[Alan]

I never got back on this. The debate happened last week. Honestly, it was meh.
I felt I prepared too much for nothing. I debated against an anarchist and a free market capitalist. I made an impassioned speech, I explained how Marxism implies democracy and humanism by necessity. I detailed dialectical materialism and historical materialism as a way to interpret history.
I felt proud.
And then the capitalist just said let the free market take care of stuff and the anarchist preached from an inconsistent ethical high horse. Half of the time I thought to myself "I could defend their positions better than they are doing!"

And then the Q&A came about. I thought we were only going to be the philosophy majors and was prepared and excited to defend the validity of dialectical materialism and the pillars of Marxism. But the people who didn't know shit outnumbered us two to one, maybe three to one.
I ended up defending the mere concept of socialism. Half of them couldn't go beyond their own middle class upbringing. They kept asking the same questions you can assume, the same inane pseudo-libertarian rambling that why should people give up their 'freedoms', despite the constant reminder that hundreds of millions necessarily live without the most pressing freedoms and the reminder that this argument is only speaking of "freedom to own property" which the overwhelming population does not enjoy anyway.

You guys asked me better questions than most people in the debate. I want to answer the ones I still haven't answered but I'm gonna have to wait after finals.