We return to our history of the "debating both sides controversy" in speech education (1954-1966) to explore how conviction is re-assigned from a first order belief to a second order conviction assigned to the value of debate as a democratic procedure. In so doing, we isolate how our interlocutors to our original article (Greene and Hicks 2005) elide the unique intellectual history we tell about debate as a technology of self fashioning as one with a history in "american exceptionalism" and in class formation of the knowledge class. Moreover, we pick up on how recent trends debate performance in intercollegiate debate tournaments isolate a racial critique of debate as a cultural technology. In bringing the history the debating both sides controversy to the present racial critique, we explore how debate becomes a site for generate an affective orientation to conviction as an intensive commitment to debate as a procedural technology of democracy. This affective atmosphere permeates the controversy over debating both sides
