Liberalism is a mental disorder

My oppent has to debate on why it isnt. Also first round isn't just acceptance. He has to make a debate on the first round.

First and foremost, I'd like to say that I was challenged this directly. This is not something that I took from the open challenges, though I probably would have.

We really need to define our terms, so allow me to do that.

Liberalism [1] - "a political orientation that favors social progress by reform and by changing laws rather than by revolution."
Mental Disorder [2] - "a psychological syndrome or behavioral pattern that is associated with subjective distress and/or objective impairment."

In order for something to be a "mental disorder" it must meet several conditions.

1) Be a psychological syndrome or behavioral pattern.
2) Associated with subjective distress or objective impairment.

Both of those must be true, let us address each one individually.

1a) Be a psychological syndrome.

A psychological syndrome is a group of symptoms that originates from the psyche. In order for this to be true, a person must be subconsciously a liberal, meaning that they can never become a conservative or libertarian or any other philosophy. They may be able to mask it by consciously acking like a different political belief, but they ultimately cannot change, or it is extremely difficult and mentally straneous to change.

We can see that this is not true, based on who people change from liberal to conservative all the time at elections. While there are some individuals that are die hard supporters, many are not, and so any mental disorders that they have cannot be attributed to liberalism.

1b) Behavioral Pattern

This, again, suggests a subconscious act as opposed to a conscious decision to engage in such behaviors. This fails for the same line of reasoning mentioned in 1a.

2a) subjective distress

This means that the individual experencing liberalism must be under apparent distress because of the liberalism. This is often not the case, while a poll done in 2006 seemed to suggest that conservatives were happier (and indeed they were in 2006), it is not due to them being conservative, but due to the conservatives holding all of congress at the time, while liberals were sad that they held none. Swing that around to Feb 2009, and liberals were far happier (until Obama went limp on everyone). This shows that the distress is not attributed to liberalism, but to the political process.

2b) objective impairment

This means that someone is objectively impaired in a measurable way. Some objective impairments are the loss of senses (blind, deaf, mute, numb, etc) or limitation of senses (colorblind, near-sightedness, etc). There is no objective impairment caused by liberalism. There are some subjective impairments that conservatives will claim, but those are not object.

So I've shown that liberalism does not meet the definition of mental disorder and so the resolution is negated. I pass this on to my opponent to see what he makes of it.

[1] Princeton Dictionary
[2] WebMD http://dictionary.webmd.com... which cites a 2006 medical dictionary

Liberalism is. Yahoo Answers thinks it is so it is. Many liberals are black. Prison is filled with 87 percent blacks. That means 92 percent of people in there are liberals.

"Yahoo Answers thinks it is so it is."

This is an appeal to authority and an appeal to popularity (it might only be one of those, but they both kinda fit). Either way, it is a logical fallacy.

My opponent makes a claim regarding the prison populations. Whether or not more liberals are in jail, has no baring on whether liberalism is a mental disorder or not. The definitions were given, and my opponent did not challenge those definitions, so they shall stand for the rest of the debate. My opponent has also not refuted any of my points, merely attempted some counterpoints (which have already been dealt with).

Normally, I'd end here, but it will be more fun to go down the rabbit hole.

My opponent says that Blacks make up 87% of the prison population. This is completely false. Blacks make up about 35% of the prison population as of 2008 [1]. My opponent also falsely assumes that all blacks are liberals. While only 9% identified as republican [2]



26% identified as conservatives [2] and only 38% identified as liberal [2].



Now non-blacks, identifed as 36% conservative and 26% liberal [2].



So if we apply these ratios to the prison population, we'll find that 32.5% of the prison population is conservative, 30.2% is liberal and 37.3% is moderate. So even if my opponent's logic was related to this topic, he'd still be wrong.

Thank you,

[1] http://abcnews.go.com...
[2] http://sda.berkeley.edu...

Well Obummer still sucks! You are a freaking choir boy!

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My opponent has not refuted any of my points, nor has he defended any of his. Extend my arguments. I would like to remind my opponent, that I left some serious errors in my counter arguments with the hope that if you found them (as most reasonable debaters should be able to) that would motivate you to put some actual effort into this.

Yeah you made some serious mistakes! You were lying!
LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR

You are just some pupet for the democratics! You keep lying to everyone. You hate yahoo answers! I bet you do.

You are trying to get me to join those liberals! I will never join you! You are the worst debater on this site. FK U!

LIAR!

AYE! AFDDFSFNSDKJFNSDKJFN

DOODLE DOODLE!

HA HA!

No argument made, extend all.

Goo Monkeys.