The world is swamped by information, propaganda, and dubious reasoning. STRATEGIC DEBATE aims to facilitate academic debate so students
can construct well-formed arguments and win competitions with distinction. The old way of debate thrived on being boring, dull
as nails and legalistic; the new way - our way - is a martial art; it is confrontational. The opposing team is more than just a competitor;
it is an adversary, and a purveyor of 'half-truths' to be brought up short in a public forum. Our training protocols are unique, one-of-a-kind.
STRATEGIC DEBATE rethinks - deconstructs - debate to a zero-degree, pivoting the activity into a loquacious dogfight with the goal being
to force the other team into a very small box, making any rejoinder impossible. Reduced to muteness, the opponent crashes & burns. Our focus
emphasizes megadoses of surprise - defamiliarization - applying the OODA LOOP as a standard. The most effective methods for winning debates
in our course entail the subtle incorporation of Caesarian military strategy, updated by 'shock & awe' and hypergame theory, the fine art
of deception (Maskirovka). So, rollover Cicero; make some room for Col. John Boyd, 40-second Boyd, the master fighter pilot of the Korean War.
STRATEGIC DEBATE offers a new kind of one-on-one intensive debate tutorial that is based upon doing the unexpected: listen; learn; circle; attack.
What we teach is how to cleverly drive the opposing team into 'brain lock', a type of unrecoverable mental paralysis leading to indecisiveness.
Brain lock is the inability, on the part of a debater, to respond to an argument. This inability leads to 'shallow debate', a repetition of a
weak argument and failure. Debating is a synonym for critical thinking; it is best done by students well versed in alternative history.
Debating, in our view, is all about developing an understanding of how to effectively employ brain lock, a special type of strategic thinking.
We offer extensive training in the concept of 'New Debate' that makes all other forms of forensic instruction obsolete by comparison.
Brain lock is one of a new ensemble of cutting-edge ideas to energize the activity of debate, and bring this form of public speaking
into the twenty-first century. Also, STRATEGIC DEBATE accesses 'benchmark' ideas from a number of fields, and incorporates them into a training regimen.
An added plus of our intensive course, an assemblage of concepts at this writing, is that it is situated at the cusp of a critical thinking
curriculum that ultimately 'centers' debating in an historical and technological framework of contemporary thinking. Learning to speak
effectively in a competitive context is merely the tip of an iceberg. Preparing arguments is a prelude to an authentic education that grasps the
world as it is.