Here's a fun little game for debaters of all ages. We who are or used to be participants in the IV circuit will recall being sternly and repreatedly admonished not to "squirrel" a motion; that is, to define it in terms other than those for which it was clearly intended. Why IV organisers seem pathologically incapable of expressing this instruction in terms other than the hackneyed old non-joke "squirrels will be shot on site" has never quite been explained, but that's a question for another day. On this thread I should like to invite people to let loose their creative juices by coming up with a motion and then writing the definition part of their speech so as to squirrel it like mad.
Here's my attempt. I remember being at a competition once, I believe it had something to do with schools, where there was tabled the astonishingly badly worded motion "This House Would Enforce Kyoto". It's been a constant source of regret to me that the plucky first proppers didn't come out with the following unstintingly precise, yet still abomnably squirreled definition:
"Mr Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen, Kyoto is a small city in Japan, by all accounts a pleasant, picturesque place subsisting mainly on rice, with a lucrative sideline in hosting international summits. Now, as we should all know, the word 'reinforce' generally refers to supplying a place with arms and soldiers to allow it to be defended against an attack. The city of Kyoto is, by all accounts, a peaceful one facing no great external military threat; and, indeed, the Japanese post-1945 constitution prohibits its military from being used in aggression.
We of the Proposition want to change all this. We believe that the time for vaccilation has ended, and that the only way to rid our world from the dark forces of hegemony, corruption and strife, and to create a new utopia - nay, a new Jerusalem! - is for a city like Kyoto, fine, unpolluted and Japanese, to throw aside its mild mannered humility and assume its rightful place on the world stage, a world re-shaped in its image.
We would, therefore, enforce Kyoto. We would send to this city the arms and the manpower necessary for the successful completion of this new great crusade, one that would sweep aside our religious, ethnic and economic disparities, and issue forth a new era of democracy and peace, purging this wounded world of ours, for a safe and secure society. Our mechanism is simple: all we require is the simultaneous unilateral disbandment of the world's five most powerful armies, and a unanimous vote of assent in the United Nations General Assembly..."
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Psalm 91:7