I must admit that I originally had no interest in viewing this debate, even though I had no idea of the subject matter. My primary interests in the forum are generally (American) current events, and non-current events of the (American) nation's formation. i.e. constitutional principle. However this morning I woke early, had a full cup o'joe and was perusing the other forums, and ran across this thread... which led me to the debate thread.
After reading through the debate thread, I was frustrated by what I personally view as large swaths of debate material which are not covered by either debater.
I fully anticipated not having any agreement with German Guy's perspective, however I personally find much of the commentary by Alpaca has not addressed what I view as the 'meat', or underlying significance, of many of German Guy's comments, and even feel Alpaca has said things that are not exactly congruent with the American form of government, thereby also not addressing distinct differences between Europe in its current rendition under the EU, and the American ideology, and how this has bearing on EU's problems.
An example of this, I generally agree with Alpaca's comments about the shortcomings of a centralized government, however he seems to imply in post #7 that it is the job of the federal government to meet the needs of everyone, or even anyone, stating " our federal government still has an outrageously difficult time trying to fulfill the needs of everyone," which struck me as being in conflict with America's underlying principle, and also the root of the EU's problems. This also has bearing on German Guy's references in post #5 to "harmonize", and post #6 to "harmonized", which both set off bells and whistles for me, but Alpaca seems to at least somewhat accept harmonization by government as necessary in post #9, when this is the very root of the problems under the EU, and the increasing problems in the U.S. under highly inappropriate federal "harmonization".
Also both parties have stated underlying presumptions to their arguments, which seem to be untrue, or at least somewhat questionable, and yet these I have not seen these presumptions being challenged by either party, with perhaps one problem being that neither party has an interest in challenging them.
The result of which, again in my own perspective, is both sides of the debate have left large swaths underlying the overall discussion entirely "un-tilled", or unaddressed.
When hearing about these organized debates, I wondered if the two debating parties would have an established, vested interest in the discussion topic, perhaps from some previous thread exchange, or how the topic was chosen. Without such polar opposition of both parties regarding a specific topic, I imagined that the topic might not be thoroughly discussed, or "tilled". But then I don't know how this specific debate topic and participants came to be set.