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In the early 90s, I was a debater for a school in Texas that regularly produced National champions in Policy Debate (or CX---cross examination). Debaters, in the main, I discovered were indeed radical politically, but usually to the far right. For the most part, my Policy peers without fail were extreme Libertarians, those of the everyone-has-bootstraps-so-they-should-use-them variety. Why, might you ask? Well, the foremost life goal for any given policy debater is to either be 1) a lawyer (Harvard, natch) or 2) a politician (Kennedy School, natch). Of course, the top notch teams in national policy debate always were very rich, very exclusive, very white private schools, or very rich and very white suburban public schools. Combine that with pouring over National Review articles for 4 hours a day (great source of unargued vitrol that seems prima facie credible), and you begin treading dangerous ground. Plus, 99% of Policy debaters (at least the good ones) are by nature complete assholes. I may not have escaped the asshole charge, but I had my eyes opened and used my assholerly for good. BTW, Policy (sometimes called Spread debate) encourages and rewards atrocious spelling.
