it out: 0
Let Me Explain: How to Best Use A Sourcebook
Please do not immediately print out the sourcebook. We give you both pdf and word files for a reason: we want you to alter the sourcebook. You should read through the sourcebook and change it for your own purposes. Use it as inspiration and a launching pad. Delete evidence you see no use for. Re-organize briefs so they make more sense to you.
The number one most common, serious mistake people make when debating is thinking that evidence is an argument. They get out a brief they’ve only briefly perused and read through it in a round, and they never make an argument. In a debate round, evidence should be supporting your arguments. Evidence is the tool that provides legitimacy to the argument, not
the argument itself. So unless you understand the brief, and can use the resources within it to construct an argument, you’re not really debating at all. I can guarantee that everyone who worked on this set of sourcebooks wants you to change their work and make it better.
If you see an Ethos sourcebook as an end point, as something that makes you “ready” to debate, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice. No sourcebook can be an end point–only a beginning.
Welcome to the 2023-2024 debate season.
-Marc