2AC K Blocks

2AC K Blocks 1/165
Valley High School Rishi Shah
===2AC K BLOCKS===
***SPECIFIC KRITIKS*** ................................................................................................................................... 4 A2: Agamben K ...................................................................................................................................................... 5 A2: Ableism K ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 A2: Anthropocentricism K .................................................................................................................................... 13 A2: Apocalyptic Rhetoric K ................................................................................................................................. 17 A2: Bataille K ....................................................................................................................................................... 20 *A2: Baudrillard K ............................................................................................................................................... 23 A2: Badiou K ........................................................................................................................................................ 28 *A2: Borders K ..................................................................................................................................................... 32 *A2: Buddhism K ................................................................................................................................................. 35 *A2: Butler K ........................................................................................................................................................ 36 *A2: Burke K ........................................................................................................................................................ 39 A2: Cap K ............................................................................................................................................................. 40 *A2: Chernus K .................................................................................................................................................... 45 A2: Coercion K ..................................................................................................................................................... 46 A2: Competitiveness K ......................................................................................................................................... 48 *A2: DADA K ...................................................................................................................................................... 51 *A2: Death Drive K .............................................................................................................................................. 52 A2: Deleuze and Guattari K .................................................................................................................................. 53 *A2: Derrida K ..................................................................................................................................................... 58 A2: Ecofeminism K .............................................................................................................................................. 59 A2: Foucault K ...................................................................................................................................................... 63 A2: Fem K............................................................................................................................................................. 67 --1AR Ext. # 6 .................................................................................................................................................... 69 --1AR Ext. # 7 .................................................................................................................................................... 70 --1AR Ext. # 9 .................................................................................................................................................... 72 --A2: Fem Sci-Fi .............................................................................................................................................. 73 A2: Frontier K ....................................................................................................................................................... 74 A2: Heidegger K ................................................................................................................................................... 78 A2: Hetronormativity K ........................................................................................................................................ 81 --A2: Edelman .................................................................................................................................................... 84 *A2: Kappeler K ................................................................................................................................................... 85 A2: Kato K ............................................................................................................................................................ 86 A2: Lacan K .......................................................................................................................................................... 91 *A2: Mann K ........................................................................................................................................................ 96 *A2: Mobility K .................................................................................................................................................... 97 *A2: Nietzsche K .................................................................................................................................................. 98 *A2: Predictions K ................................................................................................................................................ 99 A2: Race K .......................................................................................................................................................... 103 --1AR Ext. #9 ................................................................................................................................................... 107 *A2: Schmitt K ................................................................................................................................................... 108 A2: Schlag/Normativity Bad K ........................................................................................................................... 109 A2: Security K .................................................................................................................................................... 113 *A2: Statism K.................................................................................................................................................... 117 *A2: Synoptic Delusion K .................................................................................................................................. 118 A2: Taoism K ...................................................................................................................................................... 122 A2: Time-Space Compression K ........................................................................................................................ 126
2AC K Blocks 2/165
*A2: Transport Rationality K ............................................................................................................................. 130 *A2: Virilio K ..................................................................................................................................................... 131 *A2: Zizek K Cap ............................................................................................................................................ 133 *A2: Zizek Psychoanalysis .............................................................................................................................. 134 ***GENERIC K ANSWERS*** ....................................................................................................................... 136 A2: Biopower ...................................................................................................................................................... 137 A2: D-Rule .......................................................................................................................................................... 137 --Constitution =/= D-Rule ................................................................................................................................ 140 A2: Ethics............................................................................................................................................................ 141 Extinction 1st ....................................................................................................................................................... 142 A2: Fiat = Illusion ............................................................................................................................................... 145 A2: Generic Indicts ............................................................................................................................................. 146 --Cap Specific .................................................................................................................................................. 147 A2: Genocide ...................................................................................................................................................... 148 A2: _______ology ........................................................................................................................................... 149 A2: Reps 1st ......................................................................................................................................................... 152 A2: Role of the Ballot ......................................................................................................................................... 154 A2: Root Cause ................................................................................................................................................... 155 --Cap =/= Root Cause ...................................................................................................................................... 156 --Otherization =/= Root Cause ......................................................................................................................... 157 --Patriarchy =/= Root Cause ............................................................................................................................ 158 --Poverty =/= Root Cause ................................................................................................................................ 161 A2: Util Bad ........................................................................................................................................................ 162 A2: VTL .............................................................................................................................................................. 163
2AC K Blocks 3/165
2AC K Blocks 4/165
***SPECIFIC KRITIKS***
2AC K Blocks 5/165
A2: Agamben K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. 4. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
Commenting on the philosophical turn in IR, Wver remarks that [a] Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)
frenzy for words like epistemology and ontology
often signals this philosophical turn, although he goes on to comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or
not, it is clear that debates concerning ontology and epistemology play a central role in the contemporary IR theory wars. In one respect, this is unsurprising since it is a characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of disciplinary disorientation involve recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of different theoretical approaches, and there is no doubt that such reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the commitments that characterise (and help individuate) diverse theoretical positions. Yet, such a philosophical turn is not without its dangers and I will briefly mention three before turning to consider a confusion that has, I will suggest, helped to promote the IR theory wars by motivating this philosophical turn. The first danger with the philosophical turn is that it
has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of ontology and epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two were merely a simple function of the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its
ontological and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theoryconstruction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problemdriven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical
action are foregrounded.
2AC K Blocks 6/165
approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 5. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if power relations were the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 6. Negs burden to prove were the bad form of power and planning Mohammadi 10 (Dr. Hamid Mohammadi, Assistant Professor at Yazd University and also holds an Urban Planning PhD from Kassel University from the
Book Citizen Participation in Urban Planning and Management: The Case of Iran, Shiraz City, Saadi Community Page 33-34 http://books.google.com/books?id=Tue8HJKIPrkC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=Jurgen+Habermas's+theory+of+communicative+action+has+been+basis+of+commu nicative+planning+theory.+Communicative+planning+concentrates+on+bottom-up+approach&source=bl&ots=AZZWTDwJo&sig=_P1pb8HH0JFnuadQcYOqHRGHSqE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mg0UUMbbM5KBrQHAi4C4Bw&ved=0CEsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Jurgen%20Habermas's%2 0theory%20of%20communicative%20action%20has%20been%20basis%20of%20communicative%20planning%20theory.%20Communicative%20planning%20conce ntrates%20on%20bottom-up%20approach&f=false) Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action has been basis of communicative planning theory. Communicative
planning concentrates on bottom-up approach and real citizen participation in decision-making. Both of the two 'bottom-up' and 'top-down* planning approaches
have been faced with certain limits and potentials. While top-down planning emphasizes on governmental authority, bottom-up planning pays particular attention to local communities as main actors in planning process. Similar to many other theories, communicative
planning theory has also been widely criticized. These critiques can be divided into three main categoriestheoretical critiques, critiques in practice, and critiques regarding the relations between power and planningamong which, I believe that critiques concerned with power is more important due to strong and mutual relations between power and planning and their mutual effects on each other. It is clear that power 'can mislead, corrupt or limit planning rationality in practice, but it only 'can. The question is that under which condition? In fact, it should be mentioned that there are different forms of power and rationality which appear within different political and institutional situations. There are conditions under which rational critiques of existent and dominant power is possible. Moreover, we should distinguish the power which detriments people from the power which may help people and leads to educate them. 7. Biopolitics creates a better life- benefits outweigh the costs Dickison, 2004 - associate professor of history at UC Davis (Edward Ross, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse about
"Modernity, accessed from JSTOR on 7/4/12) It is striking, then, that the new model of German modernity is even more relentlessly negative than the old Sonderweg model. In that older model, premodern elites were constantly triumphing over the democratic opposition. But at least there was an opposition; and in the long run, time was on the side of that opposition, which in fact embodied the historical movement of modernization. In the new model, there is virtually a biopolitical consensus.1 And that consensus is almost always fundamentally a nasty, oppressive thing, one that partakes in crucial ways of the essential quality of National Socialism. Everywhere biopolitics is intrusive, technocratic, top-down, constraining, limiting. Biopolitics is almost never
conceived of or at least discussed in any detail as creating possibilities for people, as expanding the range of their choices, as empowering them, or indeed as doing anything positive for them at all. Of course, at the most simple-minded level, it seems to me that an assessment of the potentials of modernity that ignores the ways in which biopolitics has made life tangibly better is somehow deeply flawed. To give just one example, infant mortality in Germany in 1900 was just over 20 percent; or, in other words, one in five children died before reaching the age of one year. By 1913, it was 15 percent; and by 1929 (when average real purchasing power was not significantly higher than in 1913) it was only 9.7 percent.2 The expansion of infant health programs an enormously ambitious, bureaucratic, medicalizing, and sometimes intrusive, social engineering project had a great deal to do with that change. It would be bizarre to write a history of biopolitical modernity that ruled out an appreciation for how absolutely wonderful and astonishing this achievement and any number of others like it really was. There was a reason for the Machbarkeitswahn of the early twentieth century: many marvelous things were in fact becoming machbar. In that sense, it is not really accurate to call it a Wahn (delusion, craziness) at all; nor is it accurate to focus only on the inevitable frustration of delusions of power. Even in the late 1920s, many social engineers could and did look with great satisfaction on the changes they genuinely had the power to accomplish.
1 2 See for example Usborne, The Politics and Grossmann, Reforming Sex. MB. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 17501970 (New York, 1975), 130. By 1969 it had fallen to 2.3 percent (132).
2AC K Blocks 7/165
8. Theyll win ZERO percent of their impact the massacres that their over-hyped impact evidence cites are NOT because of biopolitics biopower prevents those massacres. Mika Ojakangas, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland, May 2005, Foucault Studies, No. 2, p. 20-21
According to Foucault, it is that transformation which constitutes the background of what he calls governmentality, that is to say, bio-political rationality within the modern state.78 It explains why political power that is at work within the modern state as a legal framework of unity is, from the beginning of a states existence, accompanied by a power that can be called pastoral. Its role is
not to threaten lives but to ensure, sustain, and improve them, the lives of each and every one.79 Its means are not law and violence but care, the care for individual life.80 It is precisely care, the Christian power of love (agape), as the opposite of all violence that is at issue in bio-power. This is not to say,
however, that bio-power would be nothing but love and care. Bio-power is love and care only to the same extent that the law, according to Benjamin, is violence, namely, by its origin.81 Admittedly, in the era of bio-politics, as Foucault writes, even massacres have become vital.82 This is the case, however, because violence is hidden in the foundation of bio-politics, as Agamben believes. Although
the twentieth century thanatopolitics is the reverse of bio-politics,83 it should not be understood, according to Foucault, as the effect, the result, or the logical consequence of bio-political rationality.84 Rather, it should be understood, as he suggests, as an outcome of the demonic combination of the
sovereign power and bio-power, of the city-citizen game and the shepherd-flock game85 or as I would like to put it, of patria potestas (fathers unconditional power
Although massacres can be carried out in the name of care, they do not follow from the logic of bio-power for which death is the object of taboo.86 They follow from the logic of sovereign power, which legitimates killing by whatever arguments it chooses, be it God, Nature, or life.
of life and death over his son) and cura materna (mothers unconditional duty to take care of her children).
9. Turn Agambens biopolitics focuses too much on the Nazi state to recognize that liberal societies rule through new multiplicities of agencies to coerce a self-regulating subject. Lemke 5 (PhD in political science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main. (Thomas, 2005, "A Zone of Indistinction' - A Critique of
Giorgio Agamben's Concept of Biopolitics OUTLINES -COPENHAGEN- 2005, VOL 7; NUMB 1, pages 3-13 UNIVERSITY PRESS OF SOUTHERN DENMARK) Agamben sees the novelty of the modern biopolitics in the fact that the biological given is as such immediately political, and the political is as such immediately the biological given (1998: 148; emphasis in orig.). In the political program of the Nazis, the preoccupation with life is at the same time a struggle against the enemy. While there are probably convincing reasons to state that in the present we are one step further on the way towards a politicisation of nature, there are at least two major problems that this conception of biopolitics fails to address. Firstly, Agamben
does not take into account that the site of sovereignty has been displaced. While in the eugenic programs in the first half of the 20th century biopolitical interventions were mainly executed by the state that controlled the health of the population or the hygiene of the race, biopolitics today is becoming more and more a responsibility of sovereign subjects. As autonomous patients, active consumers or responsible parents they demand medical or biotechnological options. Today, it is less the state that regulates by direct interventions and restrictions, since the capacity and competence of decision-making is increasingly ascribed to the individual subject to make informed choices beyond political authoritarianism and medical paternalism. Decisions on life and death are less the explicit result of legal provisions and political regulations but the outcome of an invisible hand that represents the options and practices of sovereign individuals (Lemke 2002b; Koch 2002). Agambens analysis is too state-centred, or rather, it relies on a limited conception of the state which does not take into account important political transformations since the Nazi era. He does not take into account that in contemporary liberal societies political power is exercised through a multiplicity of agencies and techniques that are often only loosely associated with the formal organs of the state. The self-regulating capacities of subjects as autonomous actors have become key resources for present forms of government that rely in crucial respects on forms of scientific expertise and knowledge (Rose/Miller 1992).
2AC K Blocks 8/165
A2: Ableism K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the neg get the status quo or a competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
Commenting on the philosophical turn in IR, Wver remarks that [a]
Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)
frenzy for words like epistemology and ontology often signals this philosophical turn, although he goes on to comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theoryconstruction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problemdriven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and
2AC K Blocks 9/165
epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 4. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if ableism the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 5. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alternative. 6. They cant indict all transportation there is the possibility for positivity in transportation infrastructure toward disability Casas '07 Irene Casas National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis University at Buffalo SUNY, Volume 59, Number 4, November 2007
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9272.2007.00635.x/pdf
In transportation, this is reflected in the ability of the transport system to provide to all members of a society the same level of access to different opportunities. When access/social rights are not secured and a population is at a disadvantage, social exclusion occurs (Bhalla and Lapeyre 1997). Groups at a potential disadvantage often include
people with disabilities, women, the elderly, children, those living in certain areas (urban/rural), and people who are subject to certain forms of prejudice, including race or sex (Torrance 1992; Hine and Grieco 2003). Traditionally social exclusion indicators have been based on local indices of deprivation that do not account for the
These indices are not suitable in certain disadvantaged groups, such as the disabled, where local clusters are not the norm and where exclusion is not necessarily based on lack of access to the transport system. Rather, for the disabled, difficulties are more in terms of mobility
transport system (Bhalla and Lapeyre 1997; DETR 2000; Grieco, Turner, and Hine 2000; Hodgson and Turner 2003; Litman 2003).
7. Reality shapes discourse the way the international arena changes shapes the way we perceive and talk about it; what we say in this round will in no way affect anything in reality. 8. Rejection of policymaking dooms the affirmative- disrupting the inequitable social constructions of people with disabilities is insufficient and leaves the disabled people excluded. Only focusing on practical politics can produce empowerment for the disabled while disrupting oppressive norms Dewsbury et al 2k4 (Guy, Lancaster Univ, Karen Clarke, Lancaster Univ, Dave Randalll, Manchester Metropolitan Univ, Mark Rouncefield Lancaster, Ian
Sommerville, Lancaster, The anti-social model of disability, Disability & Society, 19.2 March) We do not share all these concerns as they apply to the social model of disability, for we are not menaced by constructionism, nor do we wish to promote one variety of truth claim over another. We are concerned specifically with how this helps. The constructionist focus, we feel, has altered our perspective on expertise such that where
we had previously unquestioningly accepted the professional expertise of medical practitioners, we now equally unquestioningly accept the expertise of the sociologist who wishes to undermine it. The social constructionist, that is, provides professional explanation by revealing the hidden nature of the social world in and through a number of typical steps. These include: 1. Showing that definitions of a given concept are shifting, especially historically. Many social constructionist studies draw attention to the ways in which explanations that were accepted as matters of fact were embedded in the ideologies or discourses of the time and can now be clearly seen as absurd or wrong. 2. Deriving from this that things could be otherwise insofar as new and constructionist models can be used contrastively with models that have preceded them, including models that still have a currency. 3. Arguing that in some way this challenges the social reality of the concept in question. 4. Suggesting that this challenge to the social reality of any given social fact has important political consequences and that the social constructionist is pivotal in the realization of these consequences. We think there may be problems here,
mainly with steps 3 and 4. As Hacking (1999) has convincingly shown the validity and importance of challenges to social reality depend very much on what kind of challenge they are. Equally, we will suggest that the
apparent political importance of the constructionist position is largely rhetorical. This is not to understate its importance, for rhetoric is a powerful force, but it does not assist us with our what to do next problem. In explicating the various ways in which disability is a social construct the Social Model highlights the social features of what, on first consideration,
might appear as a purely physical problem. As Humphrey argues: the social model harbours a number of virtues in redefining disability in terms of a disabling environment, repositioning disabled people as citizens with rights, and reconfiguring the responsibilities for creating, sustaining and overcoming disablism (Humphrey, 2000, p. 63). Again, there are self-evident, political, advantages in adopting this position. As Hacking suggests, it can
still be liberating suddenly to realize that something is constructed and is not part of the nature of things, of people, or human society (Hacking, 1999, p.
2AC K Blocks 10/165

35). However,
the metaphor has grown tired, if not tiresome, and in the matter of what we call practical politics, that is the quite ordinary business of making-do, managing, coping (and obviously everyone makes do, not just disabled people) that might inform the design-related questions we want to ask, it is for the most part empty. In order to pursue this theme, we need to examine the sense in which the social model can be seen as radical , for as with so many similar avowals there is less to this than meets the eye. Despite the supposedly radical nature and claims of the social model of disability it clearly engages in the ordinary business of sociology and, as Button (1991) suggests, any radical claims are readily absorbed into everyday sociological debate. That is, radical political commitments are not radical sociologiesthey are, from within a sociological perspective, unremarkable. Radical causes are the very stuff of conventional sociology, conducted along conventional lines. Even, for example, the argument that some current sociological approaches propagate a disablist view of society that legitimates the treatment of disabled people, whilst simultaneously obscuring their real position within society is but a pale imitation of earlier, similar, Feminist and Marxist arguments. The application of the idea may be new but the idea itself, and the argument presented, is not. 9. Accepting difference causes the alt to fail Roberts, Baylor University, Masters thesis in Communication, 7 (Jeff, The Rhetorical Structure of Disability: Bridging the Gap
Between What is Spoken and What is Said with Song - Over-Signifying with Personhood Against the Backdrop of Disease-Centric Discourse, http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=37&ved=0CGkQFjAGOB4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbeardocs.baylor.edu%2Fxmlui%2Fbitstrea m%2Fhandle%2F2104%2F5086%2FJeff_Roberts_Masters.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1&ei=hUL3T52RN4SlrQH1j6iLCQ&usg=AFQjCNHd4PB3kECHEjVxxEx07R2Oqb 2EBg , Pg. 6-7, FFF)
Just as disease-centric discourse creates these attitudes, imageries and actions rooted in notions of viral difference and hatred, it seems that any action towards people with disabilities conveyed in diseasecentric discourse is premised on a notion of viral difference. Viral difference manifests itself not only in the actions and attitudes stemming from disease-centric discourse, but also in the rhetorical structure of diseasecentric discourse itself and its general deployment. Actions which place a primacy on difference and its domestication in the acts of acceptance of difference are often justified as acts of compassion, yet acts premised on such notions can never truly overcome difference, nor can they recognize and appreciate the alterity of the other necessary for ethical encounters. Deployment of disease-centric discourse represents and independent rhetorical act which, in the words of Emmanuel Levinas, thematizes disability as difference allowing difference to obscure alterity and unique otherness by standing in for the individual subject in all encounters. In other words, difference in terms of disability subsumes the entirety of the person by reducing the individual to a mere condition of difference, as Lois Shepherd (2006) explains: On the other hand, however, focusing on the condition carries the risk of what Levinas calls
"thematization." If the condition stands in for the person in evoking the right ethical response, i.e., compassion, then the condition may stand in for the person in other respects as well. In other words, the
condition is the person, and thus we need to know nothing more about the person than the existence of the condition . . . A compassionate response that focuses on the condition of a person in a way that permits us to see her in terms of a theme can result in unfair prejudice and discrimination. Even when less noxious results follow, such a response inappropriately shortcuts the more intense inquiry that is required to determine the needs and desires of that individual and can prevent the ethical response that is due . . . . . . A compassionate response that thematizes a person as disabled can cause an underestimation of what that person can achieve and can thereby cut off opportunities for success, expression, respect, and self-worth. It can also result in alienation of people with disabilities as others cannot see beyond the apparent physical condition. The emphasis that advocates for people with disabilities place on language captures
this concern that the focus of attention is properly placed on the person rather than the condition; advocates encourage the use of terms such as "person with a disability" rather than "the disabled person" so that the person comes first. (para.8.)
And, this results in mass violence Pfeiffer, 2002 - Ph.D., Professor of Public Management at Suffolk University (David, , Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol. 22 No. 2, Spring, p. 3-23)bs
It is here contended (as the result of the author's research) that accepting
the Greek, Christian, or modern ontology, as here outlined, leads to a fanaticism in which the "other" should be, needs to be, must be destroyed. A fanaticism in which giving one's life in the destruction of the lives of the "other" is the highest moral, ethical, and religious act possible. In
2AC K Blocks 11/165
the US during the nineteenth century many persons conceived of a manifest destiny for the country to bring democracy to the rest of the world. The US built up quite an empire doing it. The US entered World War I to make the world safe for democracy. The
US entered World War II to defend democracy. The US fought in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, and now in Afghanistan to protect freedom and capitalism. The wording changed a little as did the emphasis, but the ontology was the same: the the rest of the world and
US knows truth, justice, goodness, beauty, and what is best for it is are ready to kill others to prove it. But the US is not the only country to adhere to this ontology. Some Japanese in the 1920s and 1930s conceived of their people as having a pure spirit unsoiled by Western culture. Therefore, their military campaigns during the 1930s and 1940s were to purify East Asia and to destroy the influence of the "white devils." Some Germans in the 1920s and 1930s conceived of their people as having a pure spirit unsoiled by Western culture. Therefore, their military campaigns during the 1930s and 1940s were to purify Europe and to destroy the influence of the "Christians, liberals, and Jews." The English did it, the Russians did it, the Germans did it, the French did it, the Spanish, the Italians, the Japanese did it, the Balkan nations, the Chinese - they all did it. In fact, no nation and no religion avoided killing others (if they had the resources to do so) in the name of truth, justice, goodness, and even beauty. In all of these cases value systems embodied in utility functions based on respect and more importantly based on the equality of people, of gender, of race, and of differing intellectual viewpoints were the enemy which had to be destroyed. As well discussed in Buruma & Margalit (2002), they had to be destroyed because they undermined the ideal of the pious, uncorrupted peasant who worked hard and always obeyed authority. The religious leaders and the political leaders worked together to keep society stable - and therefore their privileged position. According to the religious and political leaders it is the soul of the peasant which is in danger
from these values. It is no accident that West European and US missionaries go to other lands to save souls. And they go into the country side and into the urban slums in all parts of the world to save souls. It is primarily the skeptical intellect which is the target of missionaries. The peasant must become pious (as defined by the religious leaders) and obey the law (as defined by the political leaders). The scientists present the "facts" which support the definitions of the religious and the political leaders. Intellectuals who question motives and means must be removed and silenced. Law is based upon divine revelation and implemented by leaders. It is this view which unites right wing Christians in the US, ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel, fascists in many dictatorships around the world, far right Islamists, and any authoritarian group. It was far right Islamic terrorists who crashed those planes on September 11. It was right wing Christians Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who said it was punishment from God (their god of course) for the denial of God (again their god) in US society. They both had the same ultimate goal: to chastise the US populace in order to force them to embrace their ontology, their epistemology, their value system. People
with disabilities are seen in the US today as the "other" which is concretely involved with the world of experience. Any ontology which presents a world of experience as inferior to a world of divine law will lead to the oppression of people with disabilities. Any ontology which emphasizes ablism and normality dooms people with disabilities to destruction. Any ontology which presents an epistemology based on authority and conformity results in the death of people with disabilities. 10. Speaking is inevitably trapped within ones own conception of universal truth. Claiming to represent others in suggesting prescriptive actions merely continues domination through upholding existing systems of power. Only allowing local action can solve. Hendricks, British Columbia Professor, 2K (U of British Columbia, Foucaults Prophecy: The Intellectual as Exile,
http://www.manitowoc.uwc.edu/staff/awhite/christ00.htm, Date Accessed: 7/13, JS)
As agents of the rgime of truth, intellectuals can easily speak as if, and be received as if, they are providing others with universal, timeless truths. This is problematic, according to Foucault, because rather than being the absolutes they are said to be, claims to universal truth are contingent and historically developed. By speaking as if s/he has access to universal truths, therefore, the intellectual contributes to a system wherein contingent notions are treated as if they are necessary and unchanging. Foucault argues that those claims and knowledges that have come to have the status of universal or scientific truth, have achieved that status at least partly through power struggles, through tactics of coercion whereby competing claims and knowledges are filter[ed], hierarchise[d] and order[ed ] . . . in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects (Foucault 1980d, 83). By speaking truths as if they were universal and timeless, the intellectual tends to support the continuing domination through power of some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science. Foucault criticizes such intellectual activity, arguing that it works to contribute to the functioning of a determinate system of power that . . . must be criticized (Foucault 1991, 157).http://www.uwmanitowoc.uwc.edu/staff/awhite/christ00.htm - _ftn6 Another problem with the universal intellectual prophet is that s/he may use his/her authority as an agent of the rgime of truth to compel others to work against it (e.g., by telling them that true goodness and justice requires that they engage in resistance against particular practices of power). Foucault criticizes such intellectual prescriptions, due to both practical and ethical concerns. First, the universal intellectuals suggested tactics for
2AC K Blocks 12/165
resistance may not be as effective as those devised by the individuals who are directly involved in particular struggles. Foucault contends that relations of power are multiple and heterogeneous, and work differently at different locales; and therefore resistances to power are most effective if they address it on a local, specific level (Foucault 1980d, 99; 1990, 95-96). The intellectual who makes universal, global pronouncements as to what must be done to resist relations of power within the rgime of truth may therefore be offering ineffective advice: global, totalitarian theories have a hindering effect on the efficacy of discontinuous, particular and local criticism (Foucault 1980d, 80). There are also ethical worries lying behind Foucaults injunction against
intellectual prophecy and prescription. One of these is expressed by Gilles Deleuze in a published conversation with Foucault entitled Intellectuals and Power. Addressing Foucault, Deleuze
states: In my opinion you were the first . . . to teach us something absolutely fundamental: the indignity of speaking for others (Foucault 1977a, 209). It seems that for Foucault and Deleuze, in the act of speaking for others there is something ethically problematic, as if those others were not to be given the responsibility (and dignity) of speaking and acting for themselves. Foucault himself expresses a somewhat different ethical concern in an interview: [I dream of the intellectual who] contributes to the raising of the question of knowing whether the revolution is worth it . . . it being understood that they alone who are willing to risk their lives to bring it about can answer the question (Foucault 1996d, 225). Foucaults tone here suggests that the prophesying intellectual could send out calls to action that impact others in dangerous and perhaps even life-threatening ways; and the decision as to whether or not to act and how must, therefore, be left to those who will be carrying out resistance.
2AC K Blocks 13/165
A2: Anthropocentricism K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Perm do both their link is one of omission, it just says that we talk about human extinction and not animal extinction. 3. Icebreaking prevents drilling accidents Jones et al 7 Professor @ UVA, Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, member of the Defense Science Board, the Charles Stark Draper
Laboratory Corporation, the National Research Council Advisory Council for Policy and Global Affairs, and the MIT Corporation [Anita, First author for the Polar Research Board in the National Research Council, POLAR ICEBREAKERS IN A CHANGING WORLD, Google Book]
The U.S. Coast Guard seeks to protect the nations natural resources by eliminating environmental damage and the degradation of natural resources associated with maritime transportation, fishing, and recreational boating. Closely tied to the U.S. Coast Guards safety prevention efforts, avoidance of accidents is a key component of protecting the U.S. marine environment. The U.S. Coast Guard enforces regulations and laws protecting sensitive marine habitats, marine mammals, and endangered marine species, as well as laws preventing discharge of oil and other hazardous materials. A wide range of activities addresses environmental objectives in offshore lightering zone regulation, domestic fisheries enforcement, and foreign vessel inspection. U.S. Coast Guard units are often the first on scene when a pollution incident is reported, and the Coast Guard is typically the lead agency for a pollution response effort. Under the National Contingency Plan, U.S. Coast Guard captains of the port are the designated federal on-scene coordinators (FOSCs) for oil and hazardous substance incidents in all coastal and some inland areas. The FOSC is responsible for forging
a coordinated and effective response effort with a complex group of government and commercial entities, often in dangerous and emotion-laden situations.
Protecting the Arctic marine environment begins with ensuring the safety of vessels operating in these challenging conditions, including the availability of icebreaking assistance and comprehensive monitoring of vessel movements. Prevention might also include a regulatory regime, limiting vessels to geographic areas and seasonal periods appropriate to their ice capabilities. The Canadian Arctic Shipping Pollution Prevention Regulations (ASPPR) would serve as an obvious example . Increases in traffic, especially from Russian or Canadian waters, may create U.S. interest in establishing regulations; enforcement and deterrence would necessitate an on-scene presence capable of operating in ice. The U.S. Coast Guard would clearly have regulatory responsibility for this type of waterways management. Responding to a major oil spill in the Arctic is challenging, as cleanup activities for an onshore spill near Prudhoe Bay in early 2006 attest. Oil cleanup offshore would be even more difficult due to the dearth of infrastructure and the possibility of ice. Where depth of water permits access, an icebreaker could offer command-and-control capabilities, communications, berthing, helicopters, boats, cargo space, heavyweight handling gear, tankage, and support services to smaller craft, all of which would be of great benefit to cleanup operations. Direct oil recovery could also be included as an icebreaker capability: POLAR SEA successfully tested a boom-mounted skimming
system known as the Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System (VOSS) (as well as other capabilities) while participating in an oil spill exercise off Sakhalin Island in
U.S. Coast Guards new fleet of coastal buoy tenders is equipped with VOSS, and thought should be given to the need for new polar icebreakers to be equipped with the latest technology for oil spill response.
1998. The
Methane release causes the destruction of the environment and extinction of practically everything Ryskin 3 Ph.D. Chemical Engineering California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA Engineer-Physicist St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, St. Petersburg,
Russia Fluid dynamics; statistical physics; geophysics Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering Gregory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University [Methane-driven oceanic eruptions and mass extinctions, Geology, September 2003. <http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/methaneGeology.pdf>]
The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region boils over, ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2 , H2 S) into the atmosphere, and ooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The airmethane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions 2 and conagrations destroy most of the
2AC K Blocks 14/165
terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide. Firestorms carry smoke and dust into the upper atmosphere, where they may remain for several years (Turco et al., 1991); the resulting darkness and global cooling may provide an additional kill mechanism. Conversely, carbon dioxide and the remaining methane create the greenhouse effect, which may lead to global warming. The outcome of the competition between the cooling and the warming tendencies is difcult to predict (Turco et al., 1991; Pierrehumbert, 2002). Upon release of a signicant portion of the dissolved methane, the ocean settles down, and the entire sequence of events (i.e., development of anoxia, accumulation of dissolved methane, the metastable state, eruption) begins anew. No external cause is required to bring about a methane-driven eruptionits mechanism is self-contained, and implies that eruptions are likely to occur repeatedly at the same location. Because methane is isotopically light, its fast release must result in a negative carbon isotope excursion in the geological record. Knowing the
magnitude of the excursion, one can estimate the amount of methane that could have produced it. Such calculations (prompted by the methane-hydrate-dissociation model, but equally applicable here) have been performed for several global events in the geological record; the results range from ;10 18 to 10 19 g of released methane (e.g., Katz et al., 1999; Kennedy et al., 2001; de Wit et al., 2002). These
are very large amounts: the total carbon content of todays terrestrial biomass is ;2 3 10^(18) g. Nevertheless, relatively small regions of the deep ocean could contain such amounts of dissolved methane; e.g., the Black Sea alone (volume ;0.4 3 1023 of the ocean total; maximum depth only 2.2 km)
could hold, at saturation, ;0.5 3 10 18 g. A similar region of the deep ocean could contain much more (the amount grows quadratically with depth 3 ).
Released in a geological instant (weeks, perhaps), 10^(18) to 10^(19) g of methane could destroy the terrestrial life almost entirely. Combustion and explosion of 0.75 x 10^(19) g of methane would liberate energy equivalent to 10^(8) Mt of TNT, ;10,000 times greater than the worlds stockpile of nuclear weapons, implicated in the nuclearwinter scenario (Turco et al., 1991). 4. Reality shapes discourse the way the international arena changes shapes the way we perceive and talk about it; what we say in this round will in no way affect anything in reality. 5. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theoryconstruction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problemdriven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of
2AC K Blocks 15/165
a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 6. Discursive justification of saying we need to do the plan for good reasons and to save lives outweigh any negative affects from using bad or anthropocentric justifications. 7. Anthropocentrism is key to the existence of life. Pinson 02 [Robert, B.A. in biology from Oberlin College and third-year law student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Ethical Considerations For
Terraforming Mars, Environmental Law Institute News & Analysis, Nov. 2002, http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/lawrev/pinson.pdf.] JL
Does Mars have rights? Not really. It is beautiful and has its use in its present form, but it also has no life, at least that we know of. We will certainly research to see if life does in fact exist on Mars. But to a certain extent, even if it does, the good of all life should outweigh the good of a naturally soon-to-be extinct form of life. On earth, many would allow the killing of one animal for the good of the whole population or species. In nature, the good of the many indeed outweighs the good of the few (or the one). Planets must be vehicles for life in this universe; they are perfectly designed for it. Mars will not lose its uniqueness; earth certainly
has not. In fact, it may be the life that grows on a planet that makes it truly unique. Life on Mars will evolve and adapt differently than life on earth. This difference will simultaneously make Mars unique, ensure the survival of life through diversification, and provide a wonderful opportunity to watch and learn. If
there is life on Mars, does it have rights? The answer to that is yes and no. Many believe that we should nurture indigenous life on Mars. I believe we should let natural selection decide. Let us expose terrestrial life to the Martian environment and watch what develops. Perhaps there will be genetic blending among the groups and life will become enhanced in beauty and diversification. Just because some bacteria may exist on Mars should not mean that all life on earth must stop expanding. Perhaps the bacteria are there by accident; perhaps they are the ancestors to life on earth. Certainly we should study any indigenous life on Mars, but we should not put its interests ahead of our own. 194A possibility exists that
we will create new life that could destroy life as we know it. However, the possibility of this occurrence is so much smaller than the possibility of success that we must
The most applicable environmental ethic to terraforming Mars is anthropocentrism. It puts our interests at the forefront while still ensuring the existence of all life. It seems obvious that we should give ourselves the highest level of intrinsic worth since we are the ones placing the value.195 Life, of course, has the ultimate intrinsic worth, but we are a part of that life. It is in our best interest to preserve and expand life. What better way than by changing a planet that is currently unable to sustain life into one that can. Not only will we enrich our lives but also the life around us. We cannot, of course, begin terraforming today, but we can research and plan for the future.
try.
8. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if cap were the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 9. Their radical devotion to ecocentrism collapses into nihilism and paralysis. Brown 95 Charles S. Brown, Professor of Philosophy at Emporia State University, 1995 (Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism: the quest for a new worldview,
The Midwest Quarterly, Volume 36, Number 2, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Information Access)
2AC K Blocks 16/165
Deep ecologists regularly urge us to replace our anthropocentrism with an ecocentrism which advocates egalitarian attitudes toward all entities and forms in nature. In this suggestion, too, there is both promise and peril. Its promise lies in the hope that we will be able to see ourselves as enjoying a solidarity with nature. This is an expression of the wholistic motif present in all forms of ecological thinking. The radical egalitarianism of ecocentrism will, however, collapse into nihilism if no distinctions of value are made. To claim that everything has an equal and intrinsic value to everything else is to value nothing above anything else. Due to my place in the evolutionary-ecological system I cannot value the life of a child in a ghetto tenement and the lives of a family of rats equally. To do so would be to abdicate all value and leave me unable to act. It is a part of the predicament of every species to act from its self interest and to choose to spare the life of any innocent person over the lives of a family of rats in an expression of this evolutionary imperative.
2AC K Blocks 17/165
A2: Apocalyptic Rhetoric K

1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the neg get the status quo or a competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Reality shapes discourse the way the international arena changes shapes the way we perceive and talk about it; what we say in this round will in no way affect anything in reality. 3. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. 4. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
2AC K Blocks 18/165
approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 5. Discursive justification of saying we need to do the plan for good reasons and to save lives outweigh any negative affects from using apocalyptic rhetoric. 6. Nuclear fear is vital to prevent nuclear conflict Child, 86 (James W., professor of philosophy, Bowling Green State University, Nuclear War: The Moral Dimension, Transaction Publishers, pg. 176, Tashma)
Likewise, we
must develop strong , unfrightened , affirmative attitudes toward the risk of nuclear war. Only then can we disenthrall ourselves from myths and perhaps lessen the danger. We must see the threat of nuclear war as it is: of large but still human dimensions; a very difficult but ultimately tractable problem. But like all really important problems of human existence, the solution will come in bits and pieces to be slowly and patiently assembled: a more secure deterrent force replacing a vulnerable one here; a mutually adopted measure against accidental war there. In this painstaking process, we must dare to bear the risk of nuclear war if we are ever to make that risk go away. 7. Fear of death solves extinction Beres 96 - Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University Louis Rene, Feb., Scholar Fear of death, the ultimate source of anxiety, is essential to human survival. This is true not only for individuals, but also for states. Without such fear, states will exhibit an incapacity to confront nonbeing that can hasten their disappearance. So it is today with the State of Israel. Israel suffers acutely from insufficient existential dread. Refusing to tremble before the growing prospect of collective disintegration - a forseeable prospect connected with both genocide and war - this state is now unable to take the necessary steps toward collective survival. What is more,
because death is the one fact of life which is not relative but absolute, Israel's blithe unawareness of its national mortality deprives its still living days of essential absoluteness and growth. For
states, just as for individuals, confronting death can give the most positive reality to life itself. In this respect, a cultivated awareness of nonbeing is central to each state's pattern of potentialities as well as to its very existence. When a state chooses to block off such an awareness, a choice currently made by the State of Israel, it loses, possibly forever, the altogether critical benefits of "anxiety." 8. The idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history doesnt make any sense; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict. And, we control uniqueness, even if they win they control the root cause of conflict they cant act fast enough to solve our specific claims. 9. Icebreaking prevents methane drilling accidents Jones et al 7 Professor @ UVA, Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, member of the Defense Science Board, the Charles Stark Draper
Laboratory Corporation, the National Research Council Advisory Council for Policy and Global Affairs, and the MIT Corporation [Anita, First author for the Polar Research Board in the National Research Council, POLAR ICEBREAKERS IN A CHANGING WORLD, Google Book]
The U.S. Coast Guard seeks to protect the nations natural resources by eliminating environmental damage and the degradation of natural resources associated with maritime transportation, fishing, and recreational boating. Closely tied to the U.S. Coast Guards safety prevention efforts, avoidance of accidents is a key component of protecting the U.S. marine environment. The U.S. Coast Guard enforces regulations and laws protecting sensitive marine habitats, marine mammals, and endangered marine species, as well as laws preventing discharge of oil and other hazardous materials. A wide range of activities addresses environmental objectives in offshore lightering zone regulation, domestic fisheries enforcement, and foreign vessel inspection. U.S. Coast Guard units are often the first on scene when a pollution incident is reported, and the Coast Guard is typically the lead agency for a pollution response effort. Under the National Contingency Plan, U.S. Coast Guard captains of the port are the designated federal on-scene coordinators (FOSCs) for oil and hazardous substance incidents in all coastal and some inland areas. The FOSC is responsible for forging
2AC K Blocks 19/165
a coordinated and effective response effort with a complex group of government and commercial entities, often in dangerous and emotion-laden situations.
Protecting the Arctic marine environment begins with ensuring the safety of vessels operating in these challenging conditions, including the availability of icebreaking assistance and comprehensive monitoring of vessel movements. Prevention might also include a regulatory regime, limiting vessels to geographic areas and seasonal periods appropriate to their ice capabilities. The Canadian Arctic Shipping Pollution Prevention Regulations (ASPPR) would serve as an obvious example . Increases in traffic, especially from Russian or Canadian waters, may create U.S. interest in establishing regulations; enforcement and deterrence would necessitate an on-scene presence capable of operating in ice. The U.S. Coast Guard would clearly have regulatory responsibility for this type of waterways management. Responding to a major oil spill in the Arctic is challenging, as cleanup activities for an onshore spill near Prudhoe Bay in early 2006 attest. Oil cleanup offshore would be even more difficult due to the dearth of infrastructure and the possibility of ice. Where depth of water permits access, an icebreaker could offer command-and-control capabilities, communications, berthing, helicopters, boats, cargo space, heavyweight handling gear, tankage, and support services to smaller craft, all of which would be of great benefit to cleanup operations. Direct oil recovery could also be included as an icebreaker capability: POLAR SEA successfully tested a boom-mounted skimming
system known as the Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System (VOSS) (as well as other capabilities) while participating in an oil spill exercise off Sakhalin Island in
U.S. Coast Guards new fleet of coastal buoy tenders is equipped with VOSS, and thought should be given to the need for new polar icebreakers to be equipped with the latest technology for oil spill response.
1998. The
Methane release causes the destruction of the environment and extinction of practically everything Ryskin 3 Ph.D. Chemical Engineering California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA Engineer-Physicist St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, St. Petersburg,
Russia Fluid dynamics; statistical physics; geophysics Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering Gregory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University [Methane-driven oceanic eruptions and mass extinctions, Geology, September 2003. <http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/methaneGeology.pdf>]
The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region boils over, ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2 , H2 S) into the atmosphere, and ooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The airmethane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions 2 and conagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide. Firestorms carry smoke and dust into the upper atmosphere, where they may remain for several years (Turco et al., 1991); the resulting darkness and global cooling may provide an additional kill mechanism. Conversely, carbon dioxide and the remaining methane create the greenhouse effect, which may lead to global warming. The outcome of the competition between the cooling and the warming tendencies is difcult to predict (Turco et al., 1991; Pierrehumbert, 2002). Upon release of a signicant portion of the dissolved methane, the ocean settles down, and the entire sequence of events (i.e., development of anoxia, accumulation of dissolved methane, the metastable state, eruption) begins anew. No external cause is required to bring about a methane-driven eruptionits mechanism is self-contained, and implies that eruptions are likely to occur repeatedly at the same location. Because methane is isotopically light, its fast release must result in a negative carbon isotope excursion in the geological record. Knowing the
magnitude of the excursion, one can estimate the amount of methane that could have produced it. Such calculations (prompted by the methane-hydrate-dissociation model, but equally applicable here) have been performed for several global events in the geological record; the results range from ;10 18 to 10 19 g of released methane (e.g., Katz et al., 1999; Kennedy et al., 2001; de Wit et al., 2002). These
are very large amounts: the total carbon content of todays terrestrial biomass is ;2 3 10^(18) g. Nevertheless, relatively small regions of the deep ocean could contain such amounts of dissolved methane; e.g., the Black Sea alone (volume ;0.4 3 1023 of the ocean total; maximum depth only 2.2 km)
could hold, at saturation, ;0.5 3 10 18 g. A similar region of the deep ocean could contain much more (the amount grows quadratically with depth 3 ).
Released in a geological instant (weeks, perhaps), 10^(18) to 10^(19) g of methane could destroy the terrestrial life almost entirely. Combustion and explosion of 0.75 x 10^(19) g of methane would liberate energy equivalent to 10^(8) Mt of TNT, ;10,000 times greater than the worlds stockpile of nuclear weapons, implicated in the nuclearwinter scenario (Turco et al., 1991).
2AC K Blocks 20/165
A2: Bataille K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. Life outweighs the claim to its value because life is a prerequisite even if value is somehow lost it can always be regained; life cant. 4. Theres always value to life Prefer our ev because of Frankls subject position. Coontz 1 Phyllis D. Coontz, PhD Graduate School of Public and International Affairs University of Pittsburgh, et al, JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY HEALTH
NURSING, 2001, 18(4), 235-246 J-Stor In the 1950s, psychiatrist
and theorist Viktor Frankl (1963) described an existential theory of purpose and meaning in life. Frankl, a long-time prisoner in a concentration camp, related several instances of transcendent states that he experienced in the midst of that terrible suffering using his own experiences and observations. He believed that these experiences allowed him and others to maintain their sense of dignity and self-worth. Frankl (1969) claimed that transcendence occurs by giving to others, being open to others and the environment, and coming to accept the reality that some situations are unchangeable. He hypothesized that life always has meaning for the individual; a person can always decide how to face adversity. Therefore, self-transcendence provides meaning and enables the discovery of meaning for a person (Frankl, 1963). Expanding Frankl's work, Reed (1991b) linked self-transcendence with mental health. Through a developmental process individuals gain an increasing understanding of who they are and are able to move out beyond themselves despite the fact that they are experiencing physical and mental pain. This expansion beyond the self occurs through in- trospection, concern about others and their well-being, and integration of the past and future to strengthen one's present life (Reed, 1991b).
5. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. 6. This argument is absurd if we constantly consume, well eventually run out resources arent infinite. 7. Their moral tunnel vision is complicit with the evil they criticize Issac 2 (Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale
(Jeffery C., Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, Ends, Means, and Politics, p. Proquest) As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It
is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers
2AC K Blocks 21/165

from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the
purity of one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
8. Utilitarianism is key to morality Extinction prevents future generation from attaining other values Nye 86 (Joseph S. 1986; Phd Political Science Harvard. University; Served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Nuclear
Ethics pg. 45-46)
Is there any end that could justify a nuclear war that threatens the survival of the species? Is not all-out nuclear war just as self contradictory in the real world as pacifism is accused of being? Some people argue that "we are required to undergo gross injustice that will break many souls sooner than ourselves be the authors of mass murder."73 Still others say that "when a person makes survival the highest value, he has declared that there is nothing he will not betray. But for a civilization to sacrifice itself makes no sense since there are not survivors to give meaning to the sacrifical [sic] act. In that case, survival may be worth betrayal." Is it possible to avoid the "moral calamity of a policy like unilateral disarmament that forces us to choose between being dead or red (while increasing the chances of both)"?74 How one judges the issue of ends can be affected by how one poses the questions. If one asks "what is worth a billion lives (or the survival of the species)," it is natural to resist contemplating a positive answer. But suppose one asks, "is it possible to imagine any threat to our civilization and values that would justify raising the threat to a billion lives from one in ten thousand to one in a thousand for a specific period?" Then there are several plausible answers, including a democratic way of life and cherished freedoms that give meaning to life beyond mere survival. When we pursue several values simultaneously, we face the fact that they often conflict and that we face difficult tradeoffs. If we make one value absolute in priority, we are likely to get that value and little else. Survival is a necessary condition for the enjoyment of other values, but that does not make it sufficient. Logical priority does not make it an absolute value. Few people act as though survival were an absolute value in their personal lives, or they would never enter an automobile. We can give survival of the species a very high priority without giving it the paralyzing status of an absolute value. Some degree of risk is unavoidable if individuals or societies are to avoid paralysis and enhance the quality of life beyond mere survival. The degree of that risk is a justifiable topic of both prudential and moral reasoning.
9. The alt goes too far turns solvency Shaviro, 90 (Steven, PhD from Yale, professor at Wayne State University, former professor at University of Washington, Passion and Excess, The Florida
State University Press, pg. 40-41, Tashma)
extremism of Benjamin's and Batailles formulations makes it difficult to see how they can be applied to concrete situations of social struggle. It is easy to point out the absurdity of Acphales projects of voluntary self-sacrifice and communal
The ecstasy. But this is an "absurdity on which Bataille himself was the Hrst to insist. Absurdity, for Bataille, is not the negative condition it is regarded as by telcological thinkers and existentialists. It is an affirmation that opposes the capitalist logic ofputring all productive forces to work. [Lhomme] est libre de ressembler E1 tout ce qui nest pas lui dans lùnivers. ll peut carter la pense que cest lui ou Dieu qui empche le reste des choses dtre absurde [(Man) is free to resemble everything that is not himself in the universe. He can set aside the thought that it is he or God who keeps the rest of things from being absurd]" (OC, 1:445; VE, 180). The
problem, then, is not how to give meaning and force to otherwise absurd and inefficacious acts. It is rather how to prevent sacrifice and expenditure from becoming (as is the case in fascism ) new grounds of power or signification. \ 10. The alternative eternally dooms humanity makes endless catastrophe inevitable Shaviro, 90 (Steven, PhD from Yale, professor at Wayne State University, former professor at University of Washington, Passion and Excess, The Florida
State University Press, pg. 37-39, Tashma)
2AC K Blocks 22/165
Yet if the intensity of Batailles involvement is clear, the details of its expression are not. Does the passage which I have just quoted function as description or as exhortation? On what sort of threshold are we standing, and what is the nature of the "void which lies beyond it? At such a point,
what kind of "alternative is at stake? What further disaster could be entailed by a retreat? And is it even possible to retreat? Since the foundations
have already crumbled, is not a fall inevitable? But what sort of courage is available in such a situation? What kind of "conquest" is it which is no longer played out according to the dialectic of master and slave, with the risk of heroic death as ultimate stake? What experience of time is realized by this leap into die void? The only way to answer such questions may be to alter the way in which they are posed. For the peculiar effect of Batailles
work is that it offers no satisfying conclusions , no points of repose. Not even the satisfaction of absolute destruction. His obsessive meditations concern
a.nd participate ina catastrophe all the more obscure and unsettling in that it refuses apocalyptic closure. "Ce qui seul demeure est lagitation circulairequi ne spuise pas dans lèxtase et recommence ai partir delle [What alone remains is circular agitationwhich does not exhaust itself in ecstasy and begins again from it]" (OC, 5:130; IE, lll). The "yertiginous fall takes place in a bottomless void, and consequently never hits bottom. The privileged act of sacrifice serves no end,
leads to no appeasement. And despite Batailles frequent sexual stereotyping and invocations of virility, his " interior experience" does not culminate in any display of phallic mastery. Pure loss, expenditure without recompense, it issues only in an absurd compulsion to repeat, to approach the threshold of disaster again and again . The summit" of ecstasy cannot be extricated from a
concomitant "decline": "De mme que le S0mKIlCt nest a la fin que linacecssible, le dclin des labord est Pinvitable [Iust as the summit is finally only the inaccessible, so the decline, from the very first, is inevitable] (OC, 6:57). The
exuberant violence of Batailles texts is matched only by
the pointless dissipation of the energies they invoke.
2AC K Blocks 23/165
A2: Baudrillard K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. And, roleplaying is awesome - it creates a competitive space to imagine new ideas and translate them into practical suggestionsplaying devils advocate challenges the status quo and results in emancipatory change Andrews 06 (Peter, Consulting Faculty Member at the IBM Executive Business Institute in Palisades, New York, Executive Technology Report,
August, www-935.ibm.com/services/us/bcs/pdf/g510-6313-etr-unlearn-to-innovate.pdf) High stakes innovation
requires abandoning conventional wisdom, even actively unlearning things we know are true. As science only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 1 Venturing into the impossible carries many risks: discouragement, failure, loss of reputation and even ridicule. The trials of innovators those who had the courage to be disruptive are the stuff of legends. But their contributions have changed our world. Not everyone aspires to innovations that are high impact. Small but profitable innovations are welcome and essential contributors to the growth and well-being of corporations and societies. But, even if your goal is modest, a look at unlearning can be of value since taking even a few steps at unlearning can lead to fresh ideas. In an article, William Starbuck of New York University said, learning often cannot occur until after there has
fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said, The been unlearning. Unlearning is a process that shows people they should no longer rely on their current beliefs and methods. But, how do we unlearn? Five steps seem to be essential. We
need to: 1) Create space for thinking 2) Play with ideas 3) Dare to believe that the impossible ideas might be true
4) Adapt the ideas to useful contexts 5) Take action, despite objections of experts and authorities. Create space for thinking A classic Far Side cartoon shows a student raising his hand, asking to be excused because his brain is full. In these days of information overload, most of us have the same problem. We have been exposed to huge numbers of ideas, often at a rate that makes analysis and selection difficult. How do we put these aside? One technique is to list
what we know about a subject. Then challenge each one. What happens if you exaggerate the statement? What are the drawbacks? Does it become absurd? What does the world look like if the opposite is true? Conventional wisdom at many levels from the humors theory of disease to the inevitability of slavery, to the spoke and hub design of airlines has been successfully challenged. The unthinkable has become thinkable, and then the world has changed. The purpose of questioning is both to clear away clutter and create doubt. Starbuck focuses on this and suggests that we stop thinking of things theories, products and processes as finished. He says we should start from the premises that current beliefs and methods are not good enough or merely experimental. 3 This is an emancipating concept, but there is still work to do. What can be
put into the empty space that was created? This is where popular tricks for generating ideas can be valuable. Play with ideas The classic technique for idea generation is a freewheeling, nonjudgmental brainstorming session. And, bringing
in people with different knowledge and perspectives can help push the limits. To push even further, the process can be made competitive, using Red Team approaches (Red Teams assume the role of the outsider to challenge assumptions, look for unexpected alternatives and find the vulnerabilities of a new idea or approach).
2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
ontological and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly
dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational
2AC K Blocks 24/165

choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theoryconstruction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problemdriven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 4. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. 5. Baudrillard is wrong about hyper-reality. We are very aware of differences between real life and media images. Just imagine how horrified you would be if you were watching a horror movie and found out that the actors were really being killed. iek, 2000 (University of Ljubljana), 2000 (Slavoj, March/April The Cyberspace Real,http://www.egs.edu/faculty/iek/iek-the-cyberspace-real.html) Are the pessimistic cultural criticists (from Jean Baudrillard to Paul Virilio) justified in their claim that cyberspaceultimately generates a kind of proto-psychotic immersion into an imaginary universe of hallucinations, unconstrained byany symbolic Law or by any impossibility of some Real? If not, how are we to detect in cyberspace the contours of the other two dimensions of the Lacanian triad ISR, the Symbolic and the Real? As to the symbolic dimension, the solution seems easy it suffices to focus on the notion of authorship that fits the emerging domain of cyberspace narratives,
that of the procedural authorship": the author (say, of the interactive immersive environment in which we actively participate by role-playing) no longer writes detailed story-line, s/he merely provides the basic set of rules (the coordinates of the fictional universe in which we immerse ourselves, the limited set of actions we are allowed to accomplish within this virtual space, etc.), which serves as the basis for the interactor's active engagement (intervention, improvisation). This notion of "procedural authorship" demonstrates the need for a kind of equivalent to the Lacanian "big Other": in order for the interactor to become engaged in cyberspace, s/he has to operate within a minimal set of externally imposed accepted symbolic rules/coordinates. Without these rules, the subject/interactor would effectively become immersed in a psychotic experience of an universe in which "we do whatever we want" and are, paradoxically, for that very reason deprived of our freedom, caught in a demoniac compulsion. It is thus crucial to establish the rules that engage us, that led us in our immersion into the cyberspace, while allowing us to maintain the distance towards the enacted universe. The point is not simply to maintain "the right measure" between the two extremes (total psychotic immersion versus non-engaged external distance towards the artificial universe of the cyber-fiction): distance is rather a positive condition of immersion .
If we are to surrender to the enticements of the virtual environment, we have to "mark the border," to rely on a set of marks which clearly
2AC K Blocks 25/165
designate that we are dealing with a fiction, in the same way in which, in order to let ourselves go and enjoy a violent war movie, we somehow have to know that what we are seeing is a staged fiction, not real-life killing(imagine our horrible surprise if, while watching a war scene, we would suddenly see that we are watching a snuff, that the actor engaged in face-to-face combat is effectively cutting the throat of his "enemy"). Against the theorists who fear that cyberspace involves the regression to a kind of psychotic incestuous immersion, one should thus discern in today's often clumsy and ambiguous improvisations about "cyberspace rules" precisely the effort to establish clearly the contours of anew space of symbolic fictions in which we fully participate in the mode disavowal, i.e. being aware that "this is not real life."
6. No root cause the idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history doesnt make any sense; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict. 7. Baudrillards politics are deeply conformist. Playing with the pieces of hyper-reality shuts down real
alternatives. Donahue, 01(Department of English, Gonzaga University), (Brian, Marxism, Postmodernism, iek, PostmodernCulture,12.2, Project Muse). According to iek, theorists of postmodern society who make much of the usurpation of the Real by the simulacrum either long nostalgically
for the lost distinction between them or announce the final overcoming of the "metaphysical obsession with authentic Being," or both (he mentions Paul Virilio and Gianni Vattimo, and we might add Baudrillard to the list). In either case they "miss
the distinction between simulacrum and appearance "What gets lost in today's plague of simulations is not the firm, true, nonsimulated Real, but appearance itself. To put it in
Lacanian terms: the simulacrum is imaginary (illusion),while appearance is symbolic (fiction); when the specific dimension of symbolic appearance starts to disintegrate, imaginary and real become more and more indistinguishable.... symbolic fiction) is
And, in sociopolitical terms,this domain of appearance (that is, none other than that of politics.... The old conservative motto of keeping up appearances thus today obtains a new twist:... [it] stands for the effort to save the properly political space. ("Leftist" 995-96) Making the same argument about a slightly different version of this problem, iek writes that the standard reading of "out bursts of 'irrational' violence" in the postmodern "society of the spectacle" is that "our perception of reality is mediated by aestheticized media manipulations to such an extent that it is no longer possible for us to distinguish reality from its media image" ( Metastases 75). Violent outbursts in
this context are thus seen as "desperate attempts to draw a distinction between fiction and reality... [and] to dispel the cobweb of the aestheticized pseudo-reality" (75). Again with reference to the Lacanian triad of Imaginary-Symbolic-Real, iek argues that this analysis is " right for the wrong reasons " : What is missing from it is the crucial distinction between imaginary order and symbolic fiction. The
problem of contemporary media resides not in their enticing us to confound fiction with reality but, rather, in their "hyperrealist" character by means of which they saturate the void that
keeps open the space for symbolic fiction. A society of proliferating, promiscuous images is thus not overly fictionalized but is, on the contrary, not "fictionalized" enough in the sense that the basis for making valid statements, the structure guaranteeing intersubjective communication, the order permitting shared narratives and, to use Jameson's term, "cognitive mapping"11--in short, the
realm of the Symbolic--is short-circuited by an incessant flow of images, which solicit not analysis and the powers of thought but rather nothing more than blank, unreflective enjoyment. The kind of subjectivity that corresponds to this hyperreal,spectacularized society without a stable Symbolic order is what iek calls in Looking Awry the "pathological narcissist" (102). That is, following the predominance of the "'autonomous' individual of the Protestant ethic" and the "heteronomous 'organization man'" who finds satisfaction through "the feeling of loyalty to the group"--the two models of subjectivity
corresponding to previous stages of capitalist society--today's media-spectacle-consumer society is marked by the rise of the "pathological narcissist," a subjective structure that breaks with the "underlying frame of the ego-ideal common to the first two forms" (102). The first two forms involved inverted versions of each other: one either strove to remain true to oneself (that is, to a "paternal ego-ideal") or looked at oneself "through the eyes of the group," which functioned as an "externalized" ego-ideal, and sought "to merit its love and esteem" (102). With the stage of the"pathological narcissist," however,
the ego-ideal itself is dissolved: Instead of the integration of a symbolic law , we have a multitude of rules to follow--rules of accommodation telling us "how to succeed." The narcissistic subject knows only the "rules of the (social) game" enabling him to manipulate others; social relations constitute for him a playing field in which he assumes "roles," not proper symbolic mandates; he stays clear of any kind of binding commitment that would imply a proper symbolic identification . He is a radical conformist who paradoxically experiences himself as an outlaw The impact is extinction; the refusal to engage in traditional politics is an abdication of social responsibility that makes all social crises inevitable Boggs, 97 (Carl, National University, Los Angeles, Theory and Society, The great retreat: Decline of the public sphere inlatetwentieth-century America,
December, Volume 26, Number 6,http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/content/m7254768m63h16r0/fulltext.pdf
2AC K Blocks 26/165
) The decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America poses a series of great dilemmas and challenges. Many ideological currents scrutinized here localism, metaphysics, spontaneism, post-modernism, Deep Ecology intersect with and reinforce each other. While these currents have deep origins in popular movements of the 1960s and 1970s, they remain very much alive in the 1990s. Despite their different outlooks and trajectories, they all share one thing in common: adepoliticized expression of struggles to combat and overcome alienation. The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement, an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change. As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society will go unsolved perhaps even unrecognized only to fester more ominously in the future. And such problems (ecological crisis, poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious diseases, technological displacement of workers) cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context of internationalized markets , finance, and communications. Paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist sentiment, comes at a time when agendas that ignore or sidestep these global realities will, more than ever, be reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the increasing sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. By diluting the life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions. 74 In the mean time , the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The unyielding truth is that, even as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more compelling and even fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to decide the fate of human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that corporate colonization will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or that gigantic state and military structures will lose their hold over peoples lives. Far from it: the space abdicated by a broad citizenry, well- informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites an already familiar dynamic in many lesser-developed countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant individualism, social Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the
American landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. In this way the eclipse of politics might set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise or it might help further rationalize the existing power structure. In either case, the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated the embodiment of those universal, collective interests that had vanished from civil society. 7
8. Baudrillards simulation argument plays into the hands of power. His Gulf War example is proof of the authoritarian results of his argumentthe Real is still being constructed but the Pentagon is doing it. Rectenwald, 03 (Citizens for Legitimate Government), (March 11, Michael, Gulf War II: The New
Real,http://legitgov.org/mike_essay_the_new_real4_031103.html
introduced the notion of a new social order based on simulacra without originals. Malls, neighborhoods, amusement parks, even the political left and rightsimulations of originals that no longer exist, imitations without real models. Baudrillard engaged academics and enraged Marxists and other social realists, when he later announced, with seeming blitheness, that the first Gulf War wasnt real. Tell that to the estimated 15,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the war, or the estimated 100,000 dying in its aftermath, or the Gulf War veterans, suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. But despite the critics of postmodernisms dissolution of the real, there is something to what Baudrillardclaimed: the first victim of the video war, the simulation, the reportage censored by Israel, was the notion of reality. The real suffered a mortal blow. The
video representation of the Gulf War became the war itself, supplanting any kernel of reality with simulation. So that film could finally announce: Welcome to the desert of the real!deserted because no one sees it, the desert of the real because for all practical purposes, it doesnt exist. It appears from the previews we are receiving regarding the media coverage of Gulf War II, that the real, now dead, is to be declared alive-and-well, dressed up, camouflaged, and paraded around by the Pentagon itself: a remediation of the real . The media
Jean Baudrillard
becomes the proxy purveyor of newsreelsthe new real being supplied by the Pentagon. Reporters are to be fully approved instruments of the war machine itself, like additional scopes fastened to the instruments of death, pointing only at acceptable targets, with a simulated vision not unlike the video version of the jet fighters and scopic filters of the combatants ( on one side). The notion of bias is decimated in the very act of
killing in media res military perspectivalism serves as a placebo. Any remaining memory of real differing perspectives is thereby satisfied, if not obliterated in advance; perspectivalism becomes a multiplication of staged effects. Like cable television with its endless splintering of sameness into a reputed variety, the multiple perspectives of gunmen will supplant all other standpoints .Independent reporters, the Pentagon now reputedly warns, will be fired upon. Death to Realism! was the perhaps more apropos cry in that other, more ironic cyber film, eXistenZ. Thus,
it appears that Baudrillard was only partly right. The real is indeed under fire, but like the repressed in Freuds version of the psyche, it threatens to return .Likewise, measures must be taken against it. The Pentagon promises to take such measures. Slavoj iek suggested that
9-11 threatened to shatter the borderline which today separates the digitized First World from the Third World desert of the Real, yielding, with its crashing of the simulation, an awareness that we live in an insulated artificial universe which generates the notion that some ominous agent is threatening us all the time with total destruction. This awareness may be too painful for the denizens of the Matrix. Gulf War II(whose moralistic/poetic name is still being debated by the Pentagon) is an
2AC K Blocks 27/165
attempt to reconstruct that Matrix, to re-inscribe the borderline, to reclaim the real and reissue it as military rations. The real is parceled out. The
media asks us incredulously: Do you think that the Pentagon (or Powell, or Bush, or Rumsfeld) would actually lie to the American people? We cannot answer, simply, yes. Not only are they lying, they are actually producing the new real.
2AC K Blocks 28/165
A2: Badiou K
2AC K Blocks 29/165
approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 5. Perm do the plan as a truth event. 6. Badious concept of ethics fails because it is impossible to make qualitative distinctions between different sorts of evilleading to absurd results. Brown, 04 (Nicholas, University of Illinois at Chicago, Or, Alain Badiou and Slavoj iek, Waiting for Something to Happen, CR: The New Centennial Review
4.3 (2004) 289-319). This apparatus is a powerful lens, and there can be no doubt that Badiou is describing something important; perhaps it is even an aspect of evil. But is it really Evil (Mal) itself? Badiou's evil, like his truth, is indifferent to content, a merely formal label. In its formalism, its insistence on fidelity to any Event whateveron "ethical consistency" itself as a valueBadiou's good is almost an aesthetic rather than an ethical category. (At one point, in an echo of Kant's purposeless purpose, ethical consistency is even described as "disinterested interest.") While
there is something undeniably attractive in ethical consistency (and something ugly in its lack), the most important thing for a modern ethics may be to push these sentimental considerations aside. The value of ethical consistency is authorized by Lacan's well-known dictum not to give up on one's
desire [ne pas cder sur son dsir]. But we should not forget that this maxim derives from the reading of Antigone in Sminaire VII. Yes, Sophocles' Antigone, in her awful ethical consistency, is a captivating figure. Brecht's Galileo, on the other hand, in his opportunism and wavering inconsistency, is a bit distasteful. But Antigone is a reactionary, and Galileo invents physics. Further,
Badiou has no way of sorting out different evils beyond his tripartite division. Ethics tells us what Nazism and scientific obscurantism have in common. But an ethics would have to be able to tell them apart. The distinction between, say, the abandonment of a social movement by its leader and the abandonment of a poem by its author cannot be made without some kind of qualitative supplement. Since, as we
shall see, Badiou's philosophy is predicated precisely on the subtraction from consideration of all qualitative predicates, this supplement can only be vulgar, non-
Perhaps the supplement it requires is the language of human rights, which, whatever its faults, can tell the difference between a concentration camp and a creationist textbook.
philosophical.
7. Life outweighs the claim to its value because life is a prerequisite even if value is somehow lost it can always be
regained; life cant.
8. Turn Capitalism a. Badious system failshe has no way to overcome the enormous power he attributes to capitalism. Brown, 04 (Nicholas, University of Illinois at Chicago, Or, Alain Badiou and Slavoj iek, Waiting for Something to Happen, CR: The New Centennial Review
4.3 (2004) 289-319). But what is strange is the vehemence with which Badiou maintains his distance from the economicfrom what classical Marxism called the "base," the elements of a situation that pertain to its own reproduction. It is perfectly orthodox to say that there can be no purely economic intervention in the economy: even with the best intentions, the World Bank could not solve the problem of Third World poverty. However, in Badiou's system the economy is not merely reduced to one aspect among many, but actively dismissed from consideration. Material reproduction is reduced to the sneering Lacanian contempt for "le service des biens," the servicing of goods which pertains to the human animal beneath good and evil. Why should Badiou fully endorse Marx's analysis
In fact, capitalism is the point of impasse in Badiou's own system, the problem which cannot be actively thought without grave danger to the system as a whole. Capital's great power, the tremendous ease with which it colonizes (geographic, cultural, psychic) territory, is precisely that it seizes situations at their evental site. In their paraphrase of a
of the world economy ("there is no need for a revision of Marxism itself," [Ethics, 97]) while keeping Marx's entire problematic at arm's length? brilliant but much-maligned passage in Marx's Grundrisse, Deleuze and Guattari insist that "capitalism has haunted all forms of society, but it haunts them as their terrifying nightmare, it is the dread they feel of a flow that would elude their codes."2 Is this flow that eludes every society's codes not identical with generic multiplicity, the void which, eluding every representation, nonetheless haunts every situation? Does not capitalism make its entry at a society's point of impassesocial relations already haunted by variously dissimulated exploitationand revolutionize them into the capital-labor relation? A safely non-Orientalist version of this would be the eruption from modernist art's evental sitethe art market, which belonged to the situation of modernism while being excluded from its represented stateof what we might call the "Warhol-event," which inaugurates the transition from the formal to the real subsumption of (artistic) labor under Capital. It makes perfect sense to say that this transition is the truth of the [End Page 308] Warhol-event. As we saw earlier, the real subsumption of labor under Capital, the conversion of every relation into a monetary relation, is the origin of formal equality: that is, the foundation of universalism. And far from pertaining to mere animal life beneath the level of
capitalism itself fits perfectly the form of the revolutionary Event. It would then appear that capitalism is, like religion, eliminated from the art-politics-science-love series only by fiat. And why is this? Because the
the truth-procedure, economic, the "servicing of goods," cannot enter Badiou's system without immediately assuming the status of a cause. Excluded from direct consideration, capitalism as a condition of set theory is perfectly innocuous; its preconditional status belongs to a different order than what it conditions. It opens up a mode of presentation, but
2AC K Blocks 30/165
what is presented existed all along: look at Paul, for example. But included as the product of a truth-procedure, capitalism immediately appears as the basis for all the others: it is, in fact, the revolutionary irruption of Capital (in whatever society) that conditions any modern process of science, art, love, or politics.
If Badiou's system were to consider capitalism directly, some elements, those pertaining to the "base," would appear to have more weight than othersthe "superstructure." The effects of such an inclusion of capitalism in Badiou's systeman inclusion which nothing preventswould be catastrophic. Radical universality (as opposed to the historically conditioned universality imposed by the emergence of capitalism) would become unthinkable. The "eternity" of truth would yield to historicism. b. Capitalism causes global wars, environmental destruction, and poverty Robinson 06 Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (William I., Critical Globalization Studies, Chapter 2, Critical Globalization
Studies, ed by R Richard P Appelbaum, http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/Assets/pdf/crit_glob.pdf SW) We are living in troubling times. The
system of global capitalism that now engulfs the entire planet is in crisis. There is consensus among scientists that we are on the precipice of ecological holocaust, including the mass extinction of species; the impending collapse of agriculture in major producing areas; the meltdown of polar ice caps; global warming; and the contamination of the oceans, the food stock, water supply, and air. Social inequalities have spiraled out of control and the gap between the global rich and the global poor has never been as acute as it is in the early twenty-rst century. While absolute levels of poverty and misery expand around the world under a new global social apartheid, the richest 20 percent of humanity received in 2000 more than 85 percent of the worlds wealth, while the remaining 80 percent had to make do with less than 15 percent, according to the United Nations oft-cited annual Human Development Report (UNDP, 2001). Driven by the imperatives of overaccumulation and transnational social control, global elites have increasingly turned to authoritarianism, militarization, and war to sustain the system. Many political economists concur that a global economic collapse is possible, even probable. 9. Badiou is not politically useful because his alternative is too vaguehe says that the event side steps the state but any alternative politics must be able to reform the state to succeed. Brown, 04 (Nicholas, University of Illinois at Chicago, Or, Alain Badiou and Slavoj iek, Waiting for Something to Happen, CR: The New Centennial Review
4.3 (2004) 289-319). Badiou's ontology cannot usefully displace the dialectic. Because the Event must descend like a grace, Badiou's ontology can only describe situations and never History.
Since the event emerges from outside of the state of the situation, it is rigorously untheorizable: as we saw above, it is theorized as untheorizable. Despite every protestation to the contrary, Badiou's system cannot address the question "What is to be done?" because the only thing to do is to wait for the Event. What happens when the precipitation of the Event is precisely what needs to be done? Yes, we can be faithful to a previous event, as Badiou says Lenin was to the Paris
Commune. But surely this solution mitigates the power of the Event as the irruption of the void into this situation. The dialectic, on the other hand, conceives the void as immanent contradiction. While both contradiction and void are immanent to the situation, contradiction has the tremendous advantage of having movement built in, as it were: the Event does not appear out of an immanent nowhere, but is already fully present in itself in the situation, which it explodes in the movement to for-itself. Meanwhile, the question of the dialectic leads us back to the twofold meaning of "state": both the law and order that govern knowledge, and law and order in the everyday sense. This identification authorizes Badiou's antistatism, forcefully reflected in his own political commitment, the Organisation Politique (whose members do not vote), which has made limited [End Page 306] but effective interventions into the status of immigrant workers. In Badiou's system, nothing can happen within the state of a situation; innovation can only emerge from an evental site, constitutively excluded from the state. But can a principled indifference to the state ground a politics? The state surely has the function of suppressing the anarchic possibilities inherent in the (national) situation. But it can also suppress the possibilities exploited by an anarchic capitalism. It is well known that the current rightist "small-government" movement is an assault on the class compromise represented by the Keynesian state. To be sure, one should be suspicious of that compromise and what it excluded. But it also protected workers against some of capitalism's more baleful effects. As with Ethics, Badiou
is certainly describing something: the utopian moment of a total break with the state may be a part of any genuine political transformation. But, unless we are talking about the sad old interplay of transgression and limitwhich posited the state as basically permanent, with transgression as its permanent suspensionthis anarchic moment says nothing about the new state of affairs that will ultimately be imposed on the generic set it constructs. Surely the configuration of that state will be paramountin which case state power has to be fought for, not merely evaded. 10. Badious alternative of radical egalitarianism is unworkable and is based on a failed model of communism. Hallward, 03 (Badiou: a subject to truth, Peter Hallward, University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis / London 2003, Professor of Modern European
Philosophy, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex Univeristy).
2AC K Blocks 31/165
Badiou's politics have always been about collective emancipation, or the problem of the reign of liberty in infinite situations (DO,
54; cf. TC, 60). His political goals have remained consistent over the years, since every historical event is communist, to the degree that 'communist' designates the transtemporal subjectivity of emancipation, the egalitarian passion, the Idea of justice, the will to break with the compromises of the service des biens, the deposition of egoism, an intolerance of oppression, the wish to impose a withering away of the state. The absolute preeminence of multiple presentation over representation. 84 What has changed is communism's mode of existence. In Badiou's earlier work, the practical (if ultimately unattainable) goal was always to effect the actual, historical achievement of stateless community. Today, in order to preserve politics' intrinsic relation to truth (DO, 48), Badiou
has had to let go of almost any sort of political engagement with the economic and the social. He continues to declare a wholly egalitarian politics, but as reserved for a strictly subjective plane. The unqualified justice of a generic communism, first proposed in Marx's 1844 Manuscripts and conceived in Badiou's own terms as the advent of pure presentation, as the undivided authority of the infinite, or the advent of the collective as such (AM, 91), remains the only valid subjective norm for Badiou's political thought. This subjective norm has become ever more distant, however, from the day-to-day business of objective politics: the programmatic pursuit of the generic ideal is itself now dismissed as a
Romantic dream leading to fraternity terror (AM, 101).
2AC K Blocks 32/165
A2: Borders K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
2AC K Blocks 33/165
epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 4. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if geopolitical discourse was the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts.
5. Liberalism recast wars as intervention for the sake of all humanityresulting in global totalitarianism.
Prozorov 06 Sergei, Professor of International Relations at Petrozavodsk State University, Millennium Journal of International Studies, Liberal Enmity: The
Figure of the Foe in the Political Ontology of Liberalism, http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/35/1/75.pdf, 2006, LEQ Thus, struggles
against hegemony or domination, which indeed have constituted politics and history as we know them, are recast as a priori criminal acts in the new order of the world state, calling for global police interventions rather than interstate war. The adversary is no longer called an enemy, but a disturber of peace and is thereby designated to be an outlaw of humanity.48 The exclusionary potential of universalism is evident: theoretically, we may easily envision a situation where a world state as a global police structure does not represent anything but itself; not merely anyone, but ultimately everyone may be excluded from the world unity without any consequences for the continuing deployment of this abstract universality as an instrument of legitimation. In Zygmunt Baumans phrase, the international community has little reality apart from the occasional military operations undertaken in its name.49 Thus, for Schmitt, if the monistic project of liberalism ever succeeded, it would be at the cost of the transformation of the world into a terrifying dystopia of a self-immanent, totally administered world without an outside and hence without a possibility of flight. 6. Opening the borders would create a racist, violent backlash of epic proportions Zizek 01, professor at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana (Slavoj, Rethinking Marxism, v.13 n. 3/4,
http://coyote.kein.org/pipermail/generation_online/2002-May/000351.html) Nevertheless, one immediately gets a sense of the boundaries to Hardt and Negri's analysis. In their social-economic analysis, the lack of concrete insight is concealed in the Deleuzian jargon of multitude, deterritorialization, and so forth. No wonder that the three "practical proposals with which the book ends appear anticlimactic. The authors propose to focus our political struggle on three global rights: the rights to global citizenship, a minimal income, and the reappropriation of the new means of production (i.e. access to and control over education, information and communication). It is a paradox that Hardt and Negri, the poets of mobility, variety, hybridization, and so on, call for three demands formulated in the terminology of universal human rights. `these demands is that they fluctuate between formal emptiness and impossible radicalization. Let us take the right to global citizenship: theoretically, this right of course should be approved. However, if
this demand is meant to be taken more seriously than a celebratory formal declaration in typical United Nations Style, then it would mean the abolition of state borders; under present conditions, such a step would trigger an invasion of cheap labor from India, China and Africa into the United States and Western Europe, which would result in a populist revolt against immigrants-a result of such violent proportions that figures like Haider would seem models of multicultural tolerance. The same is valid with regard to the other two demands: for instance, the universal (worldwide) right to minimal
income-of course, why not? But how should one create the necessary social-economic and ideological conditions for such a shattering transformation?
7. Turn Terrorism
control is key to preventing terrorism uncontrolled Immigration risks national security Genenberg, 2009 (Herb The Bulletin, April 16, 2009, The Bulletin, Immigration Myths To Be Avoided When Coming Up With Reforms,
A. Border http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/16/herb_denenberg/doc49e6c910cc15d402232884.txt)
Myth One Immigration always produces good results for the economy and the country.
Because of our history, because we are a nation of immigrants, and because immigration seems to have turned out so well, many believe that more immigration will produce good results. For most of the last three centuries, America has accepted more immigrants than any other country. Even as late as 2007, there were 38 million people living in the U.S. that were not born here. Thats about 20 percent of the migrants of the world. All you have to do is look at Europe to find out what results immigration can
produce. The influx of Muslims runs the real danger of turning Europe into what has been called Eurabia a new Europe with majority control in the hands of Muslims and whole nations becoming subject to Sharia. Some of the most insightful observers
of the European scene believe that Europe is already lost and will continue to slide into Muslim domination and Sharia as its legal system. Europe not only has a problem for itself because of Muslim immigration but that also poses a serious problem to the United States. Listen to this warning from American Intelligence Officials, as reported by Robert S. Leiken in an article, The Menace in Europes Midst that appeared in Current History (April 2009): American intelligence
officials have told President Barack Obama that British jihadists now constitute the chief terrorist threat to the United
2AC K Blocks 34/165

States Britain is a visa waiver country meaning these terrorists are only an e-ticket away from the United States.
This February the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, in his first Annual Threat Assessment, emphasized that Al Qaeda has used Europe as a launching point for external operations against the homeland on several occasions since 9/11, and we believe that the group continues to view Europe as a viable launching point. There are some legitimate concern
even about Muslims and Muslim immigrants in the U.S. An often-cited poll, found that one out of four respondents under the age of 30 accepted suicide bombings.
B. Nuclear terrorism will cause extinction Sid-Ahmed, 4 (Mohamed, Managing Editor for Al-Ahali, Extinction! August 26-September 1, Issue no. 705, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm) A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far from certain - the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations,
a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war , from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.
as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of
8. Changing borders causes transition wars Rosenstock-Huessy 78 Professor at Dartmouth, Doctor of Law (1909) and Doctor of Philosophy (1923), University of Heidelberg Planetary service: a
way into the third millennium By Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YN41kwUsDikC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=%22changing+borders+*+war%22&ots=33x4PeBrr1&sig=bFJr4qNmij_hXOBYSE9N0xZpRo#v=onepage&q&f=false But they
would in fact be unchangeable, were we unable to create border-crossing points without resorting to war. The immense dilemma facing us today is not a lack of insight that the bomb cannot be thrown. No one is making that mistake, neither the Pope nor Khrushchev. What is missing is a powerful and enheartening means of changing borders without war. We are going to have to overcome borders without the bloodshed we have been used to in war. Perhaps it would be helpful to remember that we mortals have always been hemmed in by two kinds of prisons, the first being the world. That shows up on the map. There are houses and gardens and fences, the boundaries between towns, borders between countries, and finally even the borders between continents. These are all borders between the spaces in which we live. Once when l was an eleven year old boy, I drilled a hole in the door of my sister's room, and was severely punished for destroying the lovely door. I learned how dangerous it can be to move boundaries.
Luckily there are other boundaries, In English the word "neighbor" does not mean just people living on the same street, but also the person whom a living man needs most at a certain hour of his life. (German has two different words.) There are also borders in time. The Nazis built borders in time as high as borders in space. Authors were required to put the year of their birth on the title page, just as if they were part of a stud farm. This allowed any stupid little boy to say, the author is too old for me, or any stupid old man to say, he is too young. Thus
a border was created.
9. Respect for borders has prevented major wars. Zacher, 01 (Mark, International Organization, Vol. 55, No. 2. (Spring, 2001), pp. 215+ Jstor). The decline of successful wars of territorial aggrandizement during the last half century is palpable. In fact, there has not been a case of successful territorial aggrandizement since 1976. Furthermore there have been important multilateral accords in support of the norm and frequent interventions by international organizations to force states to withdraw from foreign countries. Clearly, a central source of the norm has been the industrialized worlds fear that territorial revisionism could ignite a major war that would cause great human suffering. Several scholars have observed that this revision against the imposition of physical pain has been central to the strengthening of a variety of security and human rights regimes. The experiences of the two world wars, a general understanding of territorial revisionisms encouragement of major wars, and a fear of nuclear weapons drove the development of the territorial integrity norm at key points in its multilateral legitimization.
2AC K Blocks 35/165
*A2: Buddhism K
2AC K Blocks 36/165
***A2: Butler K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the neg get the status quo or a competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
2AC K Blocks 37/165
epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 4. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if ableism the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 5. Butler abdicates responsibility to the other, reinforces racism, and justifies violence Enns 10 (Diane, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Peace Studies at McMaster University, When is a Book Grievable?, Postmodern Culture Vol 20, No 2,
Project Muse, dml) Finally, I turn to my most serious objection to Frames
of Warthat it continues a line of thinking quite prevalent in academic parlance today, particularly of the leftist, "emancipatory discourse" variety, one that I find morally irresponsible. For Butlerfaithful to her poststructuralist heritageresponsibility is a predominant concern. We read in the first chapter that responsibility arises from our being bound to one another and from the demand this binding places on us (a point embedded in another litany of rhetorical
questions"am I responsible only to myself? Are there others for whom I am responsible? Could it be that when I assume responsibility what becomes clear is that who 'I' am is bound up with others in necessary ways? Am I even thinkable without that world of others?" [35]). Butler
alludes to her "brief reflections on the perils of democracy," but only gives us a few platitudes with which her readers would most likely be quite familiar, such as the idea that global responsibility does not mean bringing American-style democracy to other nations. This would be an "arrogant politics," she says, and an irresponsible form of global responsibility (37). How many of her readers would disagree? So what would a globally responsible politics look like? Butler does not provide a satisfying answer to this question. What she does provide are more reasons to objectstrenuously and urgentlyto cultural relativism, hardly innocuous in these times when "cultures" are at war with their others, each claiming moral immunity for their own crimes in the name of tradition and cultural purity. Culture has become a crucial alibi against moral approbation, and Western scholars are among the
most vehement defenders of the ban on judgment.3 Butler's last three chapters, which deal in large part with the West's fraught relationship to Islam, include a familiar critique of the "Western" notions of progress, of universal norms, of approaches to violence, and even of sexual politics (surprisingly, Butler does not appear overly outraged in her discussion of Islamic regimes' policies toward gays). There is considerable fence-sitting in these chapters, as Butler
grapples with the conflict between sexual freedom and religious principles, but falls short of taking a stand. For example, although she argues that it is not a question of "the rights of culture [threatening] to trump rights of individual freedom," for all intents and purposes culture appears everywhere in these chapters as immutable, imposing, and on par with sexual orientation, and we are not given a route out of the impasse when these come into conflict. Butler only recommends we continue to think with Laclau and Mouffe that antagonism keeps open an alliance (between religious and sexual minorities) and "suspends the idea of reconciliation as a goal" (148). This is not helpful advice for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 45-year-old Iranian woman who awaits death by stoning as I write this, for committing the sin of adultery. Will someone please tell me why we cannot condemn outright a religion or culture for denying equality to a particular segment of society? Slavoj iek would call this the "antinomy of tolerant reason." In our "tolerance" of the "other"whether cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, or geopoliticalliberal-minded citizens of Western democracies become tolerant of intolerance. Apologies for our own cultural beliefs or practices proliferate, while those who remain steadfast in their intolerance of, or hostility toward, the West are not expected to be apologetic. Multicultural tolerance, iek concludes, leads to a lack of respect for the Muslim other, demonstrating a "hidden and patronizing racism" (115). This is why Frames of War abdicates its moral, political, and intellectual responsibility. The most disappointing effects of this can be found in the final chapter, "The Claim of Non-Violence," which shuffles impotently between intellectual obfuscations of violence and non-violence. Today, when we most urgently need to resist a global political paradigm that preaches death and destruction in the name of security, the operative question (in a book that promises to be philosophical and political) should not be: how can I make a call for non-violence if I, as a subject, am formed through norms that are by definition violent? 4 Butler concludes only that non-violence can't be a universal principle, that it "arrives as an address or an appeal" entailing some work on our part to consider under what conditions we can be responsive to such a claim (165). Furthermore, this is not a call to a peaceful state, but a struggle to "make rage articulate and effectivethe carefully crafted 'fuck you'" (182). I find this line, quite frankly, appalling. The buildings and sidewalks of Sarajevo are pock-marked with thousands of carefully crafted "fuck-you"s. We cannot tell from mortar fire whose rage is the "good" rage Butler condones. This is where her attempt to deconstructwith tolerance of ambiguity
2AC K Blocks 38/165

and with "cultural sensitivity" but without moral judgmentinevitably
leads. It may be true that "We judge a world we refuse to know, and our judgment becomes one means of refusing to know that world" (156), but the opposite is also true and perhaps more relevant for our times: we know a world we refuse to judge, and our knowing becomes one means of refusing to judge that world. 6. Reps not 1st a. Reality shapes discourse the way the international arena changes shapes the way we perceive and talk about it; what we say in this round will in no way affect anything in reality. b. Discursive justification of saying we need to do the plan for good reasons and to save lives outweigh any negative affects from using apocalyptic rhetoric. c. Double bind - if discourse comes first, they attempt to maintain the system as much as the aff, their contradictory rhetoric undermines the ability of their alt to solve. Or it proves that the perm can overcome the link.
2AC K Blocks 39/165
*A2: Burke K
2AC K Blocks 40/165
A2: Cap K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. And, even if we dont win framework we can access the case capitalism is an actual system that exists in the world, meaning questions of ontology or methodology are irrelevant its impossible to prove that every single person in the capitalist system is paid off by the government. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theoryconstruction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problemdriven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary
2AC K Blocks 41/165
tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and
prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 4. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if cap were the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 5. Capitalism leads to interdependence which greatly reduces the risk of war five reasons Yee 99 (Tan Tan, Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces, Jan-Mar, http://www.mindef.gov.sg/safti/pointer/back/journals/1999/Vol25_1/7.htm)JFS the notion that increased interdependence reduces the probability of war among nations is not new. For one, economists have long demonstrated that economic interdependence benefits both parties through the process of international trade. The underlying rationale is worth explaining. In a simple model of a two-state-two-product international economy, even if a
Like the Democratic Peace Proposition, particular state is more efficient at producing both goods, it would still make more economic sense for each state to specialise in producing one of the goods and thereafter obtain the other through barter exchange. This is because the issue is one of relative rather than absolute efficiency; the more efficient state should optimise its limited resources to focus entirely on producing the goods where it has a relatively greater efficiency. therefore,
international trade represents
one of the rare occasions in international affairs that present
From an economic viewpoint, a win-win situation to both
parties.15 Traditionally, theories on the effect of interdependence between states on the risk of war can be divided into two main camps. On the one extreme, liberals argue that economic interdependence lowers the likelihood of war by increasing the value of trading over the alternative of aggression; in other words, states would rather trade than fight.16 To put it simply, trade is mutually beneficial,
while war is at best a zero-sum game. At the same time, the increasing lethality of modern weapons has greatly increased the costs and risks of war, thus making
Four other subsidiary propositions supporting the liberal view are worth mentioning here.17 Firstly, the increased economic activity that accompanies higher trade levels tends to promote domestic prosperity, and in doing so lessens the internal problems that push leaders to war. Secondly, trade may alter the domestic structure of a particular state, giving more influence to groups with a vested interest in the continuation of peaceful trade. Thirdly, a higher level of interdependence inevitably leads to increased interaction between governments and peoples. This enhances understanding and an appreciation of each other's views and perspectives, reducing the misunderstandings and miscalculations that sometimes lead to war. The final argument asserts that trade has the spillover effect of enhancing political ties between trading partners, thus improving the prospects for long-term co-operation. Going by the liberal arguments, there is cause for optimism as long as a high level of interdependence can be maintained among all states. Rosecrance sums up the view rather neatly that high interdependence fosters peace by making trading more profitable than invading.s18 Some liberals explain the continuing occurrence of war as a result of the misconception of political leaders
the trading option seem even more rational. caught up in the outmoded belief that war still pays.19 Yet others saw it as the misguided attempts by political leaders to gamble for an outright victory in war, in which case the benefits would be even greater. The contention is that inspite of the pacifist tendencies that interdependence brings about, it may sometimes not be enough to prevent war from happening.
6. The alt fails- theres no reason questioning the system or bringing up arguments against it can bring it down; no socialist revolution has ever succeeded. They dont have a blueprint for action they just hope that violent revolution will somehow end out well. 7. Transition from cap causes transition wars cultures are embedded within the capitalist framework Aligica 03 (Paul, Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George sMason University and Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, The Great Transition and the Social
Limits to Growth: Herman Kahn on Social Change and Global Economic Development, April 21, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=2827) Stopping things would mean if not to engage in an experiment to change the human nature, at least in an equally difficult experiment in altering powerful cultural forces: "We firmly believe that despite the arguments put forward by people who would like to 'stop the earth and get off,' it is simply impractical to do so.
Propensity to change may not be inherent in human nature, but it is firmly embedded in most contemporary cultures. People have
almost everywhere become curious, future oriented, and dissatisfied with their conditions. They want more material goods and covet higher status and greater control of nature. Despite much propaganda to the contrary, they believe in progress and future" (Kahn, 1976, 164). As regarding the critics of growth that stressed the issue of the gap between rich and poor countries and the issue of redistribution, Kahn noted that what
most people everywhere want was visible, rapid
2AC K Blocks 42/165
improvement in their economic status and living standards, and not a closing of the gap (Kahn, 1976, 165). The people from poor countries have as a basic goal the transition from poor to middle class. The other implications of social change are secondary for them. Thus a crucial factor to be taken into account is that while the zero-growth advocates and their followers may be satisfied to stop at the present point, most others are not. Any serious attempt to frustrate these expectations or desires of that majority is likely to fail and/or create disastrous counter reactions. Kahn was convinced that "any concerted attempt to stop or even slow 'progress' appreciably (that is, to be satisfied with the moment) is catastrophe-prone". At the minimum, "it would probably
require the creation of extraordinarily repressive governments or movements-and probably a repressive international system" (Kahn, 1976, 165; 1979, 140-153). The pressures of overpopulation, national
security challenges and poverty as well as the revolution of rising expectations could be solved only in a continuing growth environment. Kahn rejected the idea that continuous growth would generate political repression and absolute poverty. On the
contrary, it is the limits-to-growth position "which creates low morale, destroys assurance, undermines the legitimacy of governments everywhere, erodes personal and group commitment to constructive activities and encourages obstructiveness to reasonable policies and hopes". Hence this position "increases
enormously the costs of creating the resources needed for expansion, makes more likely misleading debate and misformulation of the issues, and make less likely constructive and creative lives". Ultimately "it is precisely this position the
one that increases the potential for the kinds of disasters which most at its advocates are trying to avoid" (Kahn, 1976, 210; 1984).
8. Capitalism co-opts criticism to create more insidious means of oppression Animal Farm proves Menand 03 (Louis Menand, Distinguished Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center, January 27, 2003 New Yorker)
"Animal
Farm," George Orwell's satire, which became the Cold War "Candide," was finished in 1944, the high point of the Soviet-Western alliance against
fascism. It was a warning against dealing with Stalin and, in the circumstances, a prescient book. Orwell had trouble finding a publisher, though, and by the time the book finally appeared, in August, 1945, the month of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, the Cold War was already on the horizon. "Animal Farm" was an instant success in England and the United States. It was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection; it was quickly translated into many languages and distributed, in some countries, by the United States government; and it made Orwell, who had spent most of his life scraping by, famous and rich. "1984," published four years later, had even greater success. Orwell
was fatally ill with pulmonary tuberculosis when he wrote it, and he died in January, 1950. He was forty-six. The revision began almost immediately. Frances Stonor Saunders, in her fascinating study "The Cultural Cold War," reports that right after Orwell's death the C.I.A. (Howard Hunt was the agent on the case) secretly bought the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his widow, Sonia, and had an animated-film version produced in England, which it distributed throughout the world. The book's final scene, in which the pigs (the Bolsheviks, in Orwell's allegory) can no longer be distinguished from the animals' previous exploiters, the humans (the capitalists), was omitted. A new ending was provided, in which the animals storm the farmhouse where the pigs have moved and liberate themselves all over again. The great enemy of propaganda was subjected, after his death, to the deceptions and evasions of propagandaand by the very people, American Cold Warriors, who would canonize him as the great enemy of propaganda. Howard Hunt at least kept the story pegged to the history of the Soviet Union, which is what Orwell intended. Virtually every detail in
"Animal Farm" allegorizes some incident in that history: the Kronstadt rebellion, the five-year plan, the Moscow trials, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Tehran conference. But although
Orwell didn't want Communism, he didn't want capitalism, either. This part of his thought was carefully elided, and "Animal Farm" became a warning against political change per se. It remains so today. The cover of the current Harcourt paperback glosses the contents as follows: As ferociously fresh as it was more than half a century ago, "Animal Farm" is a parable about would-be liberators everywhere. As we witness the rise and bloody fall of the revolutionary animals through the lens of our own history, we see the seeds of totalitarianism in the most idealistic organizations; and in our most charismatic leaders, the souls of our cruelest oppressors. This is the opposite of what Orwell intended. But almost everything in the popular understanding of Orwell is a distortion of what he really thought and the kind of writer he was. 9. Cap sustainable now, solutions can be offered pollution, financial instability, health problems and inequality Rogoff 11 (Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harcard, 12/2/2011, Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable?, http://www.projectsyndicate.org/commentary/is-modern-capitalism-sustainable-, KB) In principle, none
of capitalisms problems is insurmountable, and economists have offered a variety of marketbased solutions. A high global price for carbon would induce firms and individuals to internalize the cost of their polluting activities. Tax systems can be designed to provide a greater measure of redistribution of income without
2AC K Blocks 43/165

necessarily involving crippling distortions, by minimizing non-transparent tax expenditures and keeping marginal rates low.
Effective pricing of health care, including the pricing of waiting times, could encourage a better balance between equality and efficiency. Financial systems could be better regulated, with stricter attention to excessive accumulations of debt. CommentsWill capitalism be a victim of its own success in producing massive wealth? For now, as fashionable as the topic of capitalisms demise might be, the possibility seems remote. Nevertheless, as pollution, financial instability, health problems, and inequality continue to grow, and as political systems remain paralyzed,
capitalisms future might not seem so secure in a few decades as it seems now.
10. Capitalism is key to any value to life without poverty, dictatorships, and meaningless lives Saunders 08, Writer for Policy Magazine, (Peter Saunders, writer for Policy Magazine, Summer 07-08, http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer%200708/saunders_summer07.html) If we want to know if capitalism is bad (or good) for the 'soul,' it probably makes more sense to approach the question metaphorically rather than theologically. Approached in this way, saying
something is 'good for the soul' implies simply that it enhances our capacity to live a good life. On this less literal and more secular interpretation of the 'soul,' capitalism fares rather well. We have known since the time of Adam Smith that capitalism harnesses self-interest to generate outcomes that benefit others. This is obvious in the relationship between producers and consumers, for profits generally flow to those who anticipate what other people want and then deliver it at the least cost. But it also holds in the relationship between employers and employees. One of Karl Marx's most mischievous legacies was to suggest that this relationship is inherently antagonistic: that for employers to make profit, they must drive wages down. In reality, workers in the advanced capitalist countries thrive when their companies increase profits. The pursuit of profit thus results in higher living standards for workers, as well as cheaper and more plentiful goods and services for consumers. The way this has enhanced people's capacity to lead a good life can be seen in the spectacular reduction in levels of global poverty, brought about by the spread of capitalism on a world scale. In 1820, 85% of the world's population lived on today's equivalent of less than a dollar per day. By 1950, this proportion had fallen to 50%. Today it is down to 20%. World poverty has fallen more in the last fifty years than it did in the previous five hundred.(11) This dramatic reduction in
human misery and despair owes nothing to aging rockstars demanding that we 'make poverty history.' It is due to the spread of global
Capitalism has also made it possible for many more people to live on Earth and to survive for longer than ever before. In 1900, the average life expectancy in the 'less developed countries' was just thirty years. By 1960, this had risen to forty-six years. By 1998, it was sixty-five years. To put this extraordinary achievement into perspective, the average life expectancy in the poorest countries at the end of the twentieth century was fifteen years longer than the average life expectancy in the richest country in the worldBritainat the start of that century. By perpetually raising productivity,
capitalism. capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labour, freeing us to pursue 'higher' objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a 'growth fetish' has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twentyfive times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other 'soul-enriching' pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an 'imbalance' between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work There is another sense, too, in which capitalism has freed individuals so they can pursue worthwhile lives, and that lies in its record of undermining tyrannies and dictatorships. As examples like Pinochet's Chile and Putin's Russia vividly demonstrate, a free economy does not guarantee a democratic polity or a society governed by the rule of law. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, these latter conditions are never found in the absence of a free economy.(12) Historically, it was capitalism that delivered humanity from the 'soul-destroying' weight of feudalism. Later, it freed millions from the dead hand of totalitarian socialism. While capitalism may not be a sufficient condition of human freedom, it is almost certainly a necessary one. than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history.
11. Capitalism is the only moral economic system gives individuals the right to choose and breeds moral responsibility Billings 83 (Donald B., Professor of Economics at Boise State University, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, The Moral Case for Competitive Capitalism, July,
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=1277) <Following the lead of the economist Benjamin Rogge, it is in fact the case that . .
. the most important part of the case for economic freedom is not its dramatic success in promoting economic growth, but rather its consistency with certain fundamental moral principles of life itself.[7] For personal freedom, and therefore economic and political freedom, is not ethically indifferent but a necessary condition of morality. Friedrich Hayek reminds us of certain fundamental conditions of the moral life. It is . . . an old discovery that morals and moral values will grow only in an environment of freedom, and that, in general, moral standards of people and classes are high only where they have long
2AC K Blocks 44/165
enjoyed freedomand proportional to the amount of freedom they have possessed . . . That freedom is the matrix required for the growth of moral valuesindeed not merely one value among many but the source of all valuesis almost selfevident. It is only where the individual has choice, and its inherent responsibility, that he has occasion to affirm existing values, to contribute to their further growth, and to earn moral merit.[8] Morality and the Market It appears that the free market system, in which only voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange are permitted, is a necessary condition for a moral order in which the integrity of the individual conscience is respected. Hayek points out in The Road to Serfdom that only: where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests . . . has our decision moral value. Freedom
to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to
ones conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion . . . and to bear the consequences of ones own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.[9] Surely, adds Hayek on another occasion, it is
unjust to blame a system as more materialistic because it leaves it to the individual to decide whether he prefers material gain to other kinds of excellence.[10] Whatever the goals of individuals, whether virtuous or not, the vulgar calculus of the marketplace still seems to be the most humane way mankind has found for dealing with the economic problems of scarcity and the difficult allocation of resources. Murray Rothbard forcefully reminds us that . . . in a world of voluntary social cooperation through mutually beneficial exchanges . . . it is obvious that great scope is provided for the development of social sympathy and human friendships. Indeed, it is far more likely that feelings of friendship and communion are the effects of a regime of contractual social cooperation rather than the cause.[11]
Capitalism tends to favor those who respect the sanctity of their contracts because of the respect for and enforcement of private property rights. The work ethic; encouraged by the institution of private property, represents an important source of moral responsibility as well as a continuous reminder that our actions always entail costsa pervasive characteristic of human existence. These essential ingredients of a free market order, Arthur Shenfield tells us, define a set of social institutions which encourages mutual respect for each and every individual. What we want above all for ourselves, and which therefore we must accord to our neighbor, is freedom to pursue our own purposes . . . As a corollary to this freedom we want others to respect our individuality, independence, and status as responsible human beings . . . This is the fundamental morality which capitalism requires and which it nurtures. It alone among economic systems operates on the basis of respect for free, independent responsible persons. All other systems in varying degrees treat men as less than this.
2AC K Blocks 45/165
*A2: Chernus K
2AC K Blocks 46/165
A2: Coercion K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No impact -- coercion isnt inherently bad. Glaeser, 7the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University (Edward, Coercive Regulation and the Balance of Freedom, Cato
Unbound, 5/11/7, http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/05/11/edward-glaeser/coercive-regulation-and-the-balance-of-freedom/)//EM **David Klein is a Cato Institute Adjunct Scholar and Professor of Economics at George Mason University
Klein notes, just because something is coercive, doesnt mean that it is wrong . The coercive power of the state is useful when it protects our lives and property from outside harm. If we think that state-sponsored redistribution is desirable, then we are willing to accept more coercion to help the less fortunate. We also rely on state-sponsored coercion regularly when writing private contracts. The ability of creditors to collect depends on the power of the state to coerce borrowers
But, as
4. No link they have no evidence that the plan takes coercive action their evidence just generalizes transportation infrastructure. 5. Extinction destroys all human aspiration Claims to outweigh it destroy value to life Schell 82 (Jonathan, Visiting professor of liberal studies at Harvard University, Fate of the Earth)
For the generations that now have to decide whether or not to risk the future of the species, the implication of our species unique place in the order of things is that while things in the life of [hu]mankind have worth, we must never raise that worth above the life of [hu]mankind and above our respect for that lifes existence. To do this would be to make of our highest ideals so many swords with which to destroy ourselves. To
sum up the worth of our species by reference to some particular standard, goal, or ideology, no matter how elevated or noble it might be, would be to prepare the way for extinction by closing down in thought and feeling the open-ended possibilities for human development which extinction would close down in fact. There is only one circumstance in which it might be possible to sum up the life
and achievement of the species, and that circumstance would be that it had already died; but then, of course, there would be no one left to do the summing up. Only a generation that believed itself to be in possession of final, absolute truth could ever conclude that it had reason to put an end to human life, and only
generations that recognized the limits to their own wisdom and virtue would be likely to subordinate their interests and dreams to the as yet unformed interests and undreamed dreams of the future generations, and let human life go on.
6. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. 7. Their moral tunnel vision is complicit with the evil they criticize Issac 2 (Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale
(Jeffery C., Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, Ends, Means, and Politics, p. Proquest) As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It
is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violen ce of a Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the
intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics,
in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to
2AC K Blocks 47/165

develop, and to exercise, power. To
say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
8. Utilitarianism is key to morality Extinction prevents future generation from attaining other values Nye 86 (Joseph S. 1986; Phd Political Science Harvard. University; Served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Nuclear
Ethics pg. 45-46)
Is there any end that could justify a nuclear war that threatens the survival of the species? Is not all-out nuclear war just as self contradictory in the real world as pacifism is accused of being? Some people argue that "we are required to undergo gross injustice that will break many souls sooner than ourselves be the authors of mass murder."73 Still others say that "when a person makes survival the highest value, he has declared that there is nothing he will not betray. But for a civilization to sacrifice itself makes no sense since there are not survivors to give meaning to the sacrifical [sic] act. In that case, survival may be worth betrayal." Is it possible to avoid the "moral calamity of a policy like unilateral disarmament that forces us to choose between being dead or red (while increasing the chances of both)"?74 How one judges the issue of ends can be affected by how one poses the questions. If one asks "what is worth a billion lives (or the survival of the species)," it is natural to resist contemplating a positive answer. But suppose one asks, "is it possible to imagine any threat to our civilization and values that would justify raising the threat to a billion lives from one in ten thousand to one in a thousand for a specific period?" Then there are several plausible answers, including a democratic way of life and cherished freedoms that give meaning to life beyond mere survival. When we pursue several values simultaneously, we face the fact that they often conflict and that we face difficult tradeoffs. If we make one value absolute in priority, we are likely to get that value and little else. Survival is a necessary condition for the enjoyment of other values, but that does not make it sufficient. Logical priority does not make it an absolute value. Few people act as though survival were an absolute value in their personal lives, or they would never enter an automobile. We can give survival of the species a very high priority without giving it the paralyzing status of an absolute value. Some degree of risk is unavoidable if individuals or societies are to avoid paralysis and enhance the quality of life beyond mere survival. The degree of that risk is a justifiable topic of both prudential and moral reasoning.
2AC K Blocks 48/165
A2: Competitiveness K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No link their evidence is critiquing the idea of economic competition between nations, make them prove a link to the aff. 4. Competition good- improves products and helps the economy Mankiw 4/14 (N. Gregory, 4/14/12, Competition Is Healthy for Governments, Too, The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/business/competition-is-good-for-governments-too-economic-view.html?_r=2. N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard.) RYS
SHOULD governments of nations, states and towns compete like business rivals? The question is simpler to ask than to answer. But it reflects why conservatives and liberals disagree on many big issues facing the nation. Most everyone agrees that competition is vital to a wellfunctioning market economy. Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have understood that the invisible hand of the marketplace works only if producers of goods and services vie with one another. Competition keeps prices low and provides an incentive to improve and innovate. Granted, competition is not always good for producers. I produce economics
textbooks. I curse the fact that my competitors are constantly putting out new, improved editions that threaten my market share. But knowing that I have to keep up with the Paul Krugmans and the Glenn Hubbards of the world keeps me on my toes. It makes me work harder, benefiting the customers in this case, students. The upshot is that competition among economics textbooks makes learning the dismal science a bit less dismal. For much the same reason,
competition among governments leads to better governance. In choosing where to live, people can compare public services and taxes. They are attracted to towns that use tax dollars wisely. Competition keeps town managers alert. It prevents governments from exerting substantial monopoly power over residents. If people feel that their taxes exceed the value of their public services, they can go elsewhere. They can, as economists put it, vote with their feet. The argument applies not only to people but also to capital. Because capital is more mobile than labor, competition among governments significantly constrains how capital is taxed. Corporations benefit from various government services, including infrastructure, the protection of property rights and the enforcement of contracts. But if taxes vastly exceed these benefits, businesses can and often do move to places offering a better mix of taxes and services. 5. Competitiveness is an economically sound theory Camagni 02 (Roberto, 12/1/02, On the Concept of Territorial Competitiveness: Sound or Misleading?, Sage Publications on behalf of the Urban Studies
Journal Foundation, p. 2395-2396, http://usj.sagepub.com/content/39/13/2395. Roberto Camagni works at the Polytechnic of Milan - Department BEST (Buildings, Environment, Science, and Technology)) RYS Summary. In
a globalising economy. territories and not just firms increasingly find themselves in competition with each other. In fact. unlike countries. cities and regions compete, in single currency areas, on the basis of an absolute advantage principle and not a comparative
advantage principle. This means that no efficient, automatic mechanism-like currency devaluation or prompt flexibility of wages and prices-exists to grant each territory some role in the international division of labour. whatever its relative performance. The
competitiveness of territories thus emerges as a central issue, in order to secure employment stability, benefits from external integration, continuing growth of local well-being and wealth. The arguments put forward by Paul Krugman, defining the concept of competitiveness, are wrong and misleading. and cannot be accepted in a territorial-regional and urban-context. 1. Introduction In an era of globalisation, the issue of territorial competitiveness is of increasingly central importance for regional development policies. This
paper aims to deal directly with the issue from a theoretical viewpoint, in particular examining two related questions more thoroughly: the question of the soundness of the concept of territorial competitiveness itself in terms of economic theory and the question of the new foundations on which this competitiveness is based, using a cognitive evolutionary type approach. I feel this to be to a large extent a counterargument, due to the fact that the concept of competitiveness, referring to the national level, has been strongly challenged by a well-known authority on international economics, Paul Krugman (1998), who has been dedicating an increasing amount of attention to the issue of spatial development. His
sceptical and provocative comments have perplexed experts in the field of regional economics as to their validity in more restricted contexts than the national context (International Regional Science Review, 1996; Urban Studies,
2AC K Blocks 49/165

1999) but they
have never been explicitly and analytically evaluated in a critical way; so it appears right to state that the theoretical legitimacy of the concept still remains uncertain. The argument proposed here asserts that the concept of territorial competitiveness is theoretically sound, considering not only the role that territory plays in providing competitive environmental
tools to individual companies, but especially the role that it plays in the processes of knowledge accumulation and in the development of interpretative codes, models of co-operation and decisions on which the innovative progress of local companies is based. In particular, a primary role is played by processes of collective learning (Camagni, 1991a; Capello, 1999; Keeble and Wilkinson, 1999): these processes result in a socialised growth of knowledge, which is embedded not only in the internal culture of individual companies but, particularly, in the local labour market (or, as used to be said in the past, in the local industrial atmosphere). This
conclusion is supported by different aspects of the economic concept of territory. It is at the same time: a system of
localised technological externalities i.e. an ensemble of material and immaterial factors which, thanks to proximity and the resulting reduction in transaction costs involved, can also become pecuniary externalities; a system of economic and social relations, which make up the relational capital (Camagni, 1999) or the social capital (Putnam, 1993; World Bank, 2001) of a certain geographical space; and a system of local governance, which brings together a collectivity, an ensemble of private actors and a system of local public administrations. The second argument proposed has regard to the fact that some laws
governing the economics of international trade do not operate at the sub-national level, and this once again makes the concept of territorial competitiveness relevant. I refer in particular to the Ricardian principle of comparative advantage, which assigns a role to every country in
the international division of labour, whatever the level of ef ciency and of competitiveness of its productive sectors may be. I maintain, however, that at the more finely detailed territorial leveland therefore in economies open not only to trade but also to the movement of factors of productionthe principle that governs production, specialisation and trade is an absolute advantage principle; if
a certain level or rate of growth in competitiveness is not assured, the fate of that economy may be crisis, depopulation and desertification. Therefore, it does not seem unreasonable to claim that territories compete with one another, both to attract direct foreign (or external) investment and in defining a productive role for themselves within the international division of labour, without any automatic assurance of such a role. Both
attractiveness and local competitiveness depend on similar common factors, which are not only found in physical externalities, accessibility or environmental quality, but also in relational capital and the learning capacity expressed by the territory. It is obvious that individual companies are the entities that compete and act in the international market and that their innovativeness can never be separated from the presence of a Schumpeterian entrepreneur; but these companies and these entrepreneurs are to a large extent generated by the local context and, in order for them to govern and live with uncertainty, their decision-making processes are firmly based on socialised processes and/or explicit collective action.
6. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. 7. Competition prevents extinction allows for disputes to be resolve without war Gartzkey, 10 Erik, UC San Diego Political Science Department (Interdependence Really is Complex, 2/15/10,
http://dss.ucsd.edu/~egartzke/papers/complexinterdep_02242010.pdf)RK
Strategists in the early nuclear era faced a fundamental challenge. How was competition possible when each disagreement potentially involved the end of civilization? Brodie (1946, 1959), Kahn (1960), Schelling (1966) and others realized that the situation was analogous to a game of chicken. Nuclear nations could not precipitate a cataclysmic exchange over every disagreement. Instead, conflict in the nuclear era involved manipulating the risk of mutually dreaded outcomes (Powell 1990). Competition among the superpowers became commonplace as the cost of a contest subsided from global holocaust to some finite probability of the same. Indeed, the fact that it is common knowledge in a chicken game that contests will be contained in their intensity may help to explain why the U.S. and Soviet blocs were willing to engage in a large number of relatively minor disputes. Interdependence creates similar dynamics, though by extending the range of possible contests. Economic ties provide both the motive and opportunity for interdependent states to substitute relatively minor non-militarized contests for violent confrontations. As in clashes between the Soviet Union and the United States, the lower intensity and risk of escalation should mean that interdependent dyads actually increase conflict behavior, though at lower levels of dispute intensity. This insight contrasts
with the classical liberal argument, which sees interdependence as deterring conflict and discouraging acts that run the risk of endangering trade or other pro table relationships. Interdependence encourages additional low-level conflict. Militarized disputes are replaced with non-militarized disputes, but interdependent dyads are also free to pursue a greater variety of latent conflicts, given the lower cost of non-militarized disputes. Imagine a state that has a relatively modest grievance. The state can make demands in negotiation. Sometimes demands will be believed and issues resolved diplomatically, but the state often has no way of proving its valuation for issues, short of fighting. Given the high cost of warfare, the state may not be willing or able to act on any given dispute, but may instead let
issues accumulate into a bundle of grievances. Once there are sufficient differences, or once grievances grow to sufficient intensity, this can provoke a war. If instead economic linkages allow a state to signal the need for a more generous settlement, a contest can be averted. The presence of economic linkages, by allowing signaling, substitute a larger number of relatively minor economic conflicts for less frequent, but more intense militarized contests. Introducing a mechanism that is cheaper than war and
more effective than talk encourages interdependent states to pursue issues for which fighting is prohibitively expensive. Interdependence thus creates a middle way" between talk and war, reduces militarized conflict but increasing nonmilitarized conflict over a greater variety of minor issues. The need to combine the mechanisms of
2AC K Blocks 50/165
signaling and coercion in one conflict process in order to substitute for militarized violence also imply that interdependent dyads should be more peaceful than asymmetrically dependent dyads.
2AC K Blocks 51/165
*A2: DADA K
2AC K Blocks 52/165
*A2: Death Drive K
2AC K Blocks 53/165
A2: Deleuze and Guattari K

1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. Turn Bringing DnG into debate flies in the face of what they tried to do, and shuts down lines of fight that can otherwise not be explored Mann 95 (Paul Mann, Professor of English at Pomona College. Stupid Undergroundshttp://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.595/mann.595 05/95) Intellectual economics guarantees that even the most powerful and challenging work cannot protect itself from the order of fashion. Becoming-fashion, becoming-commodity, becoming-ruin. Such instant, indeed retroactive ruins, are the virtual landscape of the stupid underground. The exits and lines of flight pursued by Deleuze and Guattari are being shut down and rerouted by the very people who would take them most seriously . By now, any given work
from the stupid undergrounds critical apparatus is liable to be tricked out with smooth spaces, war-machines, n - 1s, planes of consistency, plateaus and
The nomad is already succumbing to the rousseauism and orientalism that were always invested in his figure; whatever Deleuze and Guattari intended for him, he is reduced to being a romantic outlaw, to a position opposite the State, in the sort of dialectical operation Deleuze most despised. And the rhizome is becoming just another stupid subterranean figure. It is perhaps true that Deleuze and
deterritorializations, strewn about like tattoos on the stupid body without organs. Guattari did not adequately protect their thought from this dialectical reconfiguration (one is reminded of Bretons indictment against Rimbaud for not having
The work of Deleuze and Guattari is evidence that, in real time, virtual models and maps close off the very exits they indicate. The problem is in part that rhizomes, lines of flight, smooth spaces, BwOs, etc., are at one and the same time theoretical-political devices of the highest critical order and merely fantasmatic, delirious, narcissistic models for writing, and thus perhaps an instance of the all-too-proper blurring of the distinction between criticism and fantasy. In Deleuze-speak, the stupid underground would be mapped not as a margin surrounding a fixed point, not as a fixed site determined
prevented, in advance, Claudels recuperation of him as a proper Catholic), but no vigilance would have sufficed in any case. strictly by its relation or opposition to some more or less hegemonic formation, but as an intensive, n-dimensional intersection of rhizomatic plateaus. Nomadology and rhizomatics conceive such a space (if one only had the proverbial nickel for every time that word is used as a critical metaphor, without the slightest reflection on what might be involved in rendering the conceptual in spatial terms) as a liquid, colloidal suspension, often retrievable by one or another techno-metaphorical zoning (e.g., cyberspace). What is at stake, however, is not only the topological verisimilitude of the model but the *fantastic* possibility of nonlinear passage, of multiple
Nomad thought is prosthetic, the experience of virtual exhilaration in modalities already mapped and dominated by nomad, rhizomatic capital (the political philosophy of the stupid underground: capital is more radical than any of its critiques, but one can always pretend otherwise). It is this very fantasy, this very narcissistic wish to see oneself projected past the frontier into new spaces, that abandons one to this economy, that seals these spaces within an order of critical fantasy that has long since been overdeveloped, entirely reterritorialized in advance. To pursue nomadology or rhizomatics as such is already to have lost the game. Nothing is more crucial to philosophy than escaping the dialectic and no project is more hopeless; the stupid-critical underground is the curved space in which this opposition turns back on itself. It is not yet time to abandon work that so deeply challenges our intellectual habits as does that of Deleuze and Guattari, and yet, before it has even been comprehended, in the very process of its comprehension, its fate seems secure. One pursues it and knows that the pursuit will prove futile; that every application of these new topologies will only serve to render them more pointless. The stupid optimism of every work that takes up these figures is, by itself, the means of that futility and that immanent obsolescence. One must pursue it still.
simultaneous accesses and exits, of infinite fractal lines occupying finite social space. In the strictest sense, stupid philosophy.
4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually parts of the alternative. 5. We are more than matter experiments prove Bladon 06 [Lee, creator of esoteric science, "6a - The Multidimensional Human," 2006 is date of copyright, http://www.esotericscience.org/article6a.htm]
2AC K Blocks 54/165
Dr Evan Harris Walker, author of The Physics of Consciousness, is regarded as one the pioneers of the modern consciousness research. Walker rejects the conventional physical explanations of consciousness and believes that consciousness is something outside the physical world and does not depend on the brain. He believes that consciousness transcends time and space, that our minds are all
interconnected, that we are all part of the one quantum mind, and that our consciousness survives physical death. In his book World of Psychic Research, Hereward
Carrington describes how Dutch scientists succeeded in weighing the physical body before, during and after out-of-body experiences. They measured an average weight loss of 2 ounces (63g) during out of body experiences, which is due to the self and the subtle bodies leaving the physical body. This is objective proof that we are more than just our physical bodies and brains. Here is a simple exercise you can use right now to determine who you really are: Just sit down, close your eyes and become aware of everything within you. Start off by noticing your physical body the fact that you are aware of it means that you must be more than your body. Then become aware of your emotions the fact that you are aware of how you feel means that you are more than your emotions. Finally turn your attention to your thoughts you will notice that thoughts just pop in and out of your mind without you actively thinking them. Because you are objectively aware of the thoughts in your mind, you must be more than your mind. You will realise that whatever part of yourself you focus on there will always be a sense of awareness that is somehow above and beyond everything else. This inner awareness or inner essence is the real "you". It is the basis of all your experiences: asleep or awake, "dead" or "alive" it is eternal. 6. Turn an affirmation of lines of flight causes catastrophe and fails for three reasons Fight Club proves Diken and Laustsen 1 (Blent, lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University, and Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Ph.D. student at the University of Copenhagen,
Department of Political Sciences, Enjoy your fight! Fight Club as a symptom of the Network Society, http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/dikenlaustsen-enjoy-your-fight.pdf, dml) The first danger is that a
line of flight can become re-stratified: in the fear of complete destratification, rigid segmentation and segregation may seem attractive. Whenever a line of flight is stopped by an organization, institution, interpretation, a black hole, etc., a reterritorialization takes place. In spite of the fact that Fight Club makes a mockery of an illusion of safety in the beginning, its line of flight is followed by reterritorialization. It evolves into a project, Project Mayhem. Becoming a bureaucracy of anarchy (Palahniuk 1997: 119), Project Mayhem is the point at which Fight Club reterritorializes as the paranoid position of the mass subject, with all the
identifications of the individual with the group, the group with the leader, and the leader with the group (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 34). In comparison with Fight Club, Project Mayhem is centralised around Jack/Tyler who gives the multiplicity of lines of escape a resonance. Methods change too: We and women freedom
have to show these men by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them (Ibid. 149). The new rules are: you dont ask questions; you have to trust Tyler, and so on (Ibid. 125). Fight Club was a gang, Project Mayhem is more like an army. Fight Club produces a microcosm of the affections of the rigid: it deterritorializes, massifies, but only in order to stop deterritorialization, to invent new territorializations. The second danger of the line of flight, which is less obvious but more interesting is clarity. Clarity arises when one attains a perception of the molecular texture of the social, when the holes in it are revealed. What used to be compact and whole seems now to be leaking, a texture that enables de-differentiations, overlappings, migrations, hybridizations. Clarity emerges with the transformation of Fight Club into Project Mayhem. Everything is nothing, and its cool to be enlightened (Palahniuk 1997: 64). Clarity is also the reason why Fight Club fascinates its members. In this sense, Fight Club does not only reproduce the dangers of the rigid in a miniature scale; it is microfascism. Instead of the great paranoid fear, we are trapped in a thousand little monomanias, self-evident truths, and clarities that gush from every black hole
and no longer form a system, but are only rumble and buzz, blinding lights giving any and everybody the mission of self-appointed judge, dispenser of the justice, policeman, neighbourhood SS man (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 228). Interestingly, whereas the movie clearly makes a self-reflexive mockery of Project Mayhem in the context of the first danger (macrofascism), the aspects of Fight Club that do not resonate in Project Mayhem (that is, its microfascist aspects) escape its ironic perspective. It seems as if the movie assumes that power predominantly pertains to molar lines. But
lines of flight are not exempted from power relations, and there is a microfascism in Fight Club that cannot be confined to Project Mayhem. It is in this context remarkable that Fight Club operates as a deterritorialized line of flight, as a war machine that is violently opposed to the state; its members are not merely the Oedipalized paranoiacs of the capitalist state order. Its microfascism can be understood best as a transgressive delirium. What makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolitical power, for it is a mass movement, a proliferation of molecular interactions, skipping from point to point, before beginning to resonate together in the National Socialist State (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 214-5). If Project Mayhem is the ridiculous Nazi-type organization with unreflexive skinheads who just repeat Tylers orders, Fight Club isthe molecular face of fascism. The third danger: a line of flight can lose its creative potentials and become a line of death. This is precisely what happens in Fight Club: the line of flight crossing the wall, getting out of the black holes, but instead of connecting with other lines and each time augmenting its valence, turning to destruction, abolition pure and simple, the passion for abolition (1987: 229). In
2AC K Blocks 55/165

fact, fascism
is the result of an intense line of flight that becomes a line of death, wanting self-destruction and death point at which escape becomes a line of death is the point at which war (destruction) becomes the main object of the war machine rather than its supplement. Fight Club, transforming into Project Mayhem, becomes an instrument of pure destruction and violence, of complete destratification, a war machine that has war as its object. In other words, the regression to the undifferentiated or complete disorganization is asdangereous as transcendence and organization. Tyler, the alluring and charismatic, the freewheeling pervert of Fight Club, is as dangerous as society. If there are two dangers, the strata and complete destratification, suicide, Fight Club fights only the first. Therefore a relevant question, never asked by microfascists, is whether it is not necessary to retain a minimum of strata, a minimum of forms and functions, a minimal subject from which to extract materials, affects, and assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari 1987: 270). The test of desire is not denouncing false desires but distinguishing between that which pertains to the strata, complete destratification, and that which pertains to line of flight, a test, which Fight Club doesnot pass (Ibid. 165). Lets qualify this point
through the death of others (Ibid. 230). A line of flight that desires its own repression. The by investigating the way the logic of the cut works in the film.
7. Deleuze and Guattaris alternative fails and leads to authoritarian oppression. Barbrook 98 (Richard, coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster, 8/27, http://amsterdam.nettime.org/ListsArchives/nettime-l-9808/msg00091.html) Techno-nomad TJs are attracted by the uncompromising theoretical radicalism expressed by Deleuze and Guattari. However, far from succumbing to an outside conspiracy, Frequence Libre imploded because of the particular New Left politics which inspired A Thousand Plateaus and the other sacred texts. Unwilling to connect abstract theory with its practical application, the techno-nomads cannot see how Deleuze
and Guattari's celebration of direct democracy
was simultaneously a justification for intellectual elitism. This elitism was no accident. Because of their very different life experiences, many young people in the sixties experienced a pronounced 'generation gap' between themselves and their parents. Feeling so isolated, they believed that society could only be changed by a revolutionary vanguard composed of themselves and their comrades. This is why many young radicals simultaneously believed in two contradictory concepts. First, the revolution would create mass participation in running society. Second, the revolution could only be organised by a committed minority.<14> The New Left militants were reliving an old problem in a new form. Back in the 1790s, Robespierre had argued that the democratic republic could only be created by a revolutionary dictatorship. During the 1917 Russian revolution , Lenin had advocated direct democracy while simultaneously instituting the totalitarian rule of the Bolsheviks. As their 'free radio' experience showed, Deleuze and Guattari never escaped from this fundamental contradiction of revolutionary politics. The absence of the Leninist party did not prevent the continuation of vanguard politics. As in other social movements, Fr=E9quence Libre was dominated by a few charismatic individuals: the holy prophets of the anarcho-communist revolution.<15> In Deleuze and Guattari's writings, this deep authoritarianism found its theoretical expression in their methodology: semiotic structuralism. Despite rejecting its 'wooden language', the two philosophers never really abandoned Stalinism in theory. Above all, they retained its most fundamental premise: the minds of the majority of the population were controlled by bourgeois ideologies.<16> During the sixties, this
elitist theory was updated through the addition of Lacanian structuralism by Louis Althusser, the chief philosopher of the French Communist party.<17> For Deleuze and Guattari, Althusser had explained why only a revolutionary minority supported the New Left. Brainwashed by the semiotic 'machinic assemblages' of the family, media, language and psychoanalysis, most people supposedly desired fascism rather than anarcho-communism. This authoritarian methodology clearly contradicted the libertarian rhetoric within Deleuze and Guattari's writings. Yet, as the rappers who wanted to make a show for Frequence Libre discovered, Deleuzoguattarian anarchocommunism even included the censorship of music. By adopting an Althusserian analysis, Deleuze and Guattari were tacitly privileging their own role as intellectuals: the producers of semiotic systems. Just
like their Stalinist elders, the two philosophers believed that only the vanguard of intellectuals had the right to lead the masses - without any formal consent from them - in the fight against capitalism. 8. Turn their type of revolution is committed precisely to stop the becoming-other of the disadvantaged they can never understand the situation of the people they try to liberate their author Deleuze 93 (Gilles, Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and mother of three, Toward Freedom, The Deleuze Reader pg 255-56, dml)
All this constitutes what can be called a right to desire. It is not surprising that all
kinds of minority questionslinguistic, ethnic, regional, about sex, or youthresurge not only as archaisms, but in up-to-date revolutionary form which call once more into question in an entirely immanent manner both the global economy of the machine and the assemblages of national States. Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the world and the States? For, once again, the world and its States are no more masters of their plan than revolutionaries are
2AC K Blocks 56/165
condemned to the deformation of theirs. Everything is played in uncertain games, front to front, back to back, back to front. The question of the revolution is a bad question because, insofar as it is asked, there are so many people who do not become, and this is exactly why it is done, to impede the question of the revolutionary-becoming of people, at every level, in every place. 9. Turn Anti-Politics a) Deleuze and Guattari link to anti-politics Barbrook '98 (Richard, Hypermedia Research Centre - University of Westminster, "The Holy Fools," August 27, http://amsterdam.nettime.org/ListsArchives/nettime-l-9808/msg00092.html) At the end of the century, the superficiality of post-modernism is no longer fashionable among radical intellectuals. Because the Soviet Union has collapsed, the European avant-garde can return to its old obsession with Leninism. Instead, TJs look back to the libertarian spontaneity of May '68.<3> Even after decades of reactionary' rule, the folk memory of the sixties still remains an inspiration for the present. The democratic ways of working, cultural experimentation and emancipatory lifestyles initiated in tins period survive - and even flourish - within the DIY culture of the Nineties.<4> However, belief in the overthrow of capitalism is no longer credible. Therefore contemporary
European intellectuals have turned social transformation into theoretical poetry - a revolutionary dreamtime for the imagination. The cult of Deleuze and Guattari is a prime example of this aesthetisation of
sixties radicalism. Above all, their most famous book - A Thousand Plateaus - now provides the buzzwords and concepts ror a specifically European understanding of the Net. In contrast with the USA, a vibrant lechno-culture has been flourishing across the continent for over two decades. Pioneered by computer-generated dance music, this digital aesthetic now embraces fashion, art, graphic design, publishing and video games. When it emerged in Europe, the Net was at first seen as a place for social and cultural experimentation rather than as a business opportunity. Unlike the Californian ideology, the writings of Deleuze and Guattari do seem to provide theoretical metaphors which describe the non-commercial aspects of the Net. For instance, the rhizome metaphor captures how cyberspace is organised as an openended, spontaneous and horizontal network. Their Body-without-Organs phrase can be used to romanticize cyber-sex. Deleuze and Guattari's nomad myth reflects the mobility of contemporary Net users as workers and tourists. D&G now symbolises more than just Dolce & Gabbana. Within the rhizomes of the Net, the Deleuzoguattarians form their own subculture: the techno-nomads. These adepts are united by specific 'signifying practices': computer technologies, techno music, bizarre science, esoteric beliefs, illegal chemicals and cyberpunk novels. There
even is a distinctive Deleuzoguattarian language which is almost incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Above all, these techno-nomads possess a radical optimism about the future of the
Net. While all that remains of hippie ideals in Wired is its psychedelic layout, the European avant-garde - and its imitators - still champions the lost Utopia of May '68 through the theoretical poetry of Deleuze and Guattari. The revolution will be digitalised. 2: The Politics of May '68 Far from deterring an audience educated in structuralism, the
hermetic language and tortured syntax used within A Thousand Plateaus are seen as proofs of its analytical brilliance. However, this idiosyncratic Deleuzoguattarian discourse is causing as much confusion as elucidation among their followers. ====CONTTNUES==== In the early eighties, Guattari was the leader of Frequence Libre, a community radio station licenced to broadcast across Paris. However, it soon became obvious that turning Deleuzoguattarian theory into practice was impossible. Far from encouraging audience participation, the sectarian politics of the two philosophers actually discouraged people - including many on the Left - from getting involved in their community radio station. Guattari and his colleagues were more interested in lecturing the audience rather than engaging in discussions with them. This revolutionary elitism even extended the musical policies of the station . When some
rappers approached Frequence Libre about the possibility of making some programmes, the station refused to let any hip-hop crews on-air until their lyrics had been politically vetted! After
they'd alienated most of their potential activists and audience. Guattari's 'free radio' encountered growing difficulties in raising sufficient cash and recruiting enough volunteers to operate the station. Eventually, Frequence Libre went bankrupt and its frequency was sold to pay its debts. Guattari's attempts to turn theory into practice within the 'free radio' movement had ended in tragedy. b) Extinction Boggs, 97 (Carl, National University, Los Angeles, Theory and Society, The great retreat: Decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America,
December, Volume 26, Number 6, http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/content/m7254768m63h16r0/fulltext.pdf)
Many ideological currents scrutinized here localism, metaphysics, spontaneism, post-modernism, Deep Ecology intersect with and reinforce each other.
The decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America poses a series of great dilemmas and challenges. trajectories, they all
While these currents have deep origins in popular movements of the 1960s and 1970s, they remain very much alive in the 1990s. Despite their different outlooks and
share one thing in common: a depoliticized expression of struggles to combat and overcome alienation. The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement, an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change. As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society will go unsolved perhaps even unrecognized only to fester more ominously in the future. And such
2AC K Blocks 57/165
problems (ecological crisis, poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious diseases, technological displacement of workers) cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context of internationalized markets, finance, and
communications. Paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist sentiment, comes at a time when agendas that ignore or sidestep these global realities will, more than ever, be reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the increasing sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. By diluting the life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions. 74 In the meantime,
the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The unyielding truth is that, even as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more compelling and even fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to decide the fate of human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that corporate colonization will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or that gigantic state and military structures will lose their hold over peoples lives. Far from it: the space abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites an already familiar dynamic in many lesser-developed
countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant individualism, social Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. In this way the eclipse of politics might set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise or it might help further rationalize the existing power structure. In either case, the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective interests that had vanished from civil society. 75
2AC K Blocks 58/165
*A2: Derrida K
2AC K Blocks 59/165
A2: Ecofeminism K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt. 4. No prior questions in IR Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
2AC K Blocks 60/165
epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 5. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if power relations were the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 6. Embracing science and objective reason is critical to a progressive social politicswe cant combat AIDS or warming without it. Alan Sokal, 1996 (Professor of Physics at New York University), A PHYSICIST EXPERIMENTS WITH CULTURAL STUDIES Accessed May 23, 2011 at
http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9605/sokal.html POLITICALLY, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have
rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful--not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of many "progressive" or "leftist" academic humanists and social scientists toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique. Theorizing about "the social construction of reality" won't help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology,
believed that economics, and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity.
Failure To Control The Spread Of Aids Triggers Mutations That Will Kill Everyone On The Planet Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Professors of Population studies at Stanford University, THE POPULATION EXPLOSION, 1990, p. 147-8 Whether or not AIDS can be contained will depend primarily on how rapidly the spread of HIV can be slowed
through public education and other measures, on when and if the medical community can find satisfactory preventatives or treatments, and to a large extent on luck.
The virus has already shown itself to be highly mutable, and laboratory strains resistant to the one drug, AZT, that seems to slow its lethal course have already been reported." A virus that infects many millions of novel hosts, in this case people, might evolve new transmission characteristics. To do so, however, would almost certainly involve changes in its lethality. If, for instance, the virus became more common in the blood (permitting insects to transmit it readily), the very process would almost certainly make it more lethal. Unlike the current version of AIDS, which can take ten years or more to kill its victims, the new strain might cause death in days or weeks. Infected individuals then would have less time to spread the virus to others, and there would be strong selection in favor of less
lethal strains (as happened in the case of myxopatomis). What this would mean epidemiologically is not clear, but it could temporarily increase the transmission rate
If the ability of the AIDS virus to grow in the cells of the skin or the membranes of the mouth, the lungs, or the intestines were increased, the virus might be spread by casual contact or through eating contaminated food. But it is likely, as Temin points out, that acquiring those abilities would so change the
and reduce life expectancy of infected persons until the system once again equilibrated. virus that it no longer efficiently infected the kinds of cells it now does and so would no longer cause AIDS. In effect it would produce an entirely different disease. We hope Temin is correct but another Nobel laureate, Joshua Lederberg, is worried that a
relatively minor mutation could lead to the virus infecting a type of white blood cell commonly present in the lungs. If so, it might be transmissible through coughs. 7. Scientific reasoning bolsters democracy while checking authoritarianism. Edward Ross Dickinson, 2004 (University of Cincinnati, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About Modernity, Central
European History, vol. 37, no. 1, March)
is also a causal fit between cultures of expertise, or scientism, and democracy. Of course, subverted the real, historical ideological underpinnings of authoritarian polities in Europe in the nineteenth century. It also in a sense replaced them. Democratic citizens have the freedom to ask why; and in a democratic system there is therefore a bias toward pragmatic, objective or naturalized answers since values are often regarded as matters of opinion, with which any citizen has a right to differ. Scientific fact is democracys substitute for revealed truth, expertise its substitute for authority. The age of democracy is the age of
Second, I would argue that there scientism
2AC K Blocks 61/165
professionalization, of technocracy; there is a deeper connection between the two, this is not merely a matter of historical coincidence. Democracy prevents wars, WMDs, and extinction Diamond 95 [Larry, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm]
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor
international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies
are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built. 8. Evidence, empiricism, and logic bolster a leftist political agendathey cede these tools to the right wing. Alan Sokal, 1996 (Professor of Physics at New York University), A PHYSICIST EXPERIMENTS WITH CULTURAL STUDIES Accessed May 23, 2011 at
http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9605/sokal.html I say this not in glee but in sadness. After all, I'm a leftist too (under the Sandinista government I taught mathematics at the National University of Nicaragua). On nearly all practical political issues--including many concerning science and technology--I'm on the same side as the Social Text editors. But I'm feminist) because
a leftist (and a of evidence and logic, not in spite of it. Why should the right wing be allowed to monopolize the intellectual high ground? And why should self-indulgent nonsense--whatever its professed political orientation--be lauded as the height of scholarly achievement? Extinction Boggs, 97 (Carl, National University, Los Angeles, Theory and Society, The great retreat: Decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America,
December, Volume 26, Number 6, http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/content/m7254768m63h16r0/fulltext.pdf) The decline of the public sphere in late twentieth-century America poses a series of great dilemmas and challenges.
Many ideological currents
scrutinized here localism, metaphysics, spontaneism, post-modernism, Deep Ecology intersect with and reinforce each other.
trajectories, they all
While these currents have deep origins in popular movements of the 1960s and 1970s, they remain very much alive in the 1990s. Despite their different outlooks and
share one thing in common: a depoliticized expression of struggles to combat and overcome alienation. The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement, an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change. As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society will go unsolved perhaps even unrecognized only to fester more ominously in the future. And such problems (ecological crisis, poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious diseases, technological displacement of workers) cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context of internationalized markets, finance, and
communications. Paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist sentiment, comes at a time when agendas that ignore or sidestep these global realities will, more than ever, be reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the increasing sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. By diluting the life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions. 74 In the meantime, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The unyielding truth is that, even
as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more compelling and even fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of
2AC K Blocks 62/165
political power that will continue to decide the fate of human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that corporate colonization will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or that gigantic state and military structures will lose their hold over peoples lives. Far from it: the space abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites an already familiar dynamic in many lesser-developed
countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant individualism, social Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. In this way the eclipse of politics might set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise or it might help further rationalize the existing power structure. In either case, the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective interests that had vanished from civil society. 75
2AC K Blocks 63/165
A2: Foucault K
2AC K Blocks 64/165
approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 5. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if power relations were the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 6. Democracy checks the impact to biopolitics Dickinson 04 (Edward Ross, Associate Professor of History at the University of California-Davis, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our
Discourse about "Modernity", in Central European History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2004), pg 18-19.) In an important programmatic statement of 1996 Geoff Eley celebrated the fact that Foucault's
ideas have "fundamentally directed attention away from institutionally centered conceptions of government and the state ... and toward a dispersed and decentered notion of power and its 'microphysics.'"48 The "broader, deeper, and less visible ideological consensus" on "technocratic reason and the ethical unboundedness of science" was the focus of his interest.49 But the "power-producing effects in Foucault's 'microphysical' sense" (Eley) of the construction of social bureaucracies and social knowledge, of "an entire institutional apparatus and system of practice" (Jean Quataert), simply do not explain Nazi policy.50 The destructive dynamic of Nazism was a product not so much of a particular modern set of ideas as of a particular modern political structure, one that could realize the disastrous potential of those ideas. What was critical was not the expansion of the instruments and
disciplines of biopolitics, which occurred everywhere in Europe. Instead, it was the principles that guided how those instruments and disciplines were organized and used, and the external constraints on them. In National Socialism, biopolitics was shaped by a totalitarian conception of social management focused on the power and ubiquity of the volkisch state. In
democratic societies, biopolitics has historically been constrained by a rights-based strategy of social management. This is a point to which I will return shortly. For now, the point is that what was decisive was actually politics at the level of the state. A comparative framework can help us to clarify this point. Other states passed compulsory sterilization laws in the 1930s. Indeed, individual states in the United States had already begun doing so in 1907. Yet they did not proceed to the next steps adopted by National Socialism, mass sterilization, mass "eugenic" abortion and murder of the "defective." Individual figures in, for example, the U.S. did make such suggestions. But neither the political structures of
democratic states nor their legal and political principles permitted such poli? cies actually being enacted. Nor did the scale of forcible sterilization in other countries match that of the Nazi program. I do not mean to suggest that such programs were not horrible; but in
a democratic political context they did not develop the dynamic of constant radicalization and escalation that characterized Nazi policies. 7. The kritik creates a distinction between biological and political life that destroys value to life Fassin, 10 - Social Science Prof at Princeton (Didier, Ethics of Survival: A Democratic Approach to the Politics of Life Humanity: An International Journal of
Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Fall, Vol 1 No 1, Project Muse)//dm Conclusion Survival, in the sense Jacques Derrida attributed to the concept in his last interview, not
only shifts lines that are too often hardened between biological and political lives: it opens an ethical space for reflection and action. Critical thinking in the past decade has often taken biopolitics and the politics of life as its objects. It has thus unveiled the way in which individuals and groups, even entire nations, have been treated by powers, the market, or the state, during the colonial period as well as in the contemporary era. However, through indiscriminate extension, this powerful instrument has lost some of its analytical sharpness and heuristic potentiality. On the one hand, the binary reduction of life to the opposition between nature and history, bare life and qualified life, when systematically applied from philosophical inquiry in sociological or anthropological study, erases much of the complexity and richness of life in society as it is in fact observed. On the other hand, the normative prejudices which underlie the evaluation of the forms of life and of the politics of life, when generalized to an undifferentiated collection of social facts, end up by depriving social agents of legitimacy, voice, and action. The risk is therefore both scholarly and political. It calls for ethical attention. In fact, the genealogy of this intellectual lineage reminds us that the main founders of these theories expressed tensions and hesitations in their work, which was often more complex, if even sometimes more obscure, than in its reduced and translated form in the humanities and social sciences today. And also biographies, here limited to fragments from South African lives that I have described and analyzed in more detail elsewhere, suggest the necessity of complicating the dualistic models that oppose
2AC K Blocks 65/165
biological and political lives. Certainly, powers like the market and the state do act sometimes as if human beings could be reduced to mere life, but democratic forces, including from within the structure of power, tend to produce alternative strategies that escape this reduction. And people themselves, even under conditions of domination, [End Page 93] manage subtle tactics that transform their physical life into a political instrument or a moral resource or an affective expression. But let us go one step further: ethnography invites us to reconsider what life is or rather what human beings make of their lives, and reciprocally how their lives permanently question what it is to be human. The
blurring between what is human and what is not human shades into the blurring over what is life and what is not life, writes Veena Das. In the tracks of Wittgenstein and Cavell, she underscores that the usual manner in which we think of forms of life not only obscures the mutual absorption of the natural and the social but also emphasizes form at the expense of life.22 It
should be the incessant effort of social scientists to return to this inquiry about life in its multiple forms but also in its everyday expression of the human. 8. Biopolitics creates a better life- benefits outweigh the costs Dickison, 2004 - associate professor of history at UC Davis (Edward Ross, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse about
"Modernity, accessed from JSTOR on 7/4/12) It is striking, then, that the new model of German modernity is even more relentlessly negative than the old Sonderweg model. In that older model, premodern elites were constantly triumphing over the democratic opposition. But at least there was an opposition; and in the long run, time was on the side of that opposition, which in fact embodied the historical movement of modernization. In the new model, there is virtually a biopolitical consensus.3 And that consensus is almost always fundamentally a nasty, oppressive thing, one that partakes in crucial ways of the essential quality of National Socialism. Everywhere biopolitics is intrusive, technocratic, top-down, constraining, limiting. Biopolitics is almost never
conceived of or at least discussed in any detail as creating possibilities for people, as expanding the range of their choices, as empowering them, or indeed as doing anything positive for them at all. Of course, at the most simple-minded level, it seems to me that an assessment of the potentials of modernity that ignores the ways in which biopolitics has made life tangibly better is somehow deeply flawed. To give just one example, infant mortality in Germany in 1900 was just over 20 percent; or, in other words, one in five children died before reaching the age of one year. By 1913, it was 15 percent; and by 1929 (when average real purchasing power was not significantly higher than in 1913) it was only 9.7 percent.4 The expansion of infant health programs an enormously ambitious, bureaucratic, medicalizing, and sometimes intrusive, social engineering project had a great deal to do with that change. It would be bizarre to write a history of biopolitical modernity that ruled out an appreciation for how absolutely wonderful and astonishing this achievement and any number of others like it really was. There was a reason for the Machbarkeitswahn of the early twentieth century: many marvelous things were in fact becoming machbar. In that sense, it is not really accurate to call it a Wahn (delusion, craziness) at all; nor is it accurate to focus only on the inevitable frustration of delusions of power. Even in the late 1920s, many social engineers could and did look with great satisfaction on the changes they genuinely had the power to accomplish. 9. Theyll win ZERO percent of their impact the massacres that their over-hyped impact evidence cites are NOT because of biopolitics biopower prevents those massacres. Mika Ojakangas, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland, May 2005, Foucault Studies, No. 2, p. 20-21
According to Foucault, it is that transformation which constitutes the background of what he calls governmentality, that is to say, bio-political rationality within the modern state.78 It explains why political power that is at work within the modern state as a legal framework of unity is, from the beginning of a states existence, accompanied by a power that can be called pastoral. Its role is
not to threaten lives but to ensure, sustain, and improve them, the lives of each and every one.79 Its means are not law and violence but care, the care for individual life.80 It is precisely care, the Christian power of love (agape), as the opposite of all violence that is at issue in bio-power. This is not to say,
however, that bio-power would be nothing but love and care. Bio-power is love and care only to the same extent that the law, according to Benjamin, is violence, namely, by its origin.81 Admittedly, in the era of bio-politics, as Foucault writes, even massacres have become vital.82 This is the case, however, because violence is hidden in the foundation of bio-politics, as Agamben believes. Although
the twentieth century thanatopolitics is the reverse of bio-politics,83 it should not be understood, according to Foucault, as the effect, the result, or the logical consequence of bio-political rationality.84 Rather, it should be understood, as he suggests, as an outcome of the demonic combination of the
sovereign power and bio-power, of the city-citizen game and the shepherd-flock game85 or as I would like to put it, of patria potestas (fathers unconditional power of life and death over his son) and cura materna (mothers unconditional duty to take care of her children).
Although massacres can be carried
3 4
See for example Usborne, The Politics and Grossmann, Reforming Sex. MB. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 17501970 (New York, 1975), 130. By 1969 it had fallen to 2.3 percent (132).
2AC K Blocks 66/165
out in the name of care, they do not follow from the logic of bio-power for which death is the object of taboo.86 They follow from the logic of sovereign power, which legitimates killing by whatever arguments it chooses, be it God, Nature, or life. 10. Foucauldian criticism is flawed it obscures genuine analysis and denies progressive action. Sangren 1999 [Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. Power Against Ideology: A Critique of Foucaultian Usage. Jstor KNP]
It is Foucault's explicit disarticulation of power from subjectivity or agency that arguably most defines the novelty of his usage, and it is this element of his thinking that is most widely emulated by other scholars. Against Foucault's reifying, transcendental notion of power - a notion in which intentional action is incidental to power - I argue that power
can be employed coherently as an analytical category only when it is linkable to some socially constituted agent - that is, to a person or to a socially constituted collectivity. This is not to say that actors or agents are possessed of complete knowledge of
how their own desires and motives are also products of complex social circumstances or of how their actions have effects that exceed intentions.8 As Foucault frequently emphasizes, people, selves, the subjects are in part products of historically and locationally specific circumstances, cultures, discourses. However,
denying agency - that is, power to actors, viewing people even at the level of their desires primarily as products and only trivially, if at all, as producers, is not only fatalistic, it significantly misrecognizes the realities of social life .9 In
comparing "Chinese" notions of power (or, more precisely, some notions of power produced by Chinese culture) with Foucault's, my intention is to draw attention to similarities in their alienating properties. I suggest that in the Foucaultian categories of power and its ineluctable other, resistance, one can perceive remarkable affinities to Chinese contrastive oppositions such as yang (a metaphysically conceived representation of ordering) and yin (yang's disordering, resistant alter). Far
from providing the kind of critical insights that Foucault would claim, Foucaultian power and resistance obstruct genuine critical analysis and constitute elements of a romantic ideology whose "effects of truth" are most socially manifest in providing an avant-gardist intelligentsia an ideology that dissociates its "theory" from its own individual and class interests - and, paradoxically, all this in the name of reflexivity and high-minded political virtue. This representative dissociation of power from intention in Foucault is also apparent in Chinese ideologies of power. Such dissociations-forms of alienation-are defining characteristics of ideology's operations in social processes.
2AC K Blocks 67/165
A2: Fem K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt. 4. Feminist epistemology contradicts itself creates a bias paradox Rolin 06 (Kristina is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at Helsinki School of Economics. Her main areas of research are philosophy of science and
epistemology, with emphasis on social epistemology and feminist epistemology. She has published articles in Philosophy of Science, Social Epistemology, Perspectives on Science, and Hypatia. The Bias Paradox in Feminist Standpoint Epistemology Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 3.1 (2006) http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/episteme/v003/3.1rolin.html) AK Sandra Harding's feminist
standpoint epistemology is an ambitious and controversial attempt to argue that diversity among inquirers is an epistemic advantage to a community of inquirers. According to Harding, epistemic advantage accrues not to just any kind of diversity but to diversity with respect to the social positions of inquirers and participants in their studies. Harding's feminist standpoint epistemology advances the claim that those who are unprivileged with respect to their social positions are likely to be privileged with respect to gaining knowledge of social reality. According to Harding, unprivileged social positions are likely to generate perspectives that are "less partial and less distorted" than perspectives generated by other social positions (Harding 1991, 121; see also pages 138 and 141). I call this claim the thesis of epistemic privilege. The thesis of epistemic privilege is connected to a particular conception of objectivity,
"strong objectivity," which is the view that objective research starts from the lives of unprivileged groups (Harding 1991, 150; see also page 142). Diversity with respect to social positions is beneficial for knowledge-seeking communities because there are many ways of being unprivileged. As Harding explains, "the subject of feminist knowledge the agent of these less partial and distorted descriptions and explanations must be multiple and even contradictory" (1991, 284). The thesis of epistemic
privilege has been criticized on two grounds. One objection is that Harding's feminist standpoint epistemology does not provide any standards of epistemic justification that enable one to judge some socially grounded perspectives
as better than others. Another objection is that there is no evidence in support of the thesis of epistemic privilege. These two objections are connected. As long as it is not [End Page 125] clear what standards of epistemic justification allow one to judge some socially grounded perspectives as better than others, it is not clear either what kind of evidence we should expect in support of the thesis of epistemic privilege. Let me explain each objection. The first objection is raised by Louise Antony (1993) and Helen Longino (1999). They argue that the thesis of epistemic standpoint epistemology, the
privilege is undermined by another thesis in Harding's feminist thesis that all scientific knowledge is socially situated (Harding 1991, 11; see also pages 119 and 142). I call this the situated knowledge thesis (see also Wylie 2003, 31). The thesis of epistemic privilege relies on the assumption that there is a standard of impartiality that enables one to judge some socially grounded perspectives as "less partial and distorted" than others. The situated knowledge thesis seems to undermine this assumption by suggesting that all knowledge claims are partial in virtue of being grounded on a particular perspective on social reality. As Helen Longino explains, in order to argue that some socially grounded perspectives are better than others, a standpoint epistemologist would have to be able to identify privileged perspectives from a non-interested position, but according to standpoint epistemology, there is no such position (1999, 338; see also Hekman 2000, 24). Louise Antony calls the tension between the thesis of epistemic privilege and the situated knowledge thesis a "bias paradox" (1993, 188-189). In claiming that all knowledge is partial, feminist standpoint epistemology challenges the very notion of impartiality. But by undermining the notion of impartiality, feminist standpoint epistemology is in danger of losing its critical edge (Antony 1993, 189).
5. No root cause the idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history doesnt make any sense; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict. 6. Their authors are trapped in the same problem; the only way feminist epistemology can become powerful is to hegemonically push out and enact violence upon other types of methodologies for gathering knowledge. 7. Turn third world fem A. Turn and alt doesnt solve: feminism silences voices of non-Western, non-white women. Goetz, 91 research fellow in Development studies at U of Sussex, (Anne Goetz, Gender and International Relations, Harper and Row, 1991, J)
2AC K Blocks 68/165

Third world women have accused first
world and western-trained feminists of exercising a certain cultural colonialism, of misrepresenting different women by homogenizing the experiences and conditions of western women across time and culture.
Chakravorty Spivak has shown that western women are complicitous in contributing to the continued degredation of third world women whose micrology they interpret without having access to it. Monica Lazreg, exploring the perils of writing as a woman on women in Algeria suggests that third
world women have been produced as a field of knowledge, essentializing their difference in a process that represents a caricature of the feminist project. Black feminists have accused white feminists of adding on difference at the margin without leaving the comforts of home so as to support the seeming homogeneity, stability, and selfevidence of its experience based epistemology. Trinh T. Minh-ha identifies this neutralized difference as the very kind of colonized
anthropologised difference the master has always granted his subordinates. Audre Lordes response to the universalized picture of oppression in Mary Dalis Gym/Ecology reproaches her for failing: to recognize that, as women differences expose all women to various forms and degrees of patriarchal oppression, some of which we share, some of which we do not The
oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean that it is identical within those boundaries to imply that all women suffer the same oppression simply because we are women is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy. It is to ignore how these
tools are used by women without awareness against each other. These statements amount to descriptions of an epistemologically totalizing and culturally disruptive feminist. And to
the extent that feminist theorys claim to relevance is based upon its claim to represent the meaning of womens social experience in all its heterogeneity, these critiques point to some fundamental problems. The original consciousness raising approach of traditional feminist what Catherine MacKinnon has called its critical method involved a project
of theorizing the collective expression of the social constitution of sexed identities. This was informed by a political understanding that gender was not an inalienable description of human reality; an understanding derived from the insights of a traditional feminist ideology whose analysis of the political meaning of experience was concerned with deconstructing the legitimating surface of womens oppression. Theorizing the social construction of subjectivity produced an understanding of the mechanisms of sexist oppression. In practice, and as seen above, particularly in the context of WID practice, that collective
critical reconstitution of womens experiences in traditional feminist movements has tended to reproduce the situational consciousness of the white, bourgeois, heterosexual feminist, developing a set of certainties structured around that specific subjectivity. Such certainties in liberal or Marxist feminist ideologies tended to inform the cross-cultural
investigations of sexual subordination, producing a certain myopia with respect to the details of sexual subordination in different societies. The failure to guide practice with reference to the processes that shape human perceptions and norms promoted the disintegration of feminist pronouncements on women in development into a norm setting activity by a counter-elite.
B. Even if your movement spreads globally, without inclusion of third-world women there is no solvency Oloka-Onyango and Tamale, 95 Joe Oloka-Onyango is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Uganda, and spent the 19941995 academic year as a Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota.Sylvia Tamale holds law degrees from Makerere University (Uganda) and Harvard Law School. She is currently a doctoral student in Sociology and Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota, (The Personal is Political or Why Womens Rights are Indeed Human Rights. J. Oloka-Onyango and Slyvia Tamale. Human Rights Quarterly 17.4, 691-731 . Project Muse, JPW)
Taking the phenomenon of cultural relativism as another example, it is quite clear that its emergence and growth in the south is not simply linked to local conditions of domination and patriarchy, but is directly related to the increasing differentiation third world communities are experiencing under current global economic and political policies. The narrow application of culture thus serves as both an escape valve for frustration with the stifling economic order and a hook on which patriarchy can further consolidate its local hegemony. In other words, the internal domestic structure of a single third world nation is increasingly determined by the political economy of international law and relations. To forget this is to produce a truncated feminism with little resonance for the vast majority of African women. Given these links, the failure to fully integrate third world perspectives into theoretical analyses of international feminism will lead only to partial solutions to the problem of the universal marginalization of women. As a result, it will have serious implications for the evolution of the movement. This will be so even if the feminist agenda succeeds in making inroads at the international level.
8. Their re-thinking inscribes essentialist conceptions of woman that make inequality and antifeminism more likely Witworth, Prof of political science and female studies @ York U, 94
Feminism and International Relations, pg 20, 1994 Even when not concerned with mothering as such, much
of the politics that emerge from radical feminism within IR depend on a re-thinking from the perspective of women. What is left unexplained is how simply thinking differently will alter the material realities of relations of domination between men and women . Structural
(patriarchal) relations are acknowledged, but not analysed in radical feminisms reliance on the experiences, behaviours and perceptions of women. As Sandra Harding notes, the
essential and universal man, long the focus of feminist critiques, has merely been replaced
2AC K Blocks 69/165
here with the essential and universal woman. And indeed, that notion of woman not only ignores important differences amongst women, but it also reproduces exactly the stereotypical vision of women and men, masculine and feminine, that has been produced under patriarchy. Those women who do not fit the mould who, for example, take up arms in military struggle are quickly dismissed as expressing negative or inauthentic feminine values (the same accusation is more rarely made against men). In this way, it comes as no surprise when mainstream IR
theorists such as Robert Reohane happily embrace the tenets of radical feminism. It requires little in the way of re-thinking or movement from accepted and comfortable assumptions about stereotypes. Radical feminists writers suggest, this in itself
find themselves defending the same account of women as nurturing, pacifist, submissive mothers as men do under patriarchy, anti-feminists and the New Right. As some 9. The women's movement relies on hierarchies of racial prejudice and ethnic superiority in order to justify equal status Newman 96 Newman, Associate Professor of US Women's/Gender History @ UFlorida, 1996 (Dr. Louise M, "History Shows Women's Movement Wasn't Color
Blind, But Was Filled with Racism," p. http://www.clas.ufl.edu/events/news/articles/199610_Newman.html)
The history of the women's movement tells a story of racial tension, prejudicial stereotypes and racial elitism,
said Louise Newman, a UF assistant prolessor of history who is conducting research for a book on feminism in the late 19th century. "The work I do centers on movements organized primarily by white women who are thinking about women's issues that are not explicitly focused on race, but which have a bearing on racial questions," she said. One
example of the dominant role racism played in the women's movement involves the 14th and 15th amendments, which enfranchised African American men. Newman said. A significant number of white women working in
the suffrage movement felt betrayed that they, too, weren't given voting rights. As members of the white race, they felt better qualified to vote than freed male slaves. "They argued
that thev were better educated, more intelligent and that the white race is superior because it had arguments made for women's suffrage by white women in the late 19th century are explicitly racialized. There are arguments made about whiteness, about why as white people they ought to vote." Another example, according to Newman, is the assimilation of Native Americans into white society. White women argued that in order for Native Americans to become U.S. citizens they must first let go of their traditional gender roles and adhere to Anglo American gender relations. "Women's questions that historians understand as very specifically related to women's issues always deal with
developed historically a greater, more advanced civilization than other races," she said. "So the race and are in fact questions that come out of particular racial crises and conflicts at that time," she said. "On the other hand, racial questions always have within them a gender component and an issue that bears directly on white women's notions of what are appropriate roles for women." In her research Newman has found that white
women in the late 19th century had particular categories of women, either "civilized" or "savage." and that the different races fell into one of these categories creating a kind of racial hierarchy. The French. German and Anglo-Saxons were considered civilized races, the Irish much less so." she said. "The African Americans were on the verge of becoming civilized while the Indians were considered savages and primitives." By understanding how white
women viewed race during the evolution of the women's movement in the 19th century, Newman hopes to answer questions about racial problems in the presentday women's movement. "My own work in its broadest sense is a history of the present, and my work about the past is guided from a set of questions I have about the present: Why do white women and black women have so much difficulty creating an
interracial feminist movement?" she explained. "To this day this has not been possible to attain, and it becomes much more understandable why that can't happen today if you know something about race relations in the early part of the feminist movement - basically that
there's a 100-year history of difficulty and tension between white women and black women over race questions." She hopes her research will be used as a tool to educate white women about their history and to explain why there exists today a racial divide in the women's movement. "I want my research to explain why the feminist movement has not been integrated; to explain to white activists why it is they meet resistance from non-white potential allies," Newman said. "I want to provide answers to why there's so much misunderstanding, miscommunication and difficulty in organizing around certain kinds of issues."
--1AR Ext. # 6
Extend feminist discourse and action faces the same problem as other discourses; the only way it affect major power relations and actions is to become hegemonic and silence other types of discourse. Heres evidence on this question Jef Huysmans 2002 Alternatives January-March 27:1 Infotrac
The critical quality rests on the assumption that representations of the world make a difference (performative force of language) and that there is no natural or neutral arbiter of a true representation. Consequently, any representation, to become true, has to establish itself as hegemonic (often by claiming it is a true representation, while the others are false) at the cost of silencing alternative representations. This is shown by indicating how alternative options circulatedand still are aroundin the political struggle for founding a hegemonic discourse and how they were silenced by the now dominant discourse. Although the critical edge of this literature cannot be ignored, denaturalizing security fields is not necessarily successful in moderating the normative dilemma. The research continues to map the
2AC K Blocks 70/165
security discourses, therefore repeating, in an often highly systematic way, a security approach to, for example, migration or drugs. Demonstrating the contingent character of the politicization does question the foundational character of this contingent construction, but it does not necessarily undermine the real effects. It does this only when these discourses rely heavily for their effects on keeping the natural character of its foundations unquestioned. This points to a more general issue concerning this kind of analysis. Although it stresses that language makes a difference and that social relations are constructed, it leaves underdeveloped the concept of security formation that heavily prestructures the possibilities to speak differently through rarifying who can speak security, what security can be spoken about, how one should speak about security, and so on. (27) Another related problem is that the approach assumes that indicating the mere existence of alternative practices challenges the dominance of the dominant discourse. This is problematic since the alternative constructions do not exist in a vacuum or in a sheltered space. To be part of the game, they must, for example, contest political constructions of migration. Alternative practices are thus not isolated but engage with other, possibly dominant, constructions. This raises the question of how the engagement actually works. It involves relations of power, structuring and restructuring the social exchanges. Staging alternative practices does not necessarily challenge a dominant construction. The political game is more complex, as Foucaults interpretation of the sexual revolution the liberation from sexual repressionof the second half of the twentieth century showed. (28) In a comment on human-rights approaches of migration, Didier Bigo raises a similar pointthat opposing strategies do not necessarily radically challenge established politicizations: It is often misleading to counterpose the ideology of security to human rights because they sometimes have more in common than their authors would like to admit. They often share the same concept of insecurity and diverge only in their solutions. (29) The main point is that alternative discourses should not be left in a vacuum. The way they function in the political struggle should be looked at. How are the alternative discourses entrenched in a specific political game? Are they possibly a constitutive part of the mastery of the dominant construction? The critical remarks on the oscillating research strategy and the deconstruction of threat constructions are not meant to devalue the contributions of these research agendas but are used as stepping-stones to help introduce another agenda that approaches the dilemma via a theorization of the structuring work of the discursive formation. Theorization means that the performative work of language and
its generic dimension is embedded in underlying social processes that could explain the specific ways in which security language arranges social relations in contemporary societies. Basically, this implies two dimensions: (1) a political sociology of security in which one looks at how the mobilization of security expectations is bound to an institutional context or a field structured around a particular stake; and (2) an interpretation of differences in the political rationality of security in which one deals with the wider symbolic order within which security practice is entrenched.
--1AR Ext. # 7
Third world fem turns their project A. Their authors homogenize the feminist experience into one western, white view of the world that is not the same for women in the third world or women of color; this turns their project because it is the same totalizing view as masculinity thats Goetz. B. The ignorance of these other cultural factors means their movement cant solve even if it spreads; it ignores colored women and consolidates masculinitys power thats Oloka-Onyango and Tamale. Feminism that prioritizes theory over material experience excludes the voices of third world feminists. Oloka-Onyango and Tamale, 95 The Personal is Political or Why Womens Rights are Indeed Human Rights. J. Oloka-Onyango and Slyvia
Tamale. Human Rights Quarterly 17.4, 691-731 . Joe Oloka-Onyango is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Uganda, and spent the 19941995 academic year as a Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota.Sylvia Tamale holds law degrees from Makerere University (Uganda) and Harvard Law School. She is currently a doctoral student in Sociology and Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota, Projest Muse).
In tandem with such an approach, feminists in third world contexts must be wary of cooptation and exploitation--a trait of western societies that appears to not respect boundaries of sex--particularly because the dominant mode of international feminism reflects the dominant character and color of international relations, Bourgeois/white, often predatory, and paternalistic. 26 As Maivn Lm has recently pointed out in an article aptly entitled, Feeling Foreign in Feminism, the agenda of Western feminism appears not only to be off target, but also "filmic." 27 According to Lm, Western feminism is "too cleanly and detachedly representational, with little connection to the ongoing lives of women who have experienced racial or colonial discrimination. . . ." 28 Vasuki Nesiah is even more critical of the transposition of Western feminism onto the international scene because it ignores "global contradictions" 29 by emphasizing the commonality of women's experience. Instead, she urges theorists to look at gender identities as being "continually reconstituted through social processes."
2AC K Blocks 71/165
2AC K Blocks 72/165
--1AR Ext. # 9
Extend womens movements have empirically enfranchised African Americans and relied on hierarchies of racial prejudice and ethnic superiority in order to justify equal status; minorities were labeled as savages thats Newman. Their feminist movement ignores intersectionality of gender hierarchies - this 'imperial feminism' reinforces racist, colonial, and economic norms which perpetuate violence and oppression while stifling attempts at reform Sudbury 2k Sudbury, assistant professor of Ethnic Studies @ Mills College, 3/'27/2k (Julia, "Building Women's Movement Beyond 'Imperial Feminism.'"San
Francisco Chronicle)
To bemoan the oppression of Third World women without acknowledging the role of racism, colonialism and economic exploitation is to engage in what black British feminist Filmmaker Pratibha Parmar calls imperial feminism." a standpoint which claims solidarity with Third World women and women of color, but in actuality contributes to the stereotyping of Third World cultures as barbaric" and "uncivilized." Women of color in the United States are often trapped between imperial feminism and the need to challenge male violence within their communities. For instance, black women are torn between their desire not to send any more black men into a penal system already bursting with wasted lives and the need to use that very system to protect themselves and their children. Similarly, American Indian women face a difficult dilemma in tackling domestic violence in their communities while denouncing police brutality against Indian men. Both of these cases illustrate the need for the feminist movement to address the nexus of racism-sexism that structures the political choices and practical strategies available to women of color. Rather than responding to these dilemmas bv turning a blind eve to sexism in their communities, women of color have energetically forged an integrated struggle against racism-sexism.
Racism is a D-rule Barndt, Pastor and Co-director of Crossroads 91 Ministry working to dismantle racism (Joseph, Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White
America 155-6,) To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations, ghettos and prisons. The prison of racism confines us all, people of color and white people alike. It shackles the victimizer as well as the victim. The walls forcibly keep people of color and white people separate from each other; in our separate prisons we are all prevented from achieving the human potential that God intends for us. The limitations imposed on people of color by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are cruel, inhuman, and unjust; the
effects of uncontrolled power, privilege, and greed, which are the marks of our white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well. But we have also seen that the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom . Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be destroyed. You and I are urgently called to join the efforts of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all, the walls of racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be drawing ever more near . The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest and colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggression, of overconsumption and environmental destruction may be reaching a point of no return . A small and predominantly white minority of the global population derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
2AC K Blocks 73/165
--A2: Fem Sci-Fi

The Alt cant solve- examining science from a feminist perspective reinforces stereotypes of women as incompetent Fehr 04(Carla is an Associate Professor in Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University. She works in the philosophy of biology,
feminist philosophy and feminist science studies. Feminism and Science: Mechanism Without Reductionism Spring http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nwsa/summary/v016/16.1fehr.html) AK Although it has been said before by such leading philosophers as Sandra Harding (1987) and Helen Longino (1987), the point that feminist theorists do not and should not endorse a single feminist method, or of a single way that women do (or ought to do) science bears repeating for at least three reasons. First, Donna Haraway (1985) has pointed out that feminism and science need to be intertwined if we are to exercise our responsibility for the practices and products of science
drawing a line between womens science and science itself, we lose our ability to address current problems within scientific practice, and we dont investigate ways in which the traditional practice of science can be interrogated and improved. Second, presuppositions of a single feminist science reinforce the cultural stereotype that women cant do science as it is traditionally construed. This further removes an already marginalized group from mainstream scientific discourse and fails to give credit to women who have fought to succeed as researchers in what continues to be a mans game. Finally, we need to guard against
and technology. By essentializing womens intellectual or cognitive characteristics. Advocating a single feminist science suggests that there is a single, feminine manner way in which women think or relate to other people or organize their experiments and their laboratories. This is not the case. Because of the latter two concerns, pluralism is an appropriate attitude to take toward feminism and science. Instead of endorsing a feminist method, I hope to create space for a variety of approaches.
2AC K Blocks 74/165
A2: Frontier K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt. 4. The failure to engage the political process turns the affirmative into spectators who are powerless to produce real change. Rorty 98 (prof of philosophy at Stanford, Richard, 1998, achieving our country, Pg. 7-9)JFS
Such people
find pride in American citizenship impossible, and vigorous participation in electoral politics pointless. They associate American patriotism with an endorsement of atrocities: the importation of African slaves, the slaughter of Native Americans,
the rape of ancient forests, and the Vietnam War. Many of them think of national pride as appropriate only for chauvinists: for the sort of American who rejoices that America can still orchestrate something like the Gulf War, can still bring deadly force to bear whenever and wherever it chooses. When
young intellectuals watch John Wayne war movies after reading Heidegger, Foucault, Stephenson, or Silko, they often become convinced that they live in a violent, inhuman, corrupt country. They begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see through nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The
contrast between national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter were written in the belief that the tone of the Gettysburg Address was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transfor-
mation would be needed because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of
these novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one in which America is destined to become the first cooperative commonwealth, the first classless society. This America would be one in which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the government ensures equality of opportunity as well as individual liberty. This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal. It set the tone for the American Left
The difference between early twentieth-century leftist intellectuals and the majority of their contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early decades of this century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through skeptical eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of course, the great exception-the great abstainer from politics. But William James thought
during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Walt Whitman and John Dewey, as we shall see, did a great deal to shape this rhetoric. that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction against the sort of detached spectators hip which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless unless accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The
kind of proto- Heideggerian cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy," James wrote, "is a kind of religion, and we are
bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2
Failure to engage in the political process will result in the takeover by the extreme right, leading to discrimination and war worldwide. Rorty 98 (prof of philosophy at Stanford, Richard, 1998, achieving our country pg. 89-94)JFS
Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist
movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from
being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers-themselves desperately afraid of being downsized-are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point, something
will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide
that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for-someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis novel It Cant Happen Here may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic. One thing that is very likely to happen is that the
gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped
2AC K Blocks 75/165
out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words "nigger" and "kike" will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated
Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness. For
after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international superrich, just will invoke the glorious memory of the Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will generate short-term prosperity. He will be a disaster for the country and the world. People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his evitable rise. Where, they will ask, was the American Left? Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the consequences of globalization? Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossessed? It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth century, no longer have a Left. Since nobody denies the existence of what I have called the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is unable to engage in national politics. It is not the sort of Left which can be asked to deal with the consequences of globalization. To get the country to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions. It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma. I have two suggestions about how to effect this transition. The first is that the Left should put a moratorium on theory. It should try to kick its philosophy habit. The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being
as Hitler made his with the German industrialists. He Americans. It should ask the public to consider how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved. In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey's Reconstruction in Philosophy in which he expresses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of "individualism versus communitarianism." Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a common defect. They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement. For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and their dialectical relationships with one another. Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction. He was wrong when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one which supplies "the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the established order. "9 For such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary academic
Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique. When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been "inadequately theorized," you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan's impossible object of desire, helps to subvert the established order. Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by "problematizing familiar
concepts." Recent attempts to subvert social institutions by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books. They have also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worst. The
authors of these purportedly "subversive" books honestly believe that they are serving human liberty. But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate, or a political strategy. Even though what these authors "theorize" is
often something very concrete and near at hand-a current TV show, a media celebrity, a recent scandal-they offer the most abstract and barren explanations imaginable. These
futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations. These result in an intellectual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is called "power." This is the name of what
Edmundson calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook."10
5. Perm- do the plan and the alternative in every other instance if the alt is strong it can overcome the link to the plan if not it fails 6. Traditional frontier ideology causes warspace channels territorial expansion into technological expansion which solves this GRAY 1999 (D.M., Space as a frontier - the role of human motivation, Space Policy, August) The motivation of nations to expand their spheres of influence has historically been expressed in terms of imperialism, colonialism, hegemony and outright military conquest. In America in the 19th century it was most often expressed in terms of Manifest Destiny - the belief that the United States of America should extend across the continent from the Atlantic to Pacific. The movement was personified by folk heroes such a Daniel Boone, Kit Carson and Davy Crockett. However, on a larger scale it was expressed in a generationally driven agrarian and mining expansion from east to west until the Civil War and then a rebound back to
the east into the interior from the Pacific in the post-War eras. In the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, the idea of a steadystate society was anathema to national prestige. Nations competed in a global land-rush with little regard for the indigenous societies. The American frontiersmen perceived the land to be empty and brushed away the native populations who could not compete with the technology, organizational structures and aggressive ideologies of the EuroAmerican society. Indeed, national
ambition expressed in the expansion of physical borders continues to produce war and the threat of war. However, nationalistic expansion is given a more constructive venue when it is presented with a true wilderness in which it can grow. In the 20th century, physical frontiers were replaced by technological frontiers
2AC K Blocks 76/165
that provided arenas of expansionist opportunity with no native populations. The Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Einstein, Yager, Glenn, Jobs and Gates became the new American folk heroes. They personified the expansion of the frontiers of technology and science. Instead of subjugating or pushing peoples aside, these technological frontiers tended to empower and provide new freedoms. The common man learned to put aside old ways of doing things and embrace new technologies. In 20th century America, the ideology of `Manifest Destiny came to be replaced with &You can't stand in the way of progress!'. Nationalistic goals motivated President Kennedy to declare during a speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, &I believe this nation should commit itself, before this decade is out, to landing a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth'. The speech resulted in the spear thrust of Apollo that proved the USA's superiority over the Soviet technological machine. On Sunday, 20 July 1969, America's sphere of influence extended to the lunar surface as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the American flag on the Sea of Tranquillity. Having proved its superiority, America could be magnanimous in victory with the symbolic handshake of Apollo}Soyuz. Since America's retreat from the successes of Apollo,
nationalistic interests in space have become less clear. The USA began to quietly concentrate on orbiting satellites. Military and security organizations in the government viewed space as the most practical means of providing information they deemed necessary to maintain national security. The USA's new symbol of superiority in space became the Space Shuttle which could take larger crews to space in airline-like comfort. The
USA's expansionist policies had once again moved from the physical to the technological. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the USA had little reason to compete in space. Instead, it found more prestige in allowing other countries to participate in Shuttle missions and most recently in the International Space Station. For America's partners, participation in the station provided access to space without having to
develop the means to travel there. For these nations, their space programs have become a focus of national pride. For example when SPAR of Canada recently sold its space robotics unit that manufactured the Shuttle's robot arm to a subsidiary of the American company Orbital Sciences, the SPAR stock holders arose to remove the board of directors that had made the decision [2].
7. Frontier mindset solves laundry list of impacts Siegfried 03Program Manager of McDonnell Douglas SEI Lunar/Mars Systems, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace System Engineering, transportation Systems,
and Business Systems and Program Management, IAF Lunar Com, AAS Technical Com, AIAA, SAE, National Space Society (W.H., Space ColonizationBenefits for the World, The Boeing Company, Integrated Defense Systems, 2003, http://www.aiaa.org/participate/uploads/acf628b.pdf)//AW It took 100,000 years for humans to get inches off the ground. Then, astonishingly, it took only 66 years to get from Kitty Hawk to the Moon. We
have sent probes out of our solar system and have begun exploration of our universe. Both robotic and human exploration of space is well underway and we have begun to colonize space, even to the extent of early space tourism. Our early Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Spacehab, Mir, and now ISS are humankinds first ventures toward colonizing space. Efforts are underway to provide short space tours and experiences and endeavors such as the X-prize are encouraging entrepreneurs to provide new systems. Many believe that space travel (colonization) will do for the 21st century what aviation did for the 20th. For purposes of definition,
space colonization includes space-based operations in Earth orbit, in transit, and on planetary surfaces; robotic, automated, and human space exploration and data needs; tourism; development of space colonies and Mars; and other planetary terraforming activities. But why
should we persevere in the face of terrorism, hunger, disease, and problems of air quality, safe abundant water, poverty, and weather vagaries to name a few of our current problems? Recently, a Global Foresight Workshop was convened by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Foresight, and Governance Project (Smitherman, 2002). Organizers solicited goals from
key agencies and organizations across the country and internationally through solicitations from United Nations University via the Millennium Project. One hundred
The top five goals based on high-ranking for overall global importance were as follows: 1. Provide clean food and water 2. Provide clean and abundant energy 3. Eliminate all major diseases 4. End slavery globally 5. Provide universal health care. Findings such as these
goals were submitted, which were then combined and condensed to 46 for workshop consideration. are consistent with a Brookings Institute study that asked a group of academic historians, political scientists, sociologists and economists to forecast the most important achievements for the next 50 years. In this study, space endeavors such as exploration or colonization were not on the major list and were ranked low, among the least important accomplishments, even though the above goals were featured. Although
thus not viewed as a beneficial enterprise by many, it is our position that Space Colonization can help lead to solutions to many of the emerging problems of our Earth, such as those listed above, both technical and sociological. The breadth of the enterprise far exceeds our normal single-purpose missions and, therefore, its benefits are greater. Among the technical attributes of Space Colonization are the potential of developing low-cost, nonpolluting energy, enhanced food-production techniques, pollution/waste and water purification, development of disease-amelioration techniques, and the development of techniques to help protect Earth from potential meteoroid impact hazards (Siegfried, 1996). 8. Connecting transportation infrastructure to the frontier is technological determinism and ignores the social and historical context of power
2AC K Blocks 77/165

Narrating the Geography of Automobility, accessed 7/14/12)//BZ I am always trying to tell this thing that a space
Vogel, 2007 PhD Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University, written as a dissertation with a masters (Andrew, of time is a natural thing for an American to always have inside them as something inside which they are continuously moving. Think of anything, of cowboys, of movies, of detective stories, of anybody who goes anywhere or stays at home and is an American and you will realize that it is something strictly American to conceive a space that is filled always filled with moving, a space of time that is always filled with moving. (Making of Making of Americans 286) Likewise, Val Hart argues in his book, The Story of American Roads, that all the various forms of road and highway in America spring. . . from the pathways of our national being (17), as though there were a fundamental relationship between the land itself, a will to mobility, and highway construction. Likewise, George Pierson argues that America is singular due to the MFactor: the factor of movement, migration, mobility (278). Similarly, Phil Patton, in Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway, remarks that all American roads represent a literally concrete expression of the central American drives . That is, change is [the nations] most unchanging premise, movement is its most firmly fixed pattern, impermanence its most permanent condition, and the receding horizon its most steadfast goal. . . the mute perspectives and pavements of the highway objectify elements of the American mind (12). Also, according to Drake Hokanson, automobility is another outlet for wanderlust, another way to span the continent, to bind the East and West (31). All these histories imply that roads are an outward expression of an essential American psychic desire; the road is the manifestation of latent desires for such things as travel, adventure, escape, nature, and/or freedom. However, such narratives presume an essentialized, homogenous American character which is anything but representative, and they reify the construction of the largest road infrastructure and public works project in human history as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The danger of this thinking is that it elides the difficult political, economic, and ideological conflicts out of which the American highway infrastructure was actually manufactured. Such a view presupposes an American highway system as a historical inevitability and thus foreshortens the need for any complex understanding of the history of such a transformation and its numerous social and e nvironmental impacts. Another common explanation of Americas prodigious construction of roads in the twentieth century is that its occurrence is flatly instrumental. This is simply technological determinism. Referencing the evolution of automobility in the late teens and twenties, Drake Hokanson maintains, On the now paved highway were cars that had reached a high level of utility, and beside the highway, road-side America was rising. Americans had found a new mode of travel and were now busy creating a landscape to support it (116). Individual actors are relegated to the background of this narrative; progress builds itself. Similarly, characterizing the twentieth century as an era of industrial progress, William Kaszynski asserts that the internal combustion engine on wheels has made the greatest impact, transforming the earths landscape and starting new industries (24). Implicitly the engine itself, the technology, is the agent of history. Chester Leibs states, cars began streaming from the nations auto factories, and the demand for places to drive them soared. Before long hundreds of new highways laced the continent, and countless older roads were widened and paved ( 3). Again, the machine itself, because of its all too obvious benefits to mankind and the market, reoriented the course of American history with hardly a trace of human involvement. This sort of instrumental reasoning, while casting automobility as a teleological inevitability, fails to account for the slow acceptance of and even reactionary resistance to the technology in the early years of its introduction in the U.S. Representing technologies determining the course of history overlooks the socio-cultural production of human relationships to technologies.
2AC K Blocks 78/165
A2: Heidegger K
1. Framework: we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first; extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. Also, we control uniqueness to the impacts; even if technology were the root case, alt. cant act fast enough to stop our impacts. 3. No prior questions of ontology Owen, 2 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
frenzy for words like epistemology and ontology often signals this philosophical turn, although he goes on to comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or not, it is
clear that debates concerning ontology and epistemology play a central role in the contemporary IR theory wars. In one respect, this is unsurprising since it is a characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of disciplinary disorientation involve recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of different theoretical approaches, and there is no doubt that such reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the commitments that characterise (and help individuate) diverse theoretical positions. Yet, such a philosophical turn is not without its dangers and I will briefly mention three before turning to consider a confusion that has, I will suggest, helped to promote the IR theory wars by motivating this philosophical turn. The first danger with the philosophical turn is that it
has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of ontology and epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two were merely a simple function of the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective action are foregrounded. It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theory-construction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problem-driven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite
occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and prioritisation
of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises.
4. Only evaluate unique impacts; claims of technological domination being the root cause of violence is non-falsifiable and makes it impossible for us to effectively answer
2AC K Blocks 79/165
5. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict. 6. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. If the alt. can solve all technological thought then it can overcome the links. 7. No concrete alternative means they dont solve cant bring humans away from technology Riis 11Carlsberg Research Fellow and Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Science Studies at Roskilde University, Ph.D. from Albert-Ludwigs-Universitt
Freiburg (Sren, 8 February 2011, Towards the origin of modern technology: reconfiguring Martin Heideggers thinking, RBatra) Martin Heideggers radical critique of technology has fundamentally stigmatized modern technology and paved the way for a comprehensive critique of contemporary Western society. However, the
following reassessment of Heideggers most elaborate and influential interpretation of technology, The Question Concerning Technology, sheds a very different light on his critique. In fact, Heideggers phenomenological line of thinking concerning technology also implies a radical critique of ancient technology and the fundamental being-in-the-world of humans. This revision of Heideggers arguments claims that The Question Concerning Technology indicates a previous unseen ambiguity with respect to the origin of the rule of das Gestell. The following inquiry departs from Heideggers critique of modern technology and connects it to a reassessment of ancient technology and Aristotles justification of slavery. The last part of the paper unfolds Heideggers underlying arguments in favor of continuity within the history of technology. According to these interpretations, humans have always strived to develop modern technology and to become truly modern in the Heideggerian sense. The danger stemming from the rule of das Gestell is thus not only transient and solely directed toward contemporary Western society, but also I will argue that humans can only be humans as the ones challenged by the rule of das Gestell.
8. An ethical obligation to prevent specific atrocities precedes ontologythe death of the "other" calls our very being into question Bulley 4 (Dan, PhD Candidate @ Department of Politics and International Studies--University of Warwick, "Ethics and Negotiation,"
www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/politics/events/aber/ethics%20and%20negotiation%20-%20bulley.doc) Crucially an openness to justice cannot be an a priori good thing. Indeed, like the future, one can say it can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger. As incalculable and unknowable, an unconditional openness to the future-to-come of justice risks the coming of what he calls the worst. The most obvious
such as genocide, Nazism, xenophobia, so-called ethnic cleansing. These we can and must oppose or prevent. But why? Why only these? Derrida states that what we can oppose is only those events that we think obstruct the future or bring death, those that close the future to the coming of the other.
figures of this worst, or, perverse calculation, are atrocities We can oppose this future-present (a future that will be present) coming then on the basis of the future-to-come (a future with no expectation of presence). Or to put it in terms of the other, we can oppose those others who prevent our openness to other others. Such was the ideology of
National Socialism in its desire to entirely negate the Jews. We have a duty to guard against the coming of such a theory or idea. Why? Because such an other closes us to the other; a future that closes the future. However, if, as Derrida says there is no ultimate way of
judging between our responsibility for others, as Every other (one) is every (bit) other, whose calculation can we say is perverse, or the worst? Why are we responsible to victims rather than the perpetrators of atrocities if both are equally other? Who makes this decision and how can it be justified? Levinas suggests that our
being-in-the-world our being-as-we-are, is only conceivable in relation to, and because of, the other. Thus the death of the other calls our very being into question. Ethics in this sense precedes ontology as our responsibility to the other precedes our own being. We may say then that our commitment is to those that accept the other as other, that allow the other to be. There is a danger though that this becomes foundational, treated as a grounding principle outside
traditional modernist ethics on which we can build a new theory of ethics. This is not the value of Derridean and Levinasian thinking however. What makes their different ways of thinking the other interesting is not that they are absolutely right or true, but rather that they take traditional ethical thinking to its limit. Whether or not a Jewish tradition is privileged over Greek, they remain within the bounds of Western metaphysics. Derridas responsibility [to the Other] without limits, does not escape this, establishing itself unproblematically as a ground outside traditional thinking. Rather, his thinking of the ethical shows that we
can think these things differently, while still accepting the exigency to prevent the worst. There can be no ultimate foundation
for what we think is the worst. And such a foundation cannot come from outside Western metaphysics. Limit thinking is not an immovable basis for judgement of the worst, and this is why it is so dangerous and troubling. The non-basis of judgement is rather the desire to stay as open as possible, while recognising that a judgement necessarily closes. The goal is for our closure to have the character of an opening (closing the future-present to allow the future-to-come), but it nevertheless remains a closure. And every closure is problematic.
9. Their arguments are too totalizing there is nothing tangible or nothing definitive that can be defined as technology or exactly what types of this technology should be rejected. 10. Heidegger is unable to translate ontological insights into the real world.
2AC K Blocks 80/165
Wolin, 90 - Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center - 1990 (Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being, P. 164)
Heidegger's inability to conceptualize the sociohistorical determinants and character of modern technology raises the oft-discussed question of the "pseudo-concreteness of his philosophy"; that is, its apparent incapacity to fulfill its original phenomenological promise as a philosophy of "existential concretion." The problem was already evident in the tension between the ontological and ontic levels of analysis that dominated the existential analytic of Being and Time. For there the sphere of ontic life seemed degraded a priori as a result of its monopolization by the "They" and its concomitant inauthentic modalities. As a result, both the desirability and possibility of effecting the transition from the metalevel of ontology to the "factical" realm of ontic concretion seemed problematical from the outset. Nowhere was this problem better illustrated than in the case of the category of historicity. And thus despite Heidegger's real insight into limitations of Dilthey's historicism, the inflexible elevation of ontology above the ontic plane virtually closes off the conceptual space wherein real history might be thought. In truth, it can only appear as an afterthought: as the material demonstration of conclusions already reached by the categories of existential ontology. Consequently, the "ontology of Being and Time is still bound to the metaphysics that it rejects. The conventional tension between existentia and essentia stands behind the difference between everyday (factical) and 'authentic historical existence.'
11. Heideggers philosophy is Nazismthe rejection of technology and re-connection with Being offered by National Socialism fit with his arguments. Wolin 01 Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York Graduate Center 2001 (Richard Wolin, Heideggers Children, P. 32)
To say that Arendt's explanation was the more successful, despite its flaws, is hardly controversial. In many respects, Heidegger's own narrative was simply delusory, a
In Heidegger's view, everything that came to pass-the war, the extermination camps, the German dictatorship (which he never renounced per se)-was merely a monumental instance of the "forgetting of Being," for which the Germans bore no special responsibility. After the war, he went so far as to insist that German fascism was unique among Western political movements in that, for one shining moment, it had come close to mastering the vexatious "relationship between planetary technology and modern man." In Heidegger's estimation, therein lay the "inner truth and greatness of National Socialism." But ultimately "these people [the Nazis] were far too limited in their thinking," he claimed. Pathetically, Heidegger was left to replay in his own mind the way things might have been had Hitler (instead of party hacks) heeded the call of Being as relayed by Heidegger himself. Nazism might thereby have realized its genuine historical potential. Fortunately, the world was spared the outcome of this particular thought experiment.
retrospectively contrived psychological prophylaxis against his own enthusiastic support for the regime.
2AC K Blocks 81/165
A2: Hetronormativity K
2AC K Blocks 82/165
approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises. 5. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if power relations were the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 6. Queer theory cedes the politicalit replaces personal poltics for engagement with real reform. Kirsch, 2000 (Max, Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University, Queer Theory and Social Change, p. 97-98)
Queerness as a deviant form of heterosexuality results in oppression. When this fact is not confronted, it can lead to maladaptive responses that include the markings of internalized homophobia: depression, psychosis, resignation, and
apathy. These are very much reactions to the ways in which we view ourselves, which in turn are, at least in part, due to the ways in which we are constantly told to view ourselves. Here, the production of consciousness takes a very concrete form. Those academy,
enduring this form of violence cannot, even in the simply decide to disengage. We cannot simply refuse to acknowledge these facts of social life in our present society, and hope that our circumstances will change. Although the lack of definition is what has inspired the use of "queer," it
cannot, as Butler herself asserts, "overcome its constituent history of injury" (1993b: 223). Be that as it may, "queer," as put forward by Queer theorists, has no inherent historical or social context. We continually return to the following question: to whom does it belong and what does it represent? These advocates of
Queer theory, particularly as it is expressed in Butler's writings on performativity, dichotomizes the political as personal and the political as social action into a binary that positions political action in impossible terms. The nature of the "political" is never clearly discussed, and remains a chasm (cf. Kaufman and Martin, 1994). However appealing the notion of positioning the self through a reinterpretation of the "I" may be, it is misguided as political action: it cannot generate the collective energy and organization necessary to challenge existing structures of power. As Michael Aglietta observes, "There is no magical road where the most abstract concepts magically command the movement of society" (1979:
"queer" do not acknowledge that queer is produced by social relations, and therefore contains the attributes of existing social relations. As I have shown, 43). The question of polities, then, brings us back to where we began: what is the nature of the political and how do we address it? Is it beneficial to maintain alliances with established political parties? Can we adopt the dominant values of our culture and still hope to change the dynamics of those values? How do we form alliances with other oppressed groups? Is there a structural economic basis for such an alliance, or should we look elsewhere? Perhaps most importantly: is it possible, given the tremendous resources represented by the dominant and coercive ideology of our present social relations, to maintain the energy necessary to develop and continue modes of resistance that counter it? In the last question, as I will show, lies an answer to the issue of alliances and structural identification. But first, we need to refocus the discussion.
And Anti-Politics dooms their project, threatens the planet, and cedes politics to the Right. Boggs 97 (CARL BOGGS Professor and Ph.D. Political Science, National University, Los Angeles -- Theory and Society 26: 741-780)
The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement, an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change. As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent American society will
problems that are destroying the fabric of go unsolved -- perhaps even unrecognized -- only to fester more ominously into the future. And such problems (ecological crisis, poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context diseases, technological displacement of workers) of internationalized markets, finance, and communications. Paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist sentiment, comes at a time when agendas that ignore or side-step these global realities will, more than ever, be reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the
increasing sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. By diluting the life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions.74 In the meantime,
the fate of the world hangs in
the balance. The unyielding truth is that, even as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more compelling and even fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to decide the fate of human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that corporate colonization
will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or that gigantic state and military
structures will lose their hold over people's lives. Far from it: the space abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites -- an already familiar dynamic in many lesser- developed
countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant individualism, social Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. In this way the
eclipse of politics might set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise -- or it
2AC K Blocks 83/165

might help further rationalize the existing power structure. In either embodiment of those universal, collective interests that had vanished from civil society.75
Valley High School Rishi Shah case, the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the
7. The Queer body is created through hetrosexual reproduction were not saying thats good or normal but thats just the way biology works means that the alt fail because there wont be any continuation of humanity in transportation infrastructure if it is queered because there is no way to reproduce. 8. Queer theorys focus on the individual destroys communities that could sustain liberation. Kirsch 00 (Max H., Associate Professor and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Comparative Studies: The Public Intellectuals Program at the Florida Atlantic
University, Routledge, Queer theory and social change, p121-123, http://books.google.com/books?id=Sfd82XETptUC&source=gbs_navlinks_s) Queer theory has developed along a path that questions the basic tenets of past resistance movements while championing the right of inclusion. But
despite calls for the recognition of diversity, it has done little to further a true inclusiveness that would have the ability to form communities of resistance. Again, this is primarily due to the insistence on the uniqueness of the individual and the relativity of experience. The call made by Queer theory is familiar to those who have participated in resistance movements: the assertion of independence from oppressive authority while claiming the right to envision and create new forms of being. But instead of focusing on the creation of a society that guarantees freedom and expression for all, it has instead focused on the individual as a site of change. Indeed, this fear of connection, as argued in Chapter 5, has real possibilities for generating self-harm. The actions of those with power exert dominance in both conscious and unconscious ways, redirecting energy towards objective oppression and subjective self-hate in the process. While the belief that heterosexuality is the norm is purveyed, violence,
both psychological and physical, is enacted on those outside of that projected norm, and experienced by them as being outside the facets of daily social life. Beyond making it more difficult to identify with others, such alienation causes a reaction to even the attempt to do so. The
right to be oneself thus becomes
a mechanism for self-protection rather than a call for equality. Current Queer theorys engagement of this fear and concentration on the
deconstruction of identity are results of such a reaction to power, a reductionistic view of the possibilities for change generated by the politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The reaction has taken place most prominently in the academy, where the purveyors of this theory are in positions that pose real danger to those opposing them. They have become the new academic elite, completely with editorships of journals, the power to hire, to decide who publishes, to deny tenure, and the ability to apply pressure with regard to which theory is well received and which disregarded. Let there be no mistake: they do act on their privileges. They are self-protective in much the same way that the managers of capitalist enterprises control the organization of work. It is not in their interest to further communities of dissidence, particularly against themselves. While
Queer theory does not call for the destruction of communities, at least by name, its consequences are the same: communities must be deconstructed to free the individual for self-expression.5 As the individual becomes the center of analysis in all aspects of social life, and as late capitalism emphasizes individualism on a global
scale, resistance theory has closely followed the dominant streams. At best, wishful thinking and the consolidation of position underpins this direction, the hope that the mind can reframe the significance of harm while ones job is not threatened. At worst, such a stance is in operative support of current structures of capitalist relations of being. Community, identity, and self-actualization are indeed complementary. Social
and emotional health are promoted by active participation with others in community. The community is where safe space is created. Power in numbers has been the call of resistance movements world-wide, from anti-colonial struggles to fights for better working conditions. Such struggles have larger outcomes. The community is a forum for debate for the construction of strategy. Communities exist with varied needs that are part of the complexity of society. It is in communities that social change begins in embryonic form. Separatist movements have proven unproductive as the community becomes isolated and involutes with disagreement. Assimilationist movements cannot work toward sustained social change because there is no confrontation with the basis of oppression. The call for individuality is the most harmful strategy of all, for it separates every person from any concrete sense of identity and collective opposition.
2AC K Blocks 84/165
--A2: Edelman
Edelmans alternative perpetuates essentialism and does not address material oppression. Edwards 06 (Tim, Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Leicester, Routledge, Cultures of Masculinity p85,
http://books.google.com/books?id=jiDisMipzEsC&source=gbs_navlinks_s)
Gay liberation is problematic not least because liberation per se is problematic, both theoretically and politically. In theoretical terms, the notion of liberation tends to imply essentialism and, in relation to sexuality, this is compounded by its conflation with the concept of repression and the assertion of some otherwise contained or constrained sexual desire. The difficulty here is not so much the charge of essentialism, which must remain in some senses merely a descriptive term, but rather the sense of confusion invoked concerning what exactly is being liberated: a sexual desire, a sexual identity, a sexual community, or all three? This is not to deny in the least that gay men still constitute a marginalized, stigmatized, and on occasions, even demonized group, yet such an experience is perhaps more accurately understood as a problem of subordination, emancipation or indeed oppression. The term
liberation therefore remains rather inadequate in theoretical terms. This sense of ambiguity or even ambivalence concerning gay liberation was, however, also illustrated more academically. Some of the earliest works on gay politics, particularly those of Hocquengheim and Mieli, attributed a liberatory force to gay desire in celebrating promiscuity, pushing the boundaries of decency and more generally going against the mores of mainstream heterosexual society; while others, particularly those of Altman and Weeks, saw gay politics as a culturally specific phenomenon contingent on histories of movements towards reform and slowly shifting morals and values (Altman, 1971; Hocquenghem, 1972; Mieli, 1980; Weeks, 1977). It was perhaps not surprising, then, that much of this ambivalence should also be played out through a series of academic debates that followed the onset of gay liberation. These more theoretical debates were in themselves often founded on the political involvements of young writers and academics making their careers in colleges and universities. Most of these controversies centred on various, and often violently opposed, perspectives of the development of commercial gay culture and the practices and attitudes of gay men, most notoriously those of the overtly sexualised and hypermasculine clone.
2AC K Blocks 85/165
*A2: Kappeler K
2AC K Blocks 86/165
A2: Kato K
1. Framework: we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first; extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. Also, we control uniqueness to the impacts; even if technology were the root case, alt. cant act fast enough to stop our impacts. 3. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusively parts of the alternative. 4. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history doesnt make sense; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict; even if power relations were the root cause of violence the alternative cant act fast enough to stop aff impacts. 5. Negative discourse toward nuclear war key to healing the wounds of the indigenous communities by the nuclear cycle Baldonado 98
Statement Coordinator Myrla Baldonado, People's Task Force for Base Clean Up, Philippines http://www.nuclearfiles.org/hinonproliferationtreaty/98npt_ngo2.html We reaffirm the correctness and relevance of the 1997 Moorea Declaration by Abolition 2000 which
states that colonized and indigenous people have in the large part, borne the brunt of this nuclear devastation - from the mining of uranium and the testing of nuclear weapons on indigenous peoples land, to the dumping, storage and transport of plutonium and nuclear wastes, and the theft of land for nuclear infrastructure." We therefore come here to the table as victims of the nuclear age.
While it is difficult to transcend the nature of what it is to be the sacrificial lambs of military imposed "peace," we seek to transcend mere victimization in demanding and calling for a final cessation to these genocidal acts of nuclear colonialism*. We are inspired by the work of the recently-deceased Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, who spoke of strategy on behalf of oppressed peoples working to liberate themselves from the oppression that dehumanizes both the oppressor and the oppressed. Being the victims of the nuclear age, we ask you to listen to the suffering voices silenced by attribution of priority to a precarious "peace" maintained by military means. The Pacific, like most Indigenous
Genuine peace can only begin to emerge when the nations of the world start to dismantle military and nuclear installations now dominating the entire Pacific from Guam to Hawaii to French Polynesia. *Nuclear disarmament can begin to heal the wounds imposed on communities not only in the South, but in the Northern countries as well.* The theory and practice of nuclear deterrence have been extremely hostile to democratic practice. Nuclear disarmament and demilitarization will allow communities to participate more fully in both the political sphere and civil society. National military strategies, on the other hand, have often required the absence of free democratic thought. As you meet
communities around the world, is heavily militarized. here, we urge you to take strong and courageous leadership in de-legitimizing what, for a whole generation, gripped our imagination as we tottered in so close a proximity to total nuclear annihilation. As we have heard oftentimes, the end of the Cold War has provided a historic opportunity to rid ourselves of this "near-death" experience with planned obsolescence of the human race. Both the NPT and subsequent efforts to re-visit it, including the 1995 review, *produced many promises which you all undertook to achieve. Integrity in this instance is crucial, and we urge you all to be true to those promise*s. With the next formal Review of the NPT in the year 2000, it will not only be logical to set ourselves on a new footing in human history; *it will also be a crucial symbol for beginning a new millennium with serious efforts to begin negotiations toward nuclear disarmament.
6. No impact to global surveillance, benefits indigenous people by promoting their interests Liftin, 98 Karen Litfin, Professor of Political Science University of Washington, 98 The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics, p. 211
Because the use of ERS data in developing countries raises a host of complex cultural, political, and ethical issues, not all observers see this sort of technology transfer in a positive light. For instances, Masahide
Kato is critical of nonprofit groups based in industrialized countries who supply satellite-generated information to remote areas of developing countries. He believes they are representatives of a global technosubjectivity which renders the territories of indigenous
peoples as resources. Indeed satellites seem to offer the tantalizing prospective of sovereign knowledge, or knowledge with supreme authority. As only enthusiast proclaims, they show vast terrains in correct perspective, from one viewpoint, and at one moment in time. But, that one viewpoint is generally located in the North and that one moment in time, cannot capture centuries of past environmental abuse, a fact that may prove profoundly disadvantageous for developing countries when ERS date are use to assign responsibility for ecological degradation. While Kato
perhaps too quickly condemns ERS technology, which we have seen can be use to promote the interests of indigenous peoples, his critique reveals two interrelated issues of political culture implicit in ERS as an artifact/idea: the control of knowledge (who controls it and for what purposes) and the constitution of knowledge (what counts as knowledge). By employing ERS date, environmental and indigenous rights groups demonstrate that it can be translated into usable knowledge for purposes of cultural and ecological preservation, but they simultaneously legitimize it as a source of credible knowledge.
2AC K Blocks 87/165
7. Imagining nuclear wars serve as a warning against the possibility and opens up questioning of national values Seed 2k David Seed, Professor of English literature at the University of Liverpool, 2000 Imagining the Worst: Science Fiction and Nuclear War, Journal of
American Studies of Turkey, Vol. 11, pp. 39-49, http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~jast/Number11/Seed.htm A number of recurring features emerge from these narratives. In virtually every case the USA plays a reactive role, never attacking first. Secondly, the
nations capacity to cope with such an attack becomes a test of its morale and for that reason the nuclear aftermath, in the short and long term, occasions an interrogation of cherished national values. Thirdly, because nuclear attack can
only be mounted with the latest technology, these novels explore anxieties about problems of control. Finally this fiction expresses a collective horror of ultimate endings. Some human presence persists however tenuous or displaced. Cherished human values like reason might be transposed on to extraterrestrial beings; or reader might play out the role of a survivor through the very act of reading a narrative whose deliverer has died. Ultimately there is an unusual circularity to such narratives. By
deploying a whole range of strategies to imagine a dreaded future, they function as warnings against such imminent developments. The more the future fails to develop along these imagined lines, the more necessary is the reconfirmation of these narratives as mere imaginary extrapolations. 8. Imagining future nuclear scenarios enables criticism of nuclear weapons ability to destroy all humankind Foard 97
James Foard, Associate Professor of Religion, Arizona State, 1997 Imagining Nuclear Weapons: Hiroshima, Armageddon, and the Annihilation of the Students of Ichijo School, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/LXV/1/1.pdf This ambivalence about Hiroshima has been partially ameliorated by displacing it with Armageddon in our imagination of nuclear weapons In Amenca the images of the atomic bomb, particularly after the Soviet Union's successful test in 1949 (Boyer.341), were pressed into the service of apocalyptic speculations, both scientific and otherwise, a process which has until recently assigned the horror that Hiroshima represented to a superpower war in an imagined future (cf. Pease'562). Specifically, images
of a nuclear Armageddon have helped us perform two sorts of cultural tasks fundamental the articulation of what makes nuclear weapons different from other weapons and the consequent reflection on the different human situation engendered by them. By "representation" I mean the expressions which seek to describe the use of nuclear weapons and incorporate that description into structures of meaning Armageddon permits us to define the difference of nuclear weapons by their capacity to destroy the human species in a war that no one will win.
for imagining nuclear weapons: those involving difference and those involving representation. By "difference" I mean both
2AC K Blocks 88/165
9. Imagining nuclear war demonstrates it is unwinnable and such reflections do not work to exclusion of envisioning past nuclear wars Foard 97
James Foard, Associate Professor of Religion, Arizona State, 1997 Imagining Nuclear Weapons: Hiroshima, Armageddon, and the Annihilation of the Students of Ichijo School, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/LXV/1/1.pdf Since the onset of the superpower conflict, nuclear
reflection has yoked itself to the Cold War and indulged itself in opposing human extinction As a consequence, the end of the Cold War has meant the obsolescence of not only our strategies toward but also our images of the nuclear threat Although excluded from our apocalyptic obsession, harder moral issues have been with us since 1945, moral issues that are as pressing now as they were then: Is the instantaneous extinction of cities different from other war death? If using a nuclear weapon (or two) does not endanger the human species, is it permissible under certain conditions? If so, how do we represent such death in our religious and cultural systems of "just war" and other meanings. Such questions are beyond
the range of this historian of religions What is clear is that the efforts of Hiroshima survivors suggest measuring the difference of nuclear death by the impossibility of theodicy, of
we have not achieved freedom from nuclear danger in the past few years solely because the apocalyptic scenario seems less plausible and that we need new theological and philosophical reflections. Furthermore, the survivors' insistence on the reality of references for nuclear language, in contrast to our own critics' insistence on the opposite, affirms that the use of nuclear weapons is indeed possible because it has already happened.
which the apocalyptic imagination is but one culturally specific and historically bound expression Following such a measurement of difference can help us see that
10. Imagining future nuclear wars prevents them Martin 82

Brian Martin, Professor of Social Sciences in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong, 1982 How the Peace Movement Should be Preparing for Nuclear War, Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1982, pp. 149-159 But these possibilities provide relatively little consolation for the human disaster of nuclear war, and certainly would not justify any policy which significantly increased the risk of nuclear war. It
is in their implications for the present that peace movement activities relating to nuclear war must be assessed. It is my belief that preparation for nuclear war by the peace movement would reduce the chance of nuclear war by providing a visible threat to the otherwise unchallenged continuance of existing political institutions. National decision-makers may wish to avoid nuclear war to save their own lives, but they have demonstrated a continued willingness to risk
nuclear war, both in crises and confrontations and through the very existence of nuclear arsenals, through the policies they have promoted and the institutions they have constructed and supported. This
institutionalised risk of nuclear war will seem less acceptable if one consequence of continued preparations for war were a major challenge to the complete system of political and economic power and privilege. Nuclear weapons states have refrained from nuclear war thus far not primarily because of their perception of the human disaster of nuclear war
but because of the possible political consequences. A prepared peace movement would ensure that such political consequences are as serious as possible.
2AC K Blocks 89/165
11. Observing earth as a whole dissolves the reasoning for classifying by nations. CARL SAGAN (Professor of astronomy and space sciences at cornell university, overall badass), September 1997 Pale Blue Dot: a Vision of the Human
Future in Space. Ballantine Books. Mariners had painstakingly mapped the coastlines of the continents. Geographers had translated these findings into charts and globes. Photographs
of tiny patches of the Earth had been obtained first by balloons and aircraft, then by rockets in brief ballistic flight, and at last by orbiting spacecraftgiving a perspective like the one you achieve by positioning your eyeball about an inch above a large globe. While almost everyone is taught that the Earth is a sphere with all of us somehow glued to it by gravity, the reality of our circumstance did not really begin to sink in until the famous frame-filling Apollo photograph of the whole Earththe one taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts on the last journey of humans to the Moon. It has become a[n] kind of icon of our age. There's Antarctica at what Americans and Europeans so readily regard as
the bottom, and then all of Africa stretching up above it: You can see Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya, where the earliest humans lived. At top right are Saudi Arabia and what Europeans call the Near East. Just barely peeking out at the top is the Mediterranean Sea, around which so much of our global civilization emerged. You
can make out the blue of the ocean, the yellow-red of the Sahara and the Arabian desert, the brown-green of forest and grassland. And yet there is no sign of humans in this picture, not our reworking of the Earth's surface, not our machines, not ourselves: We are too small and our statecraft is too feeble to be seen by a spacecraft between the Earth and the Moon. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of worldsto say nothing of stars or galaxieshumans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.
2AC K Blocks 90/165
12. Observing the whole of earth creates a bond between all of us, decreases our self-importance, and increases peace between us CARL SAGAN (Professor of astronomy and space sciences at cornell university, overall badass), September 1997 Pale Blue Dot: a Vision of the Human
Future in Space. Ballantine Books. So here they area mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets and a background smattering of more distant stars. We
were able to photograph not
only the Earth, but also five other of the Sun's nine known planets. Mercury, the innermost, was lost in the glare of the Sun, and Mars and Pluto were too small, too dimly lit, and/or too far away. Uranus and Neptune are so dim that to record their presence required long exposures; accordingly, their images were smeared because of spacecraft motion. This is how the planets would look to an alien spaceship approaching the Solar System after a long interstellar voyage. From this distance the planets seem only points of light, smeared or unsmearedeven through the high-resolution telescope aboard Voyager. They are like the planets seen with the naked eye from the surface of the Earthluminous dots, brighter than most of the stars. Over a period of months the Earth, like the other planets, would seem to move among the stars. You cannot tell merely by looking at one of these dots what it's like, what's on it, what its past has been, and whether, n this particular epoch, anyone lives there. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it's just an accident of geometry and optics. The Sun emits its radiation equitably in all directions. Had the picture been taken a little earlier or a little later, there would have been no sunbeam highlighting the Earth. And why that cerulean color? The blue comes partly from the sea, partly from the sky. While water in a glass is transparent, It absorbs slightly more red light than blue. If you have tens of meters of the stuff or more, the red light is absorbed out and what gets reflected back to space is mainly blue. In the same way, a short line of sight through air seems perfectly transparent. Neverthelesssomething Leonardo da Vinci excelled at portrayingthe more distant the object, the bluer it seems. Why? Because the air scatters blue light around much better than it does red. So the bluish cast of this dot comes from its thick but transparent atmosphere and its deep oceans of liquid water. And the white? The Earth on an average day is about half covered with white water clouds. We can explain the wan blueness of this little world because we know it well. Whether an alien scientist newly arrived at the outskirts of our solar system could reliably deduce oceans and clouds and a thickish atmosphere is less certain. Neptune, for instance, is blue, but chiefly for different reasons. From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's
here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, ever king and peasant, every young couple in love, every moth and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar, every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived thereon a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. 13 The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our
planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for
the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
character-building experience. There
2AC K Blocks 91/165
A2: Lacan K
1. Framework: we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Perm, do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative. If the alt. can rupture our obsession with the fantasy then it can overcome the links. And, the permutation is more subversive because it makes demands on the system that the system expects will never be made. The alternatives radical attempt to impose something completely different is more easily defeated. Zizek, 98 Professor of Philosophy at Institute of Social Sciences at University of Ljubljana
(Slavoj, Law and the Postmodern Mind, Why Does the Law need an Obscene Supplement? Pg 91-94) Finally, the
point about inherent transgression is not that every opposition, every attempt at subversion, is automatically "coopted." On very fear of being coopted that makes us search for more and more "radical," "pure" attitudes, is the supreme strategy of suspension or marginalization. The point is rather that true subversion is not always where it seems to be. Sometimes, a small distance is much more explosive for the system than an ineffective radical rejection. In religion, a small heresy can be more threatening than an outright atheism or passage to another religion; for a hard-line Stalinist, a Trotskyite is infinitely more threatening than a
the contrary, the bourgeois liberal or social democrat. As le Carre put it, one true revisionist in the Central Committee is worth more than thousand dissidents outside it. It was easy to dismiss Gorbachev for aiming only at improving the system, making it more efficient-he nonetheless set in motion its disintegration. So one should also bear in mind the obverse of the inherent transgression: one is tempted to paraphrase Freud's claim from The Ego and the Id that man is not only much more immoral than he believes, but also much more moral than he knows-the System is not only infinitely more resistant and invulnerable than it may appear (it can coopt apparently subversive strategies, they can serve as its support), it is also infinitely more vulnerable (a small revision etc, can have large unforeseen catastrophic consequences). Or, to put it in another way: the paradoxical role of the unwritten superego injunction is that, with regard to the explicit, public Law, it is simultaneously transgressive (superego suspends, violates, the explicit social rules) and more coercive (superego consists of additional rules that restrain the field of choice by way of prohibiting the possibilities allowed for, guaranteed even, by the public Law). From my personal history, I recall the moment of the referendum for the independence of Slovenia as the exemplary case of such a forced choice: the whole point, of course, was to have a truly free choice-but nonetheless, in the pro-independence euphoria, every argumentation for remaining within Yugoslavia was immediately denounced as treacherous and disloyal. This example is especially suitable since Slovenes were deciding about a matter that was literally "transgressive" (to break from Yugoslavia with its constitutional order), which is why the Belgrade authorities denounced Slovene referendum as unconstitutional-one was thus ordered to transgress theLaw ... The
obverse of the omnipotence of the unwritten is thus that, if one ignores them, they simply cease to exist, in contrast to the written law that exists (functions) whether one is aware of it or not-or, as the priest in Kafka's The Trial put it, law does not want anything from you, it only bothers you if you yourself acknowledge it and address yourself to it with a demand ... When, in the late eighteenth century,
universal human rights were proclaimed, this universality, ofcourse, concealed the fact that they privilege white, men of property; however, this limitation was not openly admitted, it was coded in apparently tautological supplementary qualifications like "all humans have rights, insofar as they truly are. rational and free," " which then implicitly excludes the mentally ill, "savages," criminals, children, women.'. . So, if, in this situation, a poor black woman disregards this unwritten, implicit, qualification and demands human rights, also for herself, she just takes the letter ofthe discourse of rights "more literally than it was meant" (and thereby redefines its universality, inscribing it into a different hegemonic chain). "Fantasy" designates precisely this unwritten framework that tells us how are we to understand the letter of Law. The lesson of this is that-sometimes, at least-the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of Law on behalf of the underlying fantasies, but to stick to this letter against the fantasy that sustains it. Is-at a certain level, at least-this not the outcome of the long conversation between Josepf K. and the priest that follows the priest's narrative on the Door of the Law in The Trial?-the uncanny effect of this conversation does not reside in the fact that the reader is at a loss insofar as he lacks the unwritten interpretive code or frame ofreference that would enable him to discern the hidden Meaning, but, on the contrary, in that thepriest's interpretation of the parable on the Door of the Law disregards all standard frames of unwritten rules and reads the text in an "absolutely literal" way. One could also approach this deadlock via. Lacan's notion of the specifically symbolic mode of deception: ideology "cheats precisely by letting us know that its propositions (say, on universal human rights)' are not to be read a la lettre, but against thebackground of a set of unwritten rules. Sometimes, at least, the most effective anti-ideological subversion of the official discourse of human rights consists in reading it in an excessively "literal" way, disregarding the set of underlying unwritten rules. The need for unwritten rules thus bears witness to, confirms, this vulnerability: the
system is compelled to allow for possibilities of choices that must never actually take place since they would disintegrate thesystem, and the function of the unwritten rules is precisely to prevent the actualization of these choices formally allowed by the system. One can see how unwritten rules are
correlative to, the obverseof, the empty symbolic gesture and/or the forced choice: unwritten rules prevent the subject from effectively accepting what is offered in the empty gesture, from taking the choice literally and choosing the impossible, that the choice of which destroys the system. In the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s, to take the most extreme example, it was not only prohibited to criticize Stalin, it was perhaps even more prohibited to enounce publicly this prohibition, i.e., too state that one is prohibited to criticize Stalin-the system needed to maintain the appearance that one is allowed to criticize Stalin, i.e., thatthe absence of this criticism (and the fact that there is no opposition party or movement, that theParty got 99.99% of the votes at elections) simply demonstrates that Stalin is effectively the best and (almost) always right. In Hegelese, this appearance qua appearance was essential. This dialectical tension between the vulnerability and invulnerability of the System also enables us to denounce the ultimate racist and/or sexist trick, that of "two birds in the bush instead of a bird in hand": when women demand' simple equality, quasi"feminists" often pretend to offer them "much more" (the role of the warm and wise "conscience of society," elevated above the vulgar everyday competition and struggle for domination ...)-the only proper answer to this offer, of course, is "No, thanks! Better is the enemy of the Good! We do not want more, just equality!" Here, at least, the last lines in Now Voyager ("Why reach for the moon, when we can have the stars?") are wrong. It is homologous with the native American who wants to become integrated into the predominant "white" society, and a politically correct progressive liberal endeavors to convince him that, he is thereby renouncing his very unique prerogative, the authentic native culture and tradition-no thanks, simple equality is enough, I also wouldn't mind my part of consumerist alienation! ...
2AC K Blocks 92/165
modest demand of theexcluded group for the full participation at the society's universal rights is much more threatening forthe system than the apparently much more "radical" rejection of the predominant "social values" andthe assertion of the superiority of one's own culture. For a true feminist, Otto Weininger's assertion that, although women are
"ontologically false," lacking the proper ethical stature, they should be acknowledged the same rights as men in public life, is infinitely more acceptable than the false elevationof women that makes them "too good" for the banality of men's rights.
3. Reject their methodology; it is flawed and non-falsifiable Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham, 2005 (The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Theory & Event,
Volume 8, Issue 1, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project Muse) The theoretical underpinnings of political Lacanianism typically rely on a "postmodern" disdain for essentialism, grounds and teleology, and articulate wider belief in contingency (for instance, by emphasizing contemporaneity). Doesn't a belief in contingency necessitate some conception of "constitutive lack"? The point to emphasize here is that "constitutive
lack" is not an endorsement of contingency: it is a new conception of an essence, which is used as a positive foundation for claims. It may be posited as negativity, but it operates within the syntax of theoretical discourse as if it were a noun referring to a specific object. More precisely, I would maintain that "constitutive lack" is an instance of a Barthesian myth. It is, after all, the function of myth to do exactly what this concept does: to assert the empty facticity of a particular ideological schema while rejecting any need to argue for its assumptions. 'Myth does not deny things; on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it is a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact'37. This is precisely the status of "constitutive lack": a supposed fact which is supposed to operate above and beyond explanation, on an ontological level instantly accessible to those with the courage to accept it. Myths operate to construct euphoric enjoyment for those who use them, but their operation is in conflict with the social context with which they interact. This is because their operation is connotative: they are "received" rather than "read"38, and open only to a "readerly" and not a "writerly" interpretation. A myth is a second-order signification attached to an already-constructed denotative sign, and the ideological message projected into this sign is constructed outside the context of the signified. A myth is therefore, in Alfred Korzybski's sense, intensional: its meaning derives from a prior linguistic schema, not from interaction with the world in its complexity39. Furthermore, myths have a repressive social function, carrying in Barthes's words an 'order not to think'40. They are necessarily projected onto or imposed on actual people and events, under the cover of this order. The "triumph of literature" in the Dominici trial41 consists precisely in this projection of an externally-constructed mythical schema as a way of avoiding engagement with something one does not understand. Lacanian theory, like Barthesian myths, involves a prior idea of a structural matrix which is not open to change in the light of the instances to which it is applied. Zizek's writes of a 'preontological dimension which precedes and eludes the construction of reality'42, while Laclau suggests there is a formal structure of any chain of equivalences which necessitates the logic of hegemony43. Specific analyses are referred back to this underlying structure as its necessary expressions, without apparently being able to alter it; for instance, 'those who triggered the process of
democratization in eastern Europe... are not those who today enjoy its fruits, not because of a simple usurpation... but because of a deeper structural logic'44. In most instances, the
mythical operation of the idea of "constitutive lack" is implicit, revealed only by a rhetoric of denunciation. For instance, Mouffe accuses liberalism of an 'incapacity... to grasp... the irreducible character of antagonism'45, while Zizek claims that a
'dimension' is 'lost' in Butler's work because of her failure to conceive of "trouble" as constitutive of "gender"46. This language of "denial" which is invoked to silence critics is a clear example of Barthes's "order not to think": one
is not to think about the idea of "constitutive lack", one is simply to "accept" it, under pain of invalidation. If someone else disagrees, s/he can simply be told that there is something crucial missing from her/his theory. Indeed, critics are as likely to be accused of being "dangerous" as to be accused of being wrong. One of the functions of myth is to cut out what Trevor Pateman terms the "middle level" of analytical concepts, establishing a short-circuit between high-level generalizations and ultra-specific (pseudo)concrete instances. In Barthes's classic case of an image of a black soldier saluting the French flag, this individual action is implicitly connected to highly
abstract concepts such as nationalism, without the mediation of the particularities of his situation. (These particularities, if revealed, could undermine the myth. Perhaps he enlisted for financial reasons, or due to threats of violence). Thus, while
myths provide an analysis of sorts, their basic operation is anti-analytical: the analytical schema is fixed in advance, and the relationship between this schema and the instances it organizes is hierarchically ordered to the exclusive advantage of the former. This is precisely what happens in Lacanian analyses of specific political and cultural phenomena. Zizek specifically advocates 'sweeping generalisations' and short-cuts between specific instances and high-level abstractions, evading the "middle level". 'The correct dialectical procedure... can be best described as a direct jump from the singular to the universal, bypassing the mid-level of particularity'. He wants a 'direct jump from the singular to the universal', without reference to particular contexts47. He also has a concept of a 'notion' which has a reality above and beyond any referent, so that, if reality does not fit it, 'so much the worse for reality'48. The failure to see what is really going on means that one
2AC K Blocks 93/165
sees more, not less, because libidinal perception is not impeded by annoying facts49. Zizek insists on the necessity of the
gesture of externally projecting a conception of an essence onto phenomena50, even affirming its necessity in the same case (anti-Semitism) in which Reich denounces its absurdity51. This amounts to an endorsement of myths in the Barthesian sense, as well as demonstrating the "dialectical" genius of the likes of Kelvin McKenzie. Lacanian
analysis consists mainly of an exercise in projection. As a result, Lacanian "explanations" often look more propagandistic or pedagogical than explanatory. A particular case is dealt with only in order to, and to the extent that it can, confirm the already-formulated structural theory. Judith Butler criticizes Zizek's method on the grounds that 'theory is applied to its examples', as if 'already true, prior to its exemplification'. 'The theory is articulated on its self-sufficiency, and then shifts register only for the pedagogical purpose of illustrating an already accomplished truth'. It is therefore 'a theoretical fetish that disavows the conditions of its own emergence'52. She alleges that Lacanian psychoanalysis 'becomes a theological project' and also 'a way to avoid the rather messy psychic and social entanglement' involved in studying specific cases53. Similarly, Dominick LaCapra
objects to the idea of constitutive lack because specific 'losses cannot be adequately addressed when they are enveloped in an overly generalised discourse of absence... Conversely, absence at a "foundational" level cannot simply be derived from particular historical losses'54. Attacking 'the long story of conflating absence with loss that becomes constitutive instead of historical'55, he accuses several theorists of eliding the difference between absence and loss, with 'confusing and dubious results', including a 'tendency to avoid addressing historical problems, including losses, in sufficiently specific terms', and a tendency to 'enshroud, perhaps even to etherealise, them in a generalised discourse of absence'56. Daniel Bensaid draws out the political consequences of the projection of absolutes into politics. 'The fetishism of the absolute event involves... a suppression of historical intelligibility, necessary to its depoliticization'. The space from which politics is evacuated 'becomes... a suitable place for abstractions, delusions and hypostases'. Instead of actual social forces, there are 'shadows and spectres'57. The operation of the logic of projection is predictable. According to Lacanians, there is a basic structure (sometimes called a 'ground' or 'matrix') from which all social phenomena arise, and this structure, which remains unchanged in all eventualities, is the reference-point from which particular cases are viewed. The "fit" between theory and evidence is constructed monologically by the reduction of the latter to the former, or by selectivity in inclusion and reading of examples. At its simplest, the Lacanian myth functions by a short-circuit between a particular instance and statements containing words such as "all", "always", "never", "necessity" and so on. A contingent example or a generic reference to "experience" is used, misleadingly, to found a claim with supposed universal validity. For instance, Stavrakakis uses the fact that existing belief-systems are based on exclusions as a basis to claim that all belief-systems are necessarily based on exclusions58, and claims that particular traumas express an 'ultimate impossibility'59. Similarly, Laclau and Mouffe use the fact that a particular antagonism can disrupt a particular fixed identity to claim that the social as such is penetrated and constituted by antagonism as such60. Phenomena are often analysed as outgrowths of something exterior to the situation in question. For instance, Zizek's concept of the "social symptom" depends on a reduction of the acts of one particular series of people (the "socially excluded", "fundamentalists", Serbian paramilitaries, etc.) to a psychological function in the psyche of a different group (westerners). The "real" is a supposedly self-identical principle which is used to reduce any and all qualitative differences between situations to a relation of formal equivalence. This shows how mythical characteristics can be projected from the outside, although it also raises different problems: the under-conceptualization of the relationship between individual psyches and collective phenomena in Lacanian theory, and a related tendency for psychological concepts to acquire an ersatz agency similar to that of a Marxian fetish. "The Real" or "antagonism" occurs in phrases which have it doing or causing something. As Barthes shows, myth
offers the psychological benefits of empiricism without the epistemological costs. Tautology, for instance, is 'a minor ethical salvation, the satisfaction of having militated in favour of a truth... without having to assume the risks which any somewhat positive search for truth inevitably involves'61. It dispenses with the need to have ideas, while treating this release as a stern morality. Tautology is a rationality which simultaneously denies itself, in which 'the accidental failure of language is magically identified with what one decides is a natural resistance of the object'62. This passage could almost have been written with the "Lacanian Real" in mind. The characteristic of the Real is precisely that one can invoke it without defining it (since it is "beyond symbolization"), and that the accidental failure of language, or indeed a contingent failure in social praxis, is identified with an ontological resistance to symbolization projected into Being itself .
For instance, Zizek's classification of the Nation as a Thing rests on the claim that 'the only way we can determine it is by... empty tautology', and that it is a 'semantic void'63. Similarly, he claims that 'the tautological gesture of the Master-Signifier', an empty performative which retroactively turns presuppositions into conclusions, is necessary, and also that tautology is the only way historical change can occur64. He even declares constitutive lack (in this case, termed the "death drive") to be a tautology65. Lacanian
references to "the Real" or "antagonism" as the cause of a contingent failure are reminiscent of Robert Teflon's definition of God: 'an explanation which means "I have no explanation"'66. An "ethics of the Real" is a minor ethical salvation which says very little in positive terms, but which can pose in macho terms as a "hard" acceptance of terrifying realities. It authorizes truth-claims - in Laclau's language, a 'reality' which is 'before our eyes67', or in Newman's, a 'harsh reality' hidden beneath a protective veil68 - without the attendant risks. Some Lacanian theorists also
show indications of a commitment based on the particular kind of "euphoric" enjoyment Barthes associates with myths. Laclau in particular emphasizes his belief in the 'exhilarating' significance of the present69, hinting that he is committed to euphoric investments generated through the repetition of the same.
4. Our methodology is better; people who ended slavery, worked the underground railroad, and caused civil rights movement all had a specific political goal in mind. 5. Their argument is arbitrary and unproductive Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham, 2005 (The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Theory & Event,
Volume 8, Issue 1, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project Muse) There is more than an accidental relationship between the mythical operation of the concept of "constitutive lack" and Lacanians' conservative and pragmatist politics. to extra-historical abstractions. On
Myth is a way of reducing thought to the present: the isolated signs which are included in the mythical gesture are thereby attached an analytical level, Lacanian theory can be very "radical", unscrupulously exposing
2AC K Blocks 94/165
the underlying relations and assumptions concealed beneath officially-sanctioned discourse. This radicalism, however, never translates into political conclusions: as shown above, a radical rejection of anti-"crime" rhetoric turns into an endorsement of punishment, and a radical critique of neo-liberalism turns into a pragmatist endorsement of structural adjustment. It is as if there is a magical barrier between theory and politics which insulates the latter from the former. One should recall a remark once made by Wilhelm Reich: 'You plead for happiness in life, but security means more to you'133. Lacanians have a "radical" theory oriented towards happiness, but politically, their primary concern is security. As long as they are engaged in politically ineffectual critique, Lacanians will denounce and criticize the social system, but once it comes to practical problems, the "order not to think" becomes operative. This "magic" barrier is the alibi function of myth. The short-circuit between specific instances and high-level abstractions is politically consequential. A present evil can be denounced and overthrown if located in an analysis with a "middle level", but Lacanian theory tends in practice to add an "always" which prevents change. At the very most, such change cannot affect the basic matrix posited by Lacanian theory, because this is assumed to operate above history. In this way, Lacanian theory operates as an alibi: it offers a little bit of theoretical radicalism to inoculate the system against the threat posed by a lot of politicized radicalism134. In
Laclau and Mouffe's version, this takes the classic Barthesian form: "yes, liberal democracy involves violent exclusions, but what is this compared to the desert of the real outside it?" The Zizekian version is more complex: "yes, there can be a revolution, but after the revolution, one must return to the pragmatic tasks of the present". A good example is provided in one of Zizek's texts. The author presents an excellent analysis of a Kafkaesque incident in the former Yugoslavia where the state gives a soldier a direct, compulsory order to take a voluntary oath - in other words, attempts to compel consent. He then ruins the impact of this example by insisting that there is always such a moment of "forced choice", and that one should not attempt to escape it lest one end up in psychosis or totalitarianism135.
The political function of Lacanian theory is to preclude critique by encoding the present as myth. There is a danger of a stultifying conservatism arising from within Lacanian political theory, echoing the 'terrifying conservatism'
Deleuze suggests is active in any reduction of history to negativity136. The addition of an "always" to contemporary evils amounts to a "pessimism of the will", or a "repressive reduction of thought to the present". Stavrakakis, for instance, claims that attempts to find causes and thereby to solve problems are always fantasmatic137, while Zizek states that an object which is perceived as blocking something does nothing but materialize the already-operative constitutive lack138. While this does not strictly entail the necessity of a conservative attitude to the possibility of any specific reform, it creates a danger of discursive slippage and hostility to "utopianism" which could have conservative consequences. Even if Lacanians believe in surplus/contingent as well as constitutive lack, there are no standards for distinguishing the two. If one cannot tell which social blockages result from constitutive lack and which are contingent, how can one know they are not all of the latter type? And even
if constitutive lack exists, Lacanian theory runs a risk of "misdiagnoses" which have a neophobe or even reactionary effect. To take an imagined example, a Lacanian living in France in 1788 would probably conclude that democracy is a utopian fantasmatic ideal and would settle for a pragmatic reinterpretation of the ancien regime. Laclau and Mouffe's hostility to workers' councils and Zizek's insistence on the need for a state and a Party139 exemplify this neophobe tendency. The pervasive negativity and cynicism of Lacanian theory offers little basis for constructive activity. Instead of radical transformation, one is left with a pragmatics of "containment" which involves a conservative de-problematization of the worst aspects of the status quo. The inactivity it counsels would make its claims a self-fulfilling prophecy by acting as a barrier to transformative activity. To conclude, the political theory of "constitutive lack" does not hold together as an analytical project and falls short of its radical claims as a theoretical and political one. It relies on central concepts which are constructed through the operation of a mythical discourse in the Barthesian sense, with the result that it is unable to offer sufficient openness to engage with complex issues. If political theory is to make use of poststructuralist conceptions of contingency, it would do better to look to the examples provided by Deleuze and Guattari, whose conception of contingency is active and affirmative. In contrast, the idea of "constitutive lack" turns Lacanian theory into something its most vocal proponent, Zizek, claims to attack: a "plague of fantasies".
6. Alt. doesnt solve; Lacan never says our shock into seeing the real will be a good thing; it could just as likely lead to total disaster as some type of revelation. 7. The alternative is violent; it has no limits on what can be done Robinson (PhD Political Theory, University of Nottingham) 05 (Theory and Event, Andrew, 8:1, The Political Theory of
Constitutive Lack: A Critique). On a political level, this kind of stance leads to an acceptance of social exclusion which negates compassion for its victims. The resultant inhumanity
finds its most extreme expression in iek's work, where 'today's "mad dance", the dynamic proliferation of multiple shifting identities... awaits its resolution in a new form of Terror'. It is also present, however, in the toned-down exclusionism of
authors such as Mouffe. Hence, democracy depends on 'the possibility of drawing a frontier between "us" and "them"', and 'always entails relations of inclusionexclusion'28. 'No state or political order... can exist without some form of exclusion' experienced by its victims as coercion and violence29, and, since Mouffe assumes a state to be necessary, this means that one must endorse exclusion and violence. (The supposed necessity of the state is derived from the supposed need for a master-signifier or nodal point to stabilize identity and avoid psychosis, either for individuals or for societies). What is at stake in the division between these two trends in Lacanian political theory is akin to the distinction Vaneigem draws between "active" and "passive" nihilism30. The Laclauian trend involves an implied ironic distance from any specific project, which maintains awareness of its contingency; overall, however, it reinforces conformity by insisting on an institutional mediation which overcodes all the "articulations". The iekian version is
committed to a more violent and passionate
2AC K Blocks 95/165
affirmation of negativity, but one which ultimately changes very little. The function of the iekian "Act" is to dissolve the self, producing a historical event. "After the revolution", however, everything stays much the same. For all its radical pretensions, iek's politics can be summed up in his attitude to neo-liberalism: 'If it works, why not try a dose of it?'31. The phenomena which are denounced in Lacanian theory are invariably readmitted in its "small print", and this leads to a theory which renounces both effectiveness and political radicalism. It is in this pragmatism that the ambiguity of Lacanian political theory resides, for, while on a theoretical level it is based on an almost sectarian "radicalism", denouncing everything that exists for its complicity in illusions and guilt for the present, its "alternative" is little different from what it condemns (the assumption apparently being that the "symbolic" change in the psychological coordinates of attachments in reality is directly effective, a claim assumed wrongly to follow from the claim that social reality is constructed discursively). Just like in the process of psychoanalytic cure, nothing actually changes on the level of specific characteristics. The only change is in how one relates to the characteristics, a process iek terms 'dotting the "i's"' in reality, recognizing and thereby installing necessity32. All that
changes, in other words, is the interpretation: as long as they are reconceived as expressions of constitutive lack, the old politics are acceptable. Thus, iek claims that de Gaulle's "Act" succeeded by allowing him 'effectively to realize the necessary pragmatic measures' which others pursued unsuccessfully33. More recent examples of iek's pragmatism include that his alternative to the U.S. war in Afghanistan is only that 'the punishment of those responsible' should be done in a spirit of 'sad duty', not 'exhilarating retaliation'34, and his "solution" to the Palestine-Israel crisis, which is NATO control of the occupied territories35. If this is the case for iek, the ultra-"radical" "Marxist-Leninist" Lacanian, it is so much the more so for his more moderate adversaries. Jason Glynos, for instance, offers an uncompromizing critique of the construction of guilt and innocence in anti-"crime" rhetoric, demanding that demonization of deviants be abandoned, only to insist
Lacanian theory tends, therefore, to produce an "anything goes" attitude to state action: because everything else is contingent, nothing is to limit the practical consideration of tactics by dominant elites.
as an afterthought that, 'of course, this... does not mean that their offences should go unpunished'36.
8. The alternative links to the critique: the Lacanian notion of a constitutive element that is at the root of all political fantasy is just as essentialist as they claim the affirmative to be. Robinson 05 (PhD Political Theory, University of Nottingham) (Theory and Event, Andrew, 8:1, The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique). Lacanians assume that the idea of a founding negativity is not essentialist, whereas any idea of an autonomous positive or affirmative force, even if constructed as active, undefinable, changing and/or incomplete, is essentialist.
The reason Lacanians can claim to be "anti-essentialist" is that there is a radical rupture between the form and content of Lacanian theory. The "acceptance of contingency" constructed around the idea of "constitutive lack" is a closing, not an opening, gesture, and is itself "essentialist" and non-contingent.
Many
Lacanian claims are not at all contingent, but are posited as ahistorical absolutes.
exclusions. One could hardly find a clearer example anywhere of a claim about a fixed basic structure of Being.
To take an instance from Mouffe's work, 'power and antagonism' are supposed to have an 'ineradicable character' so that 'any social objectivity is constituted through acts of power' and will show traces of
One could also note again the
frequency of words such as "all" and "always" in the Lacanian vocabulary.

words'77.
Ludwig Wittgenstein argues that 'if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions - namely the disjunction of all their common properties" - I should reply: Now you are only playing with
Lacanian theory seems, indeed, to be treating disjunction as a basis for similarity, thus simply "playing with words"."contingency" embraced in Lacanian theory is not an openness which exceeds specifiable positivities, but a positivity posing as negativity. The relationship between contingency and "constitutive lack" is like the relationship between Germans and
"Germanness", or tables and "tableness", in the work of Barthes. One could speak, therefore, of a "lack-ness" or a "contingency-ness" or an "antagonism-ness" in Lacanian political theory, and of this theory as a claim to fullness with this reified "lack-ness" as one of the positive elements within the fullness. One sometimes finds direct instances of such mythical vocabulary, as for instance when Stavrakakis demands acknowledgement of 'event-ness and negativity'78. Indeed, it
is an especially closed variety of fullness, with core ideas posited as unquestionable dogmas and the entire structure virtually immune to falsification.
2AC K Blocks 96/165
*A2: Mann K
2AC K Blocks 97/165
*A2: Mobility K
2AC K Blocks 98/165
*A2: Nietzsche K
2AC K Blocks 99/165
A2: Positive Peace K

1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR- problem driven approaches are best Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton, Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)
frenzy for words like epistemology and ontology often signals this philosophical turn, although he goes on to comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or not, it is clear
that debates concerning ontology and epistemology play a central role in the contemporary IR theory wars. In one respect, this is unsurprising since it is a characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of disciplinary disorientation involve recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of different theoretical approaches, and there is no doubt that such reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the commitments that characterise (and help individuate) diverse theoretical positions. Yet,
such a philosophical turn is not without its dangers and I will briefly mention three before turning to consider a
confusion that has, I will suggest, helped to promote the IR theory wars by motivating this philosophical turn. The first danger with the philosophical turn is that it
has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of ontology and epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two were merely a simple function of the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective action are foregrounded. It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for
this class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if
this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theory-construction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problem-driven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises.
4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusively parts of the alternative. 5. Preventing nuclear war is the absolute prerequisite to positive peace.
Folk, 78 Professor of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, 78 [Jerry, Peace Educations Peace Studies : Towards an Integrated Approach, Peace &
Change, volume V, number 1, Spring, p. 58]
2AC K Blocks 100/165
Those proponents of the positive peace approach who reject out of hand the work of researchers and educators coming to the field from the perspective of negative peace too easily forget that the prevention of a nuclear confrontation of global dimensions is the prerequisite for all other peace research, education, and action. Unless such a confrontation can be avoided there will be no world left in which to build positive peace. Moreover, the blanket condemnation of all such negative peace oriented research, education or action as a reactionary attempt to support and reinforce the status quo is doctrinaire. Conflict theory and resolution, disarmament studies, studies of the international system and of international organizations,
and integration studies are in themselves neutral. They do not intrinsically support either the status quo or revolutionary efforts to change or overthrow it. Rather they offer a body of knowledge which can be used for either purpose or for some purpose in between .
It is much more logical for those who understand peace as positive peace to integrate this knowledge into their own framework and to utilize it in achieving their own purposes. A balanced peace studies program should therefore offer the student exposure to the questions and concerns which occupy those who view the field essentially from the point of view of negative peace. 6. Reps not 1st a. Reality shapes discourse the way the international arena changes shapes the way we perceive and talk about it; what we say in this round will in no way affect anything in reality. b. Discursive justification of saying we need to do the plan for good reasons and to save lives outweigh any negative affects from using negative rhetoric. c. Double bind - if discourse comes first, they attempt to maintain the system as much as the aff, their contradictory rhetoric undermines the ability of their alt to solve. Or it proves that the perm can overcome the link. 7. Nothing can outweigh extinction even if the risk is miniscule Matheny 7 (Jason, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Reducing the Risk of Human
Extinction, Risk Analysis, Vol 27, No 5)
We may be poorly equipped to recognize or plan for extinction risks (Yudkowsky, 2007). We may not be good at grasping the significance of very large numbers (catastrophic outcomes) or very small numbers (probabilities) over large timeframes. We struggle with estimating the probabilities of rare or unprecedented events (Kunreuther et al., 2001). Policymakers may not plan far beyond current political administrations and rarely do risk assessments value the existence of future generations.18 We may unjustifiably discount the value of future lives. Finally, extinction risks are market failures where an individual enjoys no perceptible benefit from his or her investment in risk reduction. Human survival may thus be a good requiring deliberate policies to protect. It might be feared that consideration of extinction risks would lead to a reductio ad absurdum: we ought to invest all our resources in asteroid defense or nuclear disarmament, instead of AIDS, pollution, world hunger, or other problems we face today. On the contrary, programs that create a healthy and content global population are likely to reduce the probability of global war or catastrophic terrorism. They should thus be seen as an essential part of a portfolio of risk-reducing projects. Discussing the risks of nuclear winter, Carl Sagan (1983) wrote: Some have argued that the difference between the deaths of several hundred million people in a nuclear war (as has been thought until recently to be a reasonable upper limit) and the death of every person on Earth (as now seems possible) is only a matter of one order of magnitude. For me, the difference is considerably greater. Restricting our attention only to those who die as a consequence of the war conceals its full impact. If we are required to calibrate extinction in numerical terms, I would be sure to include the number of people in future generations who would not be born. A nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the population remains static, with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of a successful species (roughly ten million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes are one million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill only hundreds of millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential lossincluding culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise. In a similar vein, the philosopher Derek Parfit (1984) wrote: I believe
that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare three outcomes: 1. Peace 2. A nuclear war that kills 99% of the worlds existing population 3. A nuclear war that kills 100% 2 would be worse than 1, and 3 would be worse than 2. Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between 1 and 2. I believe that the difference between 2 and 3 is very much greater . . . . The
Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilization began only a few thousand years ago. Ifwe do not destroy mankind, these thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history. The difference between 2 and 3 may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. Human extinction in the next few centuries could reduce the number of future generations by thousands or more. We take extraordinary measures to protect some endangered species from extinction. It might be reasonable to take extraordinary measures to protect humanity from the same.19 To decide whether this is so requires more discussion of the methodological problems mentioned here, as well as research on the
extinction risks we face and the costs of mitigating them.20
8. Poverty not a statically significant cause of war Smoke and Harman 87 (Richard Smoke BA Harvard magna cum laude, PhD MIT, Prof. @ Brown, Winner Bancroft Prize in History, AND Willis
Harman M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University , Paths To Peace 1987 p. 34-35) 0
The connection between poverty and war is less direct and less immediately obvious in the other direction. It is difficult to find wars that were directly caused by poverty. National leaders have not yetdeclared that more national wealth is their war aim. Statistically there is no relationship between the degree of national poverty or wealth and the frequency of warfare. Poor nations fight even though they can't afford it, as Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest countries, has been demonstrating for many years. Rich nations fight even though they have no pressing economic needs to satisfy, as Britain demonstrated in the
Falklands/Malvinas War.
*A2: Predictions K
A2: Race K
1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. And, even if they make race visible, since its a debate and we have to give a 2AC, we are literally incapable of agreeing with them. Teams write blocks and cut strats to beat them, not to cooperate in changing the community. They actively trade-off with productive public non-competitive discourse outside of roundsprefer our evidence because its specific to debate practice, not just academia Atchison and Panetta 9 [Jarrod Atchison, Director of Debate @ Trinity University, and Edward Panetta, Director of Debate @ the University of Georgia,
Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future, p. 317-34 //liam]
The larger problem with locating the debate as activism perspective within the competitive framework is that it overlooks the communal nature of the community problem. If each individual debate is a decision about how the debate community should approach a problem, then the losing debaters become collateral damage in the activist strategy dedicated toward creating
community change. One frustrating example of this type of argument might include a judge voting for an activist team in an effort to help them reach elimination rounds to generate a community discussion about the problem. Under this scenario, the
losing team serves as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of community change. Downplaying the important role of competition and treating opponents as scapegoats for the failures of the community may increase the profile of the winning team and the community problem, but it does little to generate the critical coalitions necessary to address the community problem, because the competitive focus encourages teams to concentrate on how to beat the strategy with little regard for addressing the community problem. There is no
role for competition when a judge decides that it is important to accentuate the publicity of a community problem. An extreme example might include a team arguing that their opponents academic institution had a legacy of civil rights abuses and that the judge should not vote for them because that would be a community endorsement of a problematic institution. This scenario is a bit more outlandish but not unreasonable if one assumes that each debate should be about what is best for promoting solutions to diversity problems in the debate community. If
the debate community is serious about generating community change, then it is more likely to occur outside a traditional competitive debate. When a team loses a debate because the judge decides that it is better for the community for the other team to win, then they have sacrificed two potential advocates for change within the community. Creating change through wins generates backlash through losses. Some proponents are comfortable with generating backlash and argue that the reaction is evidence that the issue is being discussed. From our perspective, the discussion that results from these hostile situations is not a productive one where participants seek to work together for a common goal. Instead of giving up on hope for change and agitating for wins regardless of who is left behind, it seems more reasonable that the debate community should try the method of public argument that we teach in an effort to generate a discussion of necessary community changes. Simply put, debate competitions do not represent the best
environment for community change because it is a competition for a win and only one team can win any given debate, whereas addressing systemic century-long community problems requires a tremendous effort by a great number of people.
2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR- problem driven approaches are best Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton, Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)
frenzy for words like epistemology and ontology often
signals this philosophical turn, although he goes on to comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or not, it is clear
has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of ontology and epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two were merely a simple function of the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of

problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective action are foregrounded.
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for
4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt. 5. Turn Focusing on forgiving ourselves for past racism perpetuates race-neutral policies that sustain and bury modern day racism from the conscious Cho 98 (Sumi Cho, American Asian Studies Professor, BOSTON COLLEGE LAW REVIEW, December 1998, pp. 75-6)
Part III forwards a "racial redemption" theory to frame this history. I define "racial redemption" as a psychosocial and ideological process through which whiteness maintains its fullest reputational value. In the post-Jim Crow era, the reputational value of whiteness -- diminished to the extent it remains implicated in the previous era's blatant racism -- is restored by rejecting traditional white racism premised upon biological determinism . I suggest that racial redemption consists of three operations: 1) repudiating white supremacy's "old" regime; 2) burying historical memories of racial subordination and 3) transforming white supremacy into a viable contemporary regime. Part III views Warren's historical
legacy and the role of the postwar judiciary through the lens of racial redemption theory, rejecting the uncomplicated heroization of Warren and adopting a more critical understanding of possible motivations and meanings of his civil rights activism. Let me emphasize: I am not arguing that "but for" Warren's individual need for redemption from the shame of internment there would have been no Warren Court as we know it. Rather, I contend that the
theory of racial redemption provides a potent multi-level narrative which converges Warren's individual need for redemption, the judiciary's more structurally functional move to redeem itself from overt forms of white supremacist adjudication and society's redemption of whiteness in the post-Jim Crow era of race relations. Part IV concludes by placing redemption theory precisely within this broader picture of postwar racial formation, as part of a pivotal "racial project." Warren's individual quest, the judiciary's institutional move to purge its racially complicit past and society's assertion of an innocent postwar colorblindness, are parts of a politic of representation that underwrites new structures of contemporary (colorblind) racial domination. As such, the processes of racial redemption are important animators of now dominant prejudice-based, intentionality-driven approaches to antidiscrimination law and attendant colorblind, individualistic ideologies. In short, many regressive legal racial projects of the recent past are unimaginable absent the racial project to redeem whiteness.
6. No root cause - the idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history doesnt make
any sense; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict.
7. Turn - They cede the politics of whiteness to white supremacists, destroying anti-racist movements Sullivan 8 [Shannon Sullivan, Head of Philosophy and Professor of Philosophy, Women's Studies, and African and African American Studies at Pennsylvania
State University, Spring 2008, Whiteness as Wise Provincialism: Royce and the Rehabilitation of a Racial Category, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, Vol. 44, No. 2] In a similar fashion, when
white people who care about racial justice have virtually no conscious or deliberate affiliation with their whiteness, the meaning and effect of whiteness is left to happenstance or, more likely, is determined by white supremacist groups. Royces primary concern is the dissolution of communities through neglect, and if well-intentioned white people do not care about, invest in, or acknowledge a significant history with their whiteness, then whiteness will be neglected. But unlike provincial communities, whiteness does not necessarily unravel or wither away because of simple neglect by anti-racist white people. Its neglect by anti-racists whites instead leaves it wide open for racist white groups to develop. Like a garden, whiteness can easily grow tough weeds of white supremacy if it is not wisely cultivated. The evil of abandoning whiteness, allowing white supremacists to make of it whatever they will, can be mitigated by a wise form of whiteness. In practice, this means that white people who care about racial justice need to educate newcomers to whitenessnamely, white childrento be loyal to
and care about their race. While Royces comments about the problem of newcomers due to increased geographical mobility do not apply directly to whiteness,16 white children can be thought of as newcomers to the community of whiteness who do not (yet) have an intimate connection to their race or know how to cultivate and care for it. Here
again is an instance in which white supremacists have been allowed to corner the market on whiteness: almost all explicit reflection and writing on how to raise white children as white has been undertaken by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, World Church of the Creator, and Stormfront.17 The association is so tight that the mere suggestion of
educating white children in their whiteness is alarming to many people. But educating white children about their whiteness need and should not mean educating them to be white supremacists. A wise form of whiteness would help train the developing racial habits of white children in anti-racist ways.18
8. Perm do the plan and reject racism in all other instances 9. Turn - Politics of identity is necessarily founded in exclusion McLoughlin 09- PhD in philosophy from the University of New South Wales, lecturer at Adelaide Law School (Daniel, April, The Politics of Caesura:
Giorgio Agamben on Language and the Law, Law Critique (2009) 20:163176//MGD)
The traditional determination of political identity is one of inclusion and exclusion, that is, of belonging to a class or set by virtue of common features. This logic is common to a range of formulations of political community, from that of the nation state, with its division between citizens and aliens, to the politics of gender, sexuality, or race. In this paper, I will refer to this political logic as the politics of identity, because all of these approaches to politics ground community in an identity unified by a particular shared characteristic. While this logic is central to the tradition of political philosophy, Agamben is not, however, known for his engagement with it. The politics of identity appears in Homo Sacer only as something whose traditional logic has ceased functioning, having unravelled in modernity through the generalisation of the sovereign exception. Further, Agambens best known work on community, The Coming Community, is explicitly directed against the politics of identity. For Agamben the future of political thought rests not in an attempt to revive traditional concepts of community, but the attempt to overcome it through a politics of radical singularity, a whatever being that is neither being with this or that characteristic, nor being deprived of all characteristics, but rather being such that it always matters (Agamben 1993, p. 1). However, as we can observe from these two examples, the understanding of political community as determined by identity and belonging is an abiding, if submerged, concern of Agambens, for it is the political tradition over and against which his analysis emerges. The problem I
face in this section then is Agambens understanding of the politics of belonging, and its relationship to both law and language. This analysis will establish the frame within which Agambens account of the limits of language and politics should be understood in the remainder of this essay. It is Agambens recent text, The Time That
The first of nation that features in his discussion of the relationship between Israel and the Torah. The second is the concept of calling or vocation, which appears in Pauls discussion of the relationship between the messianic community and political status. The former appears to be an immediately juridical problem, while the latter reflects what we might call a professionthat is, a social economic category pertaining to someones public persona, and which does not appear to have any immediate juridical significance. Despite the seeming differences between these two articulations of the logic of belonging, Agamben posits an originary unity between them, and the argument for their unity casts light on the sense in which Agamben uses the term law, and will enable us to observe its relationship to the nature and structure of language. In the Jewish tradition the Torah is understood as a dividing wall or fence
Remains, that offers a key to understanding this problem, as it contains two important treatments of the issue of political identity and its relationship to law. is the idea
that separates Jews from non-Jews (Agamben 2005a, p. 47). As a consequence, Agamben argues the principle of the law is thus division. The fundamental partition of Jewish law is the one between Jews and non-Jews, or in Pauls words, between Iudaioi and ethne
(Agamben, 2005a, p. 47). Iudaioi are members of the nation of Israel, the elected people, and this status as being-Jewish is defined by the common characteristic of being a party to this pact, that is, being subject to Gods law. To
generalise this logic, to be part of the political community of the nation is to be subject to the same law, the juridical order marking common belonging to the set. While it is the Torah that defines the Jewish community, modernity thinks this belonging in the conjunction between state, law and people, and membership as a citizen in the between inclusion or membership in the political group nation, and exclusion from it. political community is defined through the rights and obligations of positive law. Further, as we observe in the distinction between iudaioi and ethne, the definition of political identity and community through inclusion in a law, necessarily articulates a simultaneous exclusion of those who are outside or indifferent to it.1 In Paul, this is the division between Jew and non-Jew, and in the modern nation-state the division between citizens and
aliens.2 To produce political community through law is thus to produce a shared identity through common belonging to a legal order, and this generates a division
--1AR Ext. #9
Calls for identity politics and community belonging retrench exclusion and turn case - The idea of a personal community builds an ideological fence around outsiders - The calling and vocation of the community morph into imperatives which reassert power structures and pigeon hole outsiders into fixed identities in opposition to the movement- thats McLoughlin. This turns their ethics and inclusion claims. Calls for belonging are appeals to a common identity which asserts a law-like regime of exclusionary politics McLoughlin 09- PhD in philosophy from the University of New South Wales, lecturer at Adelaide Law School (Daniel, April, The Politics of Caesura:
Giorgio Agamben on Language and the Law, Law Critique (2009) 20:163176//MGD)
Agambens discussion of the logic of political division in The Time That Remains appears to locate it as operating in two different spheresfirst, the juridical problem of nation; second, the politico-economic problem of calling. Apropos the latter, Agamben identifies a shift from a calling that pertains to ones total identity, to the narrower modern notion of vocation. However, all of these forms of political and economic determination are possible only on the basis of a more originary sense in which Agamben, drawing on Paul, deploys the term klesis. It is this notion of klesis that gives us the key to both the broad determination of the concept law at operation in Agambens work, and its relationship to language. Paul uses the term both to describe
being called as an apostle, and also to state that those called by the messiah should remain in their calling (Agamben 2005a, p. 19). Paul thus writes that circumcision is nothing, and the foreskin is nothing Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art though being called a slave? Care not for it (Paul, I Corinthians 7:1920). For Paul, undergoing
the former, messianic klesis, being called by the messiah, does not entail abandoning the latter, ones worldly calling. What is important about this passage for our discussion is that Paul uses klesis to describe both the fundamental division of the juridical order (circumcision/foreskin, Jew/goy), and the socio-political and economic division of class (slave/free man). Klesis here is simply a matter of being called, and while being called a slave, or being called a Jew, are social, political and economic problems, to be called is also a problem of language. Thus, while modernity limits the notion of calling to the economic sphere, there is a more fundamental politico-linguistic logic at operation here, that unites the seemingly disparate spheres of the political, juridical and economic. To be called, is to be subject to the law in the broadest senseas Agamben puts it elsewhere, it is to be in a worldly or juridical-factical condition. This is related to the signifying function of language because, for Agamben, law is, in a fundamental way, like language. To use signifying language is to determine categorically an entity as being-x, and this determination groups an entity together with others designated by a general name. Likewise, law produces determinate identities through the application of abstract normative categories to entities, or in the
language that Agamben uses in Homo Sacer, applying law to life. Thus being-Jewish is determined by the application of the juridical categories of the Jewish Law to
Law and language both operate by grouping entities through the name on the basis of a common identity, and they achieve this by bringing words into relation with things, designating particularities as belonging to certain sets on the basis of shared characteristics.
an individual, while being-a-slave is determined by the application of the laws of property to people. The most fundamental of these borders is that designated by the law of the political communityin Paul, this is the division between the iudaioi and the ethne, but in the language of the modern nation-state, it is the split between citizens and aliens, the parties to the social contract and those who fall outside it. Within the wall demarcated by the national law there are further divisions, such as those of class, gender, family, and race, all of which are legal phenomenon, understood in its broadest
Law and language are machines for producing determinate identities. To be politically determined as the member of a group is to be subject to a law of naming, that is, to be called and hence divided through the performative power of language. Law and politics are thus to be thought for Agamben in relation to language, and
sense as a mechanism that regulates and produces sociopolitical identities. the ability of law to generate political identity is grounded in the linguistic logic of the name.
*A2: Schmitt K
A2: Schlag/Normativity Bad K

4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt. 5. Schlag is wrong seven reasons. Carlson, 99 (Columbia Law Review, David Gray, 99 Colum. L. Rev. 1908, (Professor, Cardozo School of Law)).
If this psychoanalytic suggestion explains the angry tone of Schlag's work, it also explains the basic errors into which he falls. When one considers this work as a whole, most of these errors are obvious and patent. Indeed, most of these errors have been laid by Schlag himself at the doorstep of others. But, in surrendering to feeling or, as perhaps
Schlag would put it, to context (i.e., the pre-theoretical state), Schlag cannot help but make these very same errors. Some examples:
(1) Schlag's program, induced from his critiques, is that we should rely on feeling to tell us what to do. Yet Schlag denounces in others any reliance on a pre-theoretical self.
(2)
Schlag warns that, by definition, theory abstracts from context. He warns that assuming the right answer will arise from context unmediated by theory is "feeble." Yet, he rigorously and repetitively denounces any departure from context, as if any such attempt is a castration - a wrenching of the subject from the natural realm. He usually implies that context alone can
provide the right answer - that moral geniuses like Sophocles or Earl Warren can find the answer by consulting context.
(3) Schlag complains that common law judges are "vacuous fellows" when they erase themselves so that law can speak. Yet, Schlag, a natural lawyer, likewise erases himself so that context can speak without distortion. (4) Schlag warns that merely reversing the valences of polarities only reinstates what was criticized. Yet he does the same in his own work. In attacking the sovereignty of the liberal self, he merely asserts the sovereignty of the romantic self. Neither, psychoanalytically, is a valid vision. One polarity is substituted for another. (5) Schlag scorns the postulation of ontological entities such as free will, but makes moral arguments to his readers that depend entirely on such postulation.
(6)
Schlag denounces normativity in others, but fails to see that he himself is normative when he advises his readers to stop being normative. The pretense is that Schlag is an invisible mediator between his reader and context. As such, Schlag, the anti-Kantian, is
more Kantian than Kant himself. Thus, context supposedly announces, "Stop doing normative work." Yet context says nothing of the sort. It is Schlag's own normative theory that calls for the work slowdown.
(7) Schlag urges an end to legal scholarship when he himself continues to do legal scholarship. He may wish to deny that
his work is scholarship, but his denial must be overruled. We have before us a legal scholar, like any other.
6. Normative legal thought is effective at creating order, salvation, and progress. Carlson 99 (David Gray, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Review Essay: Duellism In Modern American Jurisprudence, Columbia
Law Review, November 1999, 99 Colum. L. Rev. 1908, LexisNexis) Perhaps Pierre Schlag's most famous point is his imperative, "Don't be normative." The values of the legal academy are little better than advertising purveyors n192 - hypocrites who try "to achieve strategic advantages largely (if not entirely) unrelated to the observance or realization of those professed values." n193 Values are used as totems or tools to induce guilt or shame. n194 Stifling and narrow, n195 normativity
n196
is not even a thought - only an unthinking habit. Normativity argues that, if it does not hold sway, terrible social consequences would follow. n197 Normative thought is designed to shut down critical inquiry into the nothingness of law. n198 Not only are values deceitfully strategic, but they are ineffective. n199 They are too vague to be self-determining. n200 "Normative legal thought's only consumers are legal academics and perhaps a few law students - persons who are virtually never in a position to put any of its wonderful normative advice into effect." n201 Judges are not listening. n202 Even if judges had the time to read and study all of academia's
suggestions, they would be unlikely to implement any which would require radical changes in the status quo, since, Schlag notes, "only those kinds of norms that already conform to the audience's belief are likely to meet with any sort [*1937] of wide-scale approval." n203 Thus, Schlag
concedes, sometimes normativity is empirically effective after all - but not because of intrinsic authenticity. Normativity is effective because it tracks and incorporates "folk-ontologies," such as order, salvation, or progress. n204 Like Antony, norms tell the people only what they already know. Norms and values are lies, Schlag says, when proffered by legal academics, but it was otherwise with Sophocles n205 or the Warren court, n206 who were authentically in touch with real pain. By implication, values are authentic when immediately connected to feelings. n207 Values, properly used, are worthy of commendation. n208 But the mere invocation of values does not guarantee their authenticity. The proof of values is in context. n209 7. Schlags paranoia forces him to advocate a philosophy that is too radical destroys solvency.

Houston Law Review, 31 Hous. L. Rev. 873, 1994-1995, Hein Online)
Mootz 94 (Francis J., Associate Prof. of Law at Western New England College School of Law, The Paranoid Style in Contemporary Legal Scholarship,
As described by Schlag, the postmodern legal critic bears an uncanny resemblance to a paranoid individual. I have no doubts that Schlag, as a person dealing with everyday life, is entirely free from paranoid tendencies. Why, then, does his asserted intellectual persona assume such a counterproductive posture? Quite simply, the
imperative to radicalize the critique of foundationalism and formalism eventually carries theory, and the persona adopted by the theorist, beyond the realm of ordi-nary discourse. Schlag does not engage his readers in a shared quest for decency and happiness in an often brutal and trau-matic world, but instead challenges such a normative quest as being symptomatic of deeper-seated problems. Schlags radical-ism is extended to the point of cannibalizing its own presuppo-sitions. A collection of discourses that in their strategic maneu-vering have precluded the possibility of being discursive, have succeeded not just in being destructive, but in being self-de-structive.35 When the hermeneutics of suspicion is pushed to the point of paranoia, the critical effort dissolves into a self-described irrelevance. 8. Turn: Schalgs protest ultimately fuels the law. The ballot is an empty gesture of theoretical resistance that has no effect on the actual operation of the system. It simply makes you feel better about your place in it as a critical objector. Carlson, 99 (Columbia Law Review, David Gray, 99 Colum. L. Rev. 1908, (Professor, Cardozo School of Law)). Schlag presents a dark vision of what he calls "the bureaucracy," which crushes us and controls us. It operates on "a field of pain and death." n259 It deprives us of choice, speech, n260 and custom. As bureaucracy cannot abide great minds, legal education must
suppress greatness through mind numbing repetition. n262 In fact, legal thought is the bureaucracy and cannot be distinguished from it. n263 If legal thought tried to buck the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would instantly crush it. Schlag observes that judges have taken "oaths that require subordination of truth, understanding, and insight, to the preservation of certain bureaucratic governmental institutions and certain sacred texts." n265 Legal scholarship and lawyers generally n266 are the craven tools of bureaucracy, and those who practice law or scholarship simply serve to justify and strengthen the bureaucracy. "If there were no discipline of American law, the liberal state would have to invent it." n267 "Legal thinkers in effect serve as a kind of P.R. firm for the bureaucratic state." n268 Legal scholarship has sold
out to the bureaucracy: Insofar as the expressions of the state in the form of [statutes, etc.] can be expected to endure, so can the discipline that so helpfully
organizes, rationalizes, and represents these expressions as intelligent knowledge. As long as the discipline shows obeisance to the authoritative legal forms, it enjoys the backing of the state... Disciplinary knowledge of law can be true not because it is true, but because the state makes it true. Scholarship produces a false "conflation between what [academics] celebrate as 'law' and the ugly bureaucratic noise that grinds daily in the [*1946] [ ] courts...." n270 Scholarship "becomes the mode of discourse by which bureaucratic institutions and practices re-present themselves as subject to the rational ethical-moral control of autonomous individuals." n271 "The United States Supreme Court and its academic groupies in the law schools have succeeded in doing what many, only a few decades ago, would have thought impossible. They have succeeded in making Kafka look naive." Lacanian
theory allows us to interpret the meaning of this anti-Masonic vision precisely. Schlag's bureaucracy must be seen as a "paranoid construction according to which our universe is the work of art of unknown creators." In Schlag's view, the bureaucracy is in control of law and language and uses it exclusively for its own purposes. The bureaucracy is therefore the Other of the Other, "a hidden subject who pulls the strings of the great
Other (the symbolic order)." The bureaucracy, in short, is the superego (i.e., absolute knowledge of the ego), but rendered visible and projected outward. The superego, the ego's stern master, condemns the ego and condemns what it does. Schlag has transferred this function to the bureaucracy. As is customary, by
describing Schlag's vision as a paranoid construction, I do not mean to suggest that Professor Schlag is mentally ill or unable to
function. Paranoid construction is not in fact the illness. It is an attempt at healing what the illness is - the conflation of the domains of the symbolic, imaginary, and real. This conflation is what Lacan calls "psychosis." Whereas the "normal" subject is split between the three domains, the psychotic is not. He is unable to keep the domains separate. The symbolic domain of language begins to lose place to the real domain. The psychotic raves incoherently, and things begin to talk to him directly. The psychotic, "immersed in jouissance," n280 loses desire itself. Paranoia is a strategy the subject adopts to ward off breakdown. The
paranoid vision holds together the symbolic order itself and thereby prevents the subject from slipping into the psychotic state in which "the concrete 'I' loses its absolute power over the entire system of its determinations." This of course means - and here is the deep irony of paraonia - that bureaucracy is the very savior of romantic metaphysics. If the romantic program were ever fulfilled - if the bureaucracy were to fold up shop and let the natural side of the subject have its way - subjectivity would soon be enveloped, smothered, and killed in the night of psychosis. Paranoid ambivalence toward bureaucracy (or whatever other fantasy may be substituted for it) is very commonly observed. Most recently, conservatives "organized their enjoyment" by opposing communism. By confronting and resisting an all-encompassing, sinister power, the subject confirms his existence as that which sees and resists the power. As long as communism existed, conservatism could be perceived. When communism disappeared, conservatives felt "anxiety" - a lack of purpose. Although they publicly opposed communism, they secretly regretted its disappearance. Within a short time, a new enemy was found to organize conservative jouissance - the cultural left. (On the left, a similar story could be told about the organizing function of racism and sexism, which, of course, have not yet
disappeared.) These humble examples show that the romantic yearning for wholeness is always the opposite of what it appears to be. We paranoids need our enemies to

of law is artificial. It only exists because we insist it does. We all fear that the house of cards may come crashing down .
organize our enjoyment. Paranoid construction is, in the end, a philosophical interpretation, even in the clinical cases. n287 As Schlag has perceived, the symbolic order
Paradoxically, it is this very "anxiety" that shores up the symbolic. The normal person knows he must keep insisting that the symbolic order exists precisely because the person knows it is a fiction. The paranoid, however, assigns this role to the bureaucracy (and thereby absolves himself from the responsibility). Thus, paranoid delusion allows for the maintenance of a "cynical" distance between the paranoid subject and the realm of mad psychosis. In truth, cynicism toward bureaucracy shows nothing but the unconfronted depth to which the cynic is actually committed to what ought to be abolished. 9. There is no impact to the legal contradictions argument. Schlag is right that there are contradictions in the law but is wrong about what that means. Contradictions allow for the positive evolution of the law. Carlson, 99 (Columbia Law Review, David Gray, 99 Colum. L. Rev. 1908, (Professor, Cardozo School of Law)). Schlag offers this critique of the law's inability to withstand its internal contradiction: This stratagem for the denial of contradiction seems to be a hybrid of Zeno's paradox and marginal analysis. The idea behind sectorization [i.e., synthesis] is that if one produces distinctions [i.e., reconcilations] at a rate marginally faster than the production of contradiction, then the sum of these curves will always yield coherence, not contradiction. This is a great denial strategy, and it
would work just fine except for one thing: it is hardly self-evident that the production of distinction [i.e., synthesis] and the production of contradiction are independent functions. This criticism properly recognizes the internality of contradiction, but, in the end, it is not well taken. When
a judge reconciles conflicting accounts of what the law is, law enjoys a moment of coherence - one that will not last but one that nevertheless validly claims its moment, thanks to the free will of the honest judge. It follows, then, that the judge-as-tortoise stays ever ahead of the deconstructive Achilles. n181 But the precise solution reached by the judge is only a moment. This moment will be subjected to future interpretation and hence further change. n182 And the reason why the law must change is that it contains contradiction. This is so in two senses. It both restrains and suffers from contradiction. In Hegel's system, a "thing" is precisely that which contains contradiction over time. Contradiction is the very essence of things that come to be and cease to be - the enduring aspect to which all "things" refer. n183 Yet, because things are finite (and hence contradictory), they must become something other than
what they are. Finitude implies that what a thing ought to be is already implicit in the thing. Accordingly, if law is a thing, implicit in law is what it ought to become.
Contradiction is by no means an evil in Hegel's system. Being the ground of things, there is no possibility of abolishing it. Contradiction is what makes law a dynamic "thing." Law is therefore always in a state of becoming - of growth. When a judge follows the law, law is presented in a necessary moment of stasis and synthesis. Law is transformed at the moment it is
pronounced and performed. But law cannot remain in this static state. The next judge to confront the law must likewise transform it, producing a static moment that cannot entirely replicate the previous static moment. In this way law changes, but remains a "thing" nevertheless. This is law in its autopoietic mode. In
this account, and contrary to Schlag, synthesis and contradiction are dependent forms - logical correlatives. Synthetic activity is possible only because dialectical opposition precedes it. Contradiction causes synthesis, and so synthesis is ever marginally ahead of it - precisely the opposite of what Schlag contends.
A2: Security K
4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt. 5. Their attempt to police the boundaries of proper critique destroys the possibility of self-reflection. The absolute denial of validity to forms of political expression based on asserted starting points creates a fundamentalist ethic that violently cleanses those with dirty hands.

William Rasch, Germanic Studies Indiana, 5 (South Atlantic Quarterly 104:2, Spring)
But how are we to respond? For those who say there is no war and who yet find themselves witnessing daily bloodshed, Adornoian asceticism (refraining from participating in the nihilism of the political) or Benjaminian weak, quasi, or other messianism (waiting for the next incarnation of the historical subject [the multitudes?] or the next proletarian general strike [the event?]) would seem to be the answer. To this, however, those who say there is a war can respond only
Waiting for a completely new politics 10 and completely new political agents, waiting for the event and the right moment to name it, or waiting for universal ontological redemption feels much like waiting for the Second Coming, or,more accurately, for Godot. And have we not all grown weary of waiting? The war we call the political, whether nihilist or not, happily goes on while we watch Rome burn. As Schmitt wrote of the relationship of early
with bewilderment. Christianity to the Roman Empire, The belief that a restrainer holds back the end of the world provides the only bridge between the notion of an eschatological paralysis of all human events and a tremendous historical monolith like that of the Christian empire of the Germanic kings (60).One does not need to believe in
ascetic quietude leads so often, so quickly, and so effortlessly to the chiliastic violence that knows no bounds;11 and as we have lately observed anew, the millennial messianism of imperial rulers and nomadic partisans alike dominates the contemporary political
the virtues of that particular historical monolith to understand the dangers of eschatological paralysis. But as Max Weber observed firsthand, landscape. The true goal of those who say there is no war is to eliminate the war that actually exists by eliminating those Lyons and Tygers and other Savage Beasts who say there is a war. This war is the truly savage war. It is the war we witness today. No amount of democratization, pacification, or Americanization will mollify its effects, because democratization, pacification, and Americanization are among the weapons used by those who say there is no war to wage their war to end all war. What is to be done? If you are one who says there is a war, and if you say it not because you glory in it but because you fear it and hate it, then your goal is to limit it and its effects, not eliminate it, which merely intensifies it, but limit it by drawing clear lines within which it can be fought, and clear lines between those who fight it and those who dont, lines between friends, enemies, and neutrals, lines between combatants and noncombatants. There are, of
the question that we should ask is not how can we establish perpetual peace, but rather a more modest one: Can symmetrical relationships be guaranteed only by asymmetrical
course, legitimate doubts about whether those ideal lines could ever be drawn again; nevertheless, ones? According to Schmitt, historically this has been the case. The traditional Eurocentric order of international law is foundering today, as is the old nomos of the earth. This order arose from a legendary and unforeseen discovery of a new world, from an unrepeatable historical event. Only in fantastic parallels can one imagine a modern recurrence, such as men on their way to the moon discovering a new and hitherto unknown planet that could be exploited freely and utilized effectively to relieve their struggles on earth (39). We have since gone to the moon and have found nothing on the way there to exploit. We may soon go to Mars, if current leaders have their way, but the likelihood of finding exploitable populations seems equally slim. Salvation through spatially delimited asymmetry, even were it to be desired, is just not on the horizon. And salvation through globalization, that is, through global unity and equality, is equally impossible, because todays asymmetry is not so much a localization of the exception as it is an invisible generation of the exception from within that formal ideal of unity, a generation of the exception as the difference between the human and the inhuman outlaw, the Savage Beast, with whom Men can have no Society nor Security. We are, therefore, thrown back upon ourselves, which is to say, upon those artificial moral persons who act as our collective political identities. They used to be called states. What they will be called in the future remains to be seen. But, if we think to establish a differentiated unity of discrete
we must symmetrically manage the necessary pairing of inclusion and exclusion without denying the forms of power and domination that inescapably accompany human ordering. We must think the possibility of roughly equivalent power relations rather than fantasize the elimination of power from the political universe. This,
political entities that once represented for Schmitt the highest form of order within the scope of human power, then conceivably, was also Schmitts solution. Whether his idea of the plurality of Grorume could ever be carried out under contemporary circumstances is, to be sure, more than a little doubtful, given that the United States enjoys a monopoly on guns, goods, and the Good, in the form of a supremely effective ideology of universal democratization. Still, we would do well to devise vocabularies that do not just emphatically repeat philosophically more sophisticated versions of
The space of the political will never be created by a bloodless, Benjaminian divine violence. Nor is it to be confused with the space of the simply human. To dream the dreams of universal inclusion may satisfy an irrepressible human desire, but it may also always produce recurring, asphyxiating political nightmares of absolute exclusion.
the liberal ideology of painless, effortless, universal equality.
6. No root cause idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history is dumb; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict. 7. Wishing doesnt make it so. Violence results from changes away from realism inspired by criticism Alastair Murray, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, 1997, p. 181-182
This highlights the central difficulty with Wendt's constructivism. It is not any form of unfounded idealism about the possibility of effecting a change in international politics. Wendt accepts that the
intersubjective character of international institutions such as self-help render them relatively hard social facts. Rather, what is problematic is his faith that such change, if it could be achieved, implies progress. Wendt's entire approach is governed by the belief that the problematic elements of international politics can be transcended, that the
competitive identities which create these elements can be reconditioned, and that the predatory policies which underlie these identities can be eliminated.
Everything, in his account, is up for grabs: there is no core of recalcitrance to human conduct which cannot be reformed, unlearnt, disposed of. This generates a stance that so privileges the possibility of a systemic transformation that it simply puts aside the difficulties which it recognises to be inherent in its
achievement. Thus, even though Wendt acknowledges that the intersubjective basis of the self-help system makes its reform difficult, this does not
dissuade him. He simply demands that states adopt a strategy of àltercasting', a strategy which `tries to induce alter to take on a new identity (and thereby enlist
Wendt's position effectively culminates in a demand that the state undertake nothing less than a giant leap of faith. The fact that its opponent might not take its overtures seriously, might not be interested in reformulating its own construction of the world, or might simply see such an opening as a weakness to be exploited, are completely discounted . The prospect of achieving
alter in ego's effort to change itself) by treating alter as if it already had that identity'. a systemic transformation simply outweighs any adverse consequences which might arise from the effort to achieve it. Wendt ultimately appears, in the final analysis, to have overdosed on `Gorbimania'.
8. Threats are real; our authors are qualified and interpret their data from changes in international relations; not just socially constructed. And, more evidence - default to expert consensus Knudsen 1 PoliSci Professor at Sodertorn (Olav, Post-Copenhagen Security Studies, Security Dialogue 32:3)
Moreover, I have a problem with the underlying implication that it is unimportant whether states 'really' face dangers from other states or groups.
In the
Copenhagen school, threats are seen as coming mainly from the actors' own fears, or from what happens when the fears of individuals turn into paranoid political action. In my view, this emphasis on the subjective is a misleading conception of threat, in that it discounts an independent existence for whatever is perceived as a threat. Granted, political life is often marked by misperceptions, mistakes, pure imaginations, ghosts, or mirages, but such phenomena do not occur simultaneously to large numbers of politicians, and hardly most of the time. During the Cold War, threats - in the sense of plausible possibilities of danger - referred to 'real' phenomena, and they refer to 'real' phenomena now. The objects
referred to are often not the same, but that is a different matter. Threats have to be dealt with both n terms of perceptions and in terms of the phenomena which are perceived to be threatening. The
point of Waevers concept of security is not the potential existence of danger somewhere but the use of the word itself by political elites. In his 1997 PhD dissertation, he writes, One can View security as that which is in language
theory called a speech act: it is not interesting as a sign referring to something more real - it is the utterance itself that is the act.24 The deliberate disregard of objective factors is even more explicitly stated in Buzan & WaeVers joint article of the same year. As a consequence, t he
phenomenon of threat is reduced to a matter of pure domestic politics. It seems to me that the security dilemma, as a central notion in security studies, then loses its foundation. Yet I see that Waever himself has no compunction about referring to the security dilemma in a recent article." This discounting of the objective aspect of threats shifts security studies to insignificant concerns. What has long made 'threats' and threat perceptions important phenomena in the study of IR is the implication that urgent action may be required. Urgency, of course, is where Waever first began his argument in favor of an alternative security conception, because a convincing sense of urgency has been the chief culprit behind the abuse of 'security' and the consequent politics of panic', as Waever aptly calls it. Now, here - in the case of urgency - another baby is thrown out with the Waeverian bathwater. When real situations of urgency arise, those situations are challenges to democracy; they are actually at the core of the problematic arising with the process of making security policy in parliamentary democracy. But in Waevers world, threats are merely more or less persuasive, and the claim of urgency is just another argument. I hold that instead of 'abolishing' threatening phenomena out there by reconceptualizing them, as Waever does, we should continue paying attention to them, because situations with a credible claim to urgency will keep coming back and then we need to know more about how they work in the interrelations of groups and states (such as civil wars, for instance), not least to find adequate democratic procedures for dealing with them. 9. Debates about threats in the academic world result in better policy-makingreal threats can be confronted and risks can be weighed. Walt 91 Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago 1991 (Stephen, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, p. 229-30)
A recurring theme of this essay has been the
twin dangers of separating the study of security affairs from the academic world or of shifting the focus of academic scholarship too far from real-world issues. The danger of war will be with us for some time to come, and states will continue to acquire military forces for a variety of purposes. Unless one believes that ignorance is preferable to expertise, the value of independent national security scholars should be apparent. Indeed, history suggests that countries that suppress debate on national security matters are more likely to blunder into disaster, because misguided policies cannot be evaluated and stopped in time. As in other areas of public

policy, academic
experts in security studies can help in several ways. In the short term, academics are well placed to evaluate current programs, because they face less pressure to support official policy. The long-term effects of academic involvement may be even more significant: academic research can help states learn from past mistakes and can provide the theoretical innovations the produce better policy choices in the future. Furthermore, their role in training the new generation of experts gives academics an additional avenue of influence.
*A2: Statism K
A2: Synoptic Delusion K

4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusively parts of the alternative. And, Hayek agrees that the permutation is the only way to solve -- cooperation between public and private actors is key to the success of the spontaneous order.

economics, Santa Lara University. 2000www-pam.usc.edu/volume1/v1i1a1print.html)//TD
Klein 2k- Professor of economics at Santa Clara University (Daniel, "Planning and the Two Coordinations, With Illustration in Urban Transit." Department of
The emphasis that Mises and Hayek place on local knowledge is not merely a recognition of the free market's function to distill dispersed knowledge into a price vector, in a manner like the "Big Board" (the New York Stock Exchange). They also recognize the importance of flexibility in private contract, to sculpt private arrangements to fit the particulars, to cope with change, and to coordinate with others . Although Hayek coordination is distinct from Schelling coordination, its
process is not apart from Schelling coordination. The process includes the practice of voluntary planning, by consent and contract, to achieve Schelling coordination.
Hayek (1973, 46) says, "[t]he family, the farm, the firm, the corporation and the various associations, and all the public institutions including government, are organizations which in turn are integrated into a more comprehensive spontaneous order [or metacoordination]." (2) 5. Its possible to make accurate predictions about the world without complete knowledge -- expertise and reasoned arguments are sufficient justification for action.
Foss 06- Professor at the Copehagen Business School (Nicolai, "The limits to designed orders: Authority under 'distributed knowledge' conditions." Springer
Science. 2006. Proquest.) Narrow authority is the view of authority associated with Simon (1951). The argument that has just been summarized holds that such authority is fundamentally compromised by distributed knowledge. However, it is not always the case that suppressing distributed knowledge is inefcient. For example, Hammond and Miller (1985: 1) argue that . . . knowledge
about any particular problem is seldom complete, and in a competitive or changing environment there may be advantages to making some decision, however imperfectly grounded on expertise, rather than none at all . . . In the absence of expert knowledge some chief executive is given authority to impose his own best judgment on the matter. It is not entirely transparent what Hammond and Miller mean here, but a later treatment by Bolton and
Farrell (1990) provides a clue. Bolton and Farrell wish to identify the determinants of centralization/ decentralization decisions. In order to isolate the costs and benets of centralized and decentralized decision-making in a specic setting, they study a coordination problem with private information in the setting of a natural monopoly market. The coordination problem concerns which rm should enter the market when costs are sunk and are private information. Under decentralization, which is represented as a Springer268 K. Foss, N. J. Foss two-period incomplete information game of timing (sink costs/enter or wait another period), each rm is uncertain about whether the other rm will enter. However, the incentive to enter depends on the height of a given rms cost, low-cost rms being less worried that their rival will enter (and vice versa). If costs are sufciently dispersed, the optimal outcome prevails, that is, the lowest-cost producer enters and preempts the rival(s). However, if costs are equal or are high for both, inefciencies may obtain, since rms will then enter simultaneously (inefcient duplication) or will wait (inefcient delay). Enter a central authority whose job is to nominate a rm for entry. In the spirit of Hayek, Bolton and Farrell assume that this central authority cannot possess knowledge about costs. In their model, s/he nominates the high cost producer half of the times, which is clearly inefcient. However, this cost of centralization should be
compared against the costs of decentralization (delay and duplication). Bolton and Farrell show that . . . the less important the private information that the planner lacks and the more essential coordination is, the more attractive the central planning solution is (1990: 805). Moreover, the decentralized solution performs poorly if urgency is important. Centralization is assumed to not involve delay and therefore is a good mechanism for dealing with emergencies, a conclusion they argue is consistent with the
observed tendency of rms to rely on centralized authority in cases of emergencies. While Austrians may argue that the Bolton and Farrell set-up trivializes distributed knowledge, and exaggerates the benets of centralization (e.g., it is assumed to not involve delays), their model does provide a rationale for authority
under distributed knowledge (given their assumptions), that is, it explains why authority may be preferred rather than some decentralized arrangement. Even the narrow understanding of authority in Coase (1937) and Simon (1951) may be rendered consistent with
distributed knowledge using the Bolton and Farrell argument: Although the employer may be ignorant of the efcient action, and perhaps of most of the employee action, he knows a subset of the employees action set, so he can always tell him to do something!, which in certain situations may be
preferable to doing nothing. The example suggests the more general implication that some overlap of knowledge may be sufcient to make coordination by means of authority work in the presence of distributed knowledge.
6. Government intervention in the marketplace can be effective -- lots of recent examples.

Taylor and Vedder 10- Professor of economics at Central Michigan University. Distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University and adjunct scholar
at the American Enterprise Institute (Jason and Richard, "Stimulus by Spending Cuts: Lessons From 1946." Cato. May/June 2010 www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v32n3/cpr32n3.pdf)
Recent examples of this phenomenon can be seen in the newly passed health care legislation and the proposal for a capandtrade environmental regime. The new health care legislation will enormously increase labor costs, as would cap and trade. Nervous employers, wanting to avoid the possibility of taking on sharply rising labor expenses, demur in hiring workers that they would in a more neutral
policy environment. Furthermore, the multitrilliondollar deficits to finance the stimulus as well as government bailout money from TARP have to be financed, and the possibility that the Federal Reserve would engage in inflationary financing of this new federal debt has clearly unnerved many investors. Since the November
2008 election, the price of gold has risen 50 percent because of growing inflationary fears. Yet another example is the
governments continual extension of unemployment benefits beyond the customary maximum 26 weeks (most recently at the beginning of March). While most would agree that unemployment insurance provides shortterm relief to those who must seek new work, many studies confirm what common sense says we should expectthe longer the time frame people are eligible for such benefits, the longer it takes for unemployment rates to fall. In 2009 the average duration of unemployment nearly doubled, and today, well over 40 percent of those unemployed have been out of work over six months. While the poor labor market is to blame for much of this jump in duration, there can be no doubt that incentives to obtain new employment have been, and will continue to be, tempered by governmental action which has extended unemployment insurance to many through the end of 2010.
7. Abstaining from government intervention falls prey to the same problems of incomplete knowledge that they claim the aff does -- creates cascading and unpredictable economic consequences and prevents the free market from functioning effectively. ODonnell, 11 Purchase College, SUNY B.A. Economics & History. (Kyle, Planning the End of Planning: Disintervention and the Knowledge Problem,
Purchase College, May 2011, http://www2.gcc.edu/dept/econ/ASSC/Papers2010-2011/O'Donnell%20-%20ASSC.pdf, Callahan)
Interventionism is distortive, disruptive, and potentially socially destructive because it attempts to defy the criticisms and possibilities of centralized planning according to the market process view of the dynamic market. Yet disintervention faces the same problems. When disintervening, political actors with necessarily limited information and knowledge must somehow decide, not only what to liberalize, but how and when. It is perhaps these latter considerations which are the truly crucial elements for successful disintervention. "Crude" disinterventionism enacted without understanding the complex interactions that occur between an intervention, other interventions, and the dynamic market process may very well lead to cascading negative unintended consequences. Deregulation in the one sector, let's say housing, might lead to bottlenecks in another complementary (or even seemingly disparate) sector, say in finance, which might cascade into other areas in unpredictable ways. To better assert this point I offer the following: not all interventions are created equally. I say this to emphasize the fact that not all acts of government interference with the economy can be equally harmful, even according to the most stringent anarcho-libertarian standards. A price floor that falls below the current market rate is not as harmful as the price ceiling that (attempts) to cut the price of a product in half from its going market rate. There also exists the possibility that there may even be less obvious interventions that are unintentionally "beneficial" relative to others given the uncoordinated nature of the interventionist system. Likewise, even many freemarket economists would agree that if a banking system must rest upon a "lender of last resort" with its subsequent moral hazard, then some regulatory framework preventing the to-be-expected excessive risk-taking may be justified or necessary in the meantime, even if the longer-run disinterventionist goal is a free market banking system. The
mixed economy often also contains entire markets built on the backs of previously distorted market processes. The wholly superfluous market process emerges where opportunities for profit would otherwise never have existed outside of the influence of interventionism (Kirzner 1985). In the real world this can mean entire industries built on the shaky grounds of government intervention. Though due to a lack of unencumbered price signals, few if any might be able to realize this. Thus there also exists the chance that by liberalizing one sector, or removing one control, that a large collapse may be unleashed and backfire in the face of the disinterventionists harming the political capital necessary to continue with any necessary disinterventions. All this leaves the question of which ones are perhaps justified in the mean time in order to prevent further harm by "holding back" other interventions? How is a planner with their limited knowledge supposed to be able to tell the difference? Lastly how can these two answers explain in what order to disintervene? The policy problem I have presented - in the form of entrenched and overlapping, uncoordinated interventions - is one of organized complexity. Even
presupposing that the number of interventions is set at point m, what still remains is a complex series of interlocking problems with no clear solution available to anyone guiding the disintervention. Of
course I am describing the knowledge problem, traced along its implications for the possibility of (dis)interventionist coordination. Yet it must also be remembered that the knowledge problem is overcome everyday by the market process acting through the price system. Even if the planners understand this insight, they must still ask
themselves: "So in a mixed economy, even one completely distorted by rampant intervention, why can't piecemeal disintervention of markets be relied upon to provide the intended results?" The
disinterventionist planner may note that the market tends towards self-correction, and that surely if he just lets the market work, then this problem will sort itself out on its own. While a free market would have the mechanism of the discovery process, guided by profit and loss, for realizing the most socially beneficial ends from available means, interventionism lacks this mechanism in any true spontaneous form. If a disinterventionist plans to liberalize successfully they must decide at some point what to disintervene, when (in what order), and how. Markets are spontaneous orders lacking any centralized direction, made possible by the institutional settings that shape their incentive structures
and guide the market process towards socially beneficial ends. So whereas the market process encourages decentralized entrepreneurs to utilize their particular knowledge of the time and place to drive the market towards self-correction and satisfaction of consumers' wants, the command economy - and any decision making in this vein such as (dis)interventionism - lacks the institutions and incentives required to drive a spontaneous process embodying society's dispersed knowledge. In a sentence then, interventionism - and its mirror - lacks a spontaneous discovery process for systematically uncovering and incentivizing the correction of its past errors to the benefit of society. Disinterventionism as a policy necessarily confronts the knowledge problem, but this by itself is not enough to sink the mainstream "crude" disinterventionist position. After all, markets and the price system routinely overcome this problem everyday and do so remarkably well. Yet the more specific point I am arguing is that there is no tendency in piecemeal disintervention to successfully liberalize via correctly discovering the proper order, rate, or even what and where to disintervene. Next, I further develop my argument that disinterventionism confronts the knowledge problem, and the connected argument that disinterventionism lacks a discovery procedure.
A2: Taoism K
1. Framework: we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. 2. Aff impacts come first; extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration 3. Reject the kritik its based on flawed scholarship READER 08 (Ian; Professor of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures University of Manchester, Buddhism and the Perils of Advocacy, Journal of Global
Buddhism, v. 9)
Bringing ones faith into the classroom and into ones scholarship is a denial of the academic tradition and an insult to the ideal of impartiality upon which academic disciplines and enquiry rely. I have no objection to Buddhists doing Buddhist Studies, or to
scholars in the field who are Buddhists - as long as they leave their (metaphorical) robes and beliefs at the door, as it were, when they enter the classroom and conference hall, and when they write their articles and books using their academic titles and terms of office.
Not only is there no evidence thus far to indicate that their faith enhances their scholarship and teaching but, in fact, as I have suggested, it could well be detrimental to many of the paradigms upon which the discipline is grounded, and a barrier to proper scholastic assessment and to student learning, as the student cited above, found out in my class. And when advocacy precludes proper intellectual discussion, leads to false depictions of the tradition and to the privileging of certain parts of the wider tradition, then it is time to kick it out entirely. 4. They dont know that the alternative is a good action to take, meaning it contradicts itself. 5. Recognizing that we cant see the future means we should try even harder to predict and avoid disasterswe have an ethical responsibility even if we dont always guess correctly Kurasawa 04 (Fuyuki Kurasawa is Assistant Professor of Sociology at York University, Toronto, and a Faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology
at Yale University, Constellations, Vol 11, No 4 [Blackwell]) When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from some intellectual circles is a deep-seated skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The
future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latters total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our successors. 6. No reason why their authors can step outside the realm of being human to see this blinding type of knowledge that the rest of us are apparently totally oblivious to. 7. Dont believe anything they say falsifiability is a prerequisite failure to abide by it causes extinction

Shoemaker and Hoard, 1 59376 101 5)
Coyne, 06 Author and Writer for the Times (Jerry A., A plea for empiricism, FOLLIES OF THE WISE, Dissenting essays, 405pp. Emeryville, CA: My discomfort with Freuds lack of rigour only grew as I continued to read his books and case histories. The latter were especially problematic:
surely there were better explanations of Little Hanss fear of horses than their symbolic representation of his father, haunting Hans with the threat of retaliation for his Oedipal fantasies. (It has since more plausibly been suggested that Hans was simply traumatized after seeing a horse collapse in the street.) Was Freud making it all up as he went along? Or did I have a personality flaw that blinded me to the power of his contributions? After all, he is touted (along with Darwin and Marx) as one of the three greatest modern thinkers, and only a hermit could be unaware of how deeply his ideas permeate Western society. Fortunately, Frederick Crews
has made a much more thorough study of Freud, distilling and interpreting not only his whole corpus but also the past three decades of Freud scholarship. His conclusion is that Freud was indeed making it up as he went along. In Follies of the Wise, Crews takes on not only Freud and psychoanalysis, but also other fields of intellectual inquiry which have caused rational people to succumb to irrational ideas: recovered-memory therapy, alien abduction, theosophy, Rorschach inkblot analysis, intelligent design creationism, and even poststructuralist literary theory. All of these, asserts Crews, violate the ethic of respecting that which is known, acknowledging what is still unknown, and acting as if one cared about the difference. This, then, is a collection about
epistemology, and one that should be read by anyone still harbouring the delusion that Freud was an important thinker, that psychoanalysis is an important cure, that intelligent design is a credible alternative to Darwinism, or that religion and science can coexist happily. It is perhaps strange that a retired professor of literature should become our preeminent critic of Freudianism and other intellectual follies on empirical grounds. But Crews has a keen mind, whetted by decades of arguing about the meaning of American literature, a scientific temperament, and is a fine prose stylist. And his credentials, at least for criticizing Freud, are authenticated by the fact that he was once an ardent Freudian, having written a psychoanalytic analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Sins of the Fathers, 1966), and then later disowned much of that book after developing misgivings about Freuds system. Laid out in the first four essays, Crewss brief against Freud is hard to refute. Through Freuds letters and documents, Crews reveals him to be not the compassionate healer of legend, but a cold and calculating megalomaniac, determined to go down in history as the Darwin of the psyche. Not
only did he not care about patients (he sometimes napped or wrote letters while they were free-associating): there is no historical evidence that he effectively cured any of them. And the propositions of psychoanalysis have proven to be either untestable or falsified. How can we disprove the idea, for example, that we have a death drive? Or that dreams always represent wish fulfilments? When faced with counter-examples, Freudianism always proves malleable enough to incorporate them as evidence for the theory. Other key elements of Freudian theory have never been corroborated. There are no scientifically convincing experiments, for example, demonstrating the repression of traumatic memories. As Crews points out, work with survivors of the Holocaust and other traumatic episodes has shown not a single case in which such
memories are quashed and then recovered. In four further essays, Crews documents the continuing pernicious influence of Freud in the recovered memory movement. The idea that childhood sexual abuse can be repressed and then recalled originated with Freud, and has been used by therapists to evoke false memories which have traumatized patients and shattered families. Realizing the scientific
weaknesses of Freud, many diehards have taken the fall-back position that he was nevertheless a thinker of the first rank. Didnt Freud give us the idea of the unconscious, they argue? Well, not really, for there was a whole history of pre-Freudian thought about peoples buried motives, including the writings of Shakespeare and Nietzsche. The unconscious was a commonplace of Romantic psychology and philosophy. And those who champion Freud as a philosopher must realize that his package also includes less savoury items like penis envy, the amorality of women, and our Lamarckian inheritance of racial memory. The quality of Crewss prose is particularly evident in his two chapters on evolution versus creationism. In the first, he takes on creationists in their new guise as intelligent-design advocates, chastising them for pushing not only bad science, but contorted faith: Intelligent design awkwardly embraces two clashing deities one a glutton for praise and a dispenser of wrath, absolution, and grace, the other a curiously inept cobbler of species that need to be periodically revised and that keep getting snuffed out by the very conditions he provided for them. Why, we must wonder, would the shaper of the universe have frittered
away some fourteen billion years, turning out quadrillions of useless stars, before getting around to the one thing he really cared about, seeing to it that a minuscule minority of earthling vertebrates are washed clean of sin and guaranteed an eternal place in his company? But after demolishing creationists, Crews gives peacemaking scientists their own hiding, reproving them for trying to show that there is no contradiction between science and theology. Regardless of what they say to placate the
Supernatural forces and events, essential aspects of most religions, play no role in science, not because we exclude them deliberately, but because they have never been a useful way to understand nature. Scientific truths are empirically supported observations agreed on by different observers. Religious truths, on the other hand, are personal, unverifiable and contested by those of different faiths. Science is nonsectarian: those who disagree on scientific issues do not blow each other up. Science encourages doubt; most religions quash it. But religion is not completely separable from science.
faithful, most scientists probably know in their hearts that science and religion are incompatible ways of viewing the world.
8. Even if you conclude death is neither good nor bad you have no right to choose for everyone else Myers 99 (D. G. Myers, Associate professor of English and religious studies at Texas A & M, Responsible for Every Single Pain: Holocaust Literature and the
Ethics of Interpretation, Comparative Literature, 51, Fall, 1999, p. 266-288, ) http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/responsible.html)
Perhaps more than any other genre, Holocaust literature poses the ethical question of responsibility. Not that it traffics in blame or guilt. Rather, Holocaust literature summons a counterfactual moral responsea response to past events that is counter to the fact that they are past repairing.5 In as far as it is an account of collective harm, Holocaust literature confronts its readers with the question whether responsibility is to be shared by them, despite the fact that they are not to blame. Holocaust texts provoke the disquieting question "What is being asked of me?" To answer this question fully interpretation is required, but unless there is a prior response of a certain kindunless the Holocaust text is received as a summonsthe problem of interpretation does not even arise. Thus interpretation contributes to the moral life by making it possible for a person to respond appropriately (though counterfactually) to human need. The way of reading that I am describing here is different in kind from what is customarily expected in literary study. It is not the discovery of meanings beneath an intelligible surface of words. It is not a matter of meaning at all, but of need. Ethically responsible reading does not seek to unmask the interests behind the Holocaust text, but rather to preserve it as the matchless revelation of a personality, requiring love. The question of how to respond to the suffering around them tormented those who were trapped by the Holocaust. Consider the remarkable coincidence of two similar passages from the diaries of two Dutch Jews who were otherwise dissimilar in most respects. The first is from the diary of Etty Hillesum, a 28-year-old assimilated Jew whose lonely quest for God has become a classic of spirituality. On July 7, 1942, four days after she had recorded her "certainty" that the Germans "are after our total destruction" and just three short weeks before she was voluntarily transported to Westerbork (she died at Auschwitz in November 1943), Hillesum wrote: This much I know: you have to forget your own worries for the sake of others, for the sake of those whom you love. All the strength and faith in God which one possesses, and which have grown so miraculously in me of late, must be there for everyone who chances to cross ones path and who needs it. . . . And you can draw strength even from suffering. . . .
You must learn to forgo all personal desires and to surrender completely. And surrender does not mean giving up the ghost, fading away with grief, but offering what little assistance I can wherever it has pleased God to place me. (142) Hillesum drew strength from her suffering, but unlike Frankl (quoting Dostoevski), she
did not pray to be worthy of it, because she was not concerned to make an inner achievement of it. Her first concern was not with what her suffering meant, but with the more immediate fact that others were also suffering. Their pain was for her a summons to respond. Although she goes on to interpret her response, extracting principles from it which she highlights with the words You can and You must, this activity of interpretation is merely the subsequent reflection upon antecedent feelings of responsibility for the sake of others. She seeks to give some stability to these feelings by reworking them as moral knowledge, but the response to suffering comes first. The second passage is from the diary of Moshe Flinker. A 16-year-old Orthodox Jew who wrote in Hebrew, Flinker was living in hiding in Brussels, where his family had fled in the summer of 1942 in the hope that they might survive where they were not known to their neighbors. Young Moshe, however, did not live under any illusion; he was aware that "the Germans mean to deport us all, bar none" (62). His family was arrested in April 1944 and transported to Auschwitz, where he and his parents were murdered. In his last diary entry, composed sometime in September 1943, he wrote: Is it not sufficient to weep, in these days of anguish? Suffering stares at me as on every side and in every direction, and still further troubles appear before your eyes. Here a man and woman, both over seventy, are taken away. There you meet a Jew who has been hiding and has no money to live. . . . Trouble never ends[.] And every time I meet a child of my people I ask myself: "Moshe, what are you doing for him?" I feel responsible for every single pain. I ask myself whether I am still participating in the troubles of my people, or whether I have withdrawn completely from them. (122) Flinker offers a striking illustration of the rabbinical teaching that kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, "all Jews are responsible for one another" (Sifra on Leviticus 26.37; see Rabinovitch). But despite an excellent Jewish education, Flinker gives no evidence at all of knowing the codified version of this teaching. Although the Jewish tradition contains an authoritative basis for his moral feeling, it would not be accurate to say that the responsibility he feels for others is the rational application of Jewish moral theory. Something else is going on. Caught in a tragedy that is not individual but collective, Flinker is plunged into a moral crisis. Since he identifies with the Jews, and since Jews are suffering, he is faced with the challenge whether he participates in the suffering of his people. By a process of moral reasoning, he reaches a conclusion that many Jews before him had reached. The ethical response to collective suffering is distilled in the maxim kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh or "I feel responsible for every single pain."Perhaps the best account of responsibility to emerge from the Holocaust is that of the late Emmanuel Levinas. Although the philosophical discussion of responsibility is at least as old as Aristotles Politics, since the Holocaust the term belongs by rights to Levinas.6 A naturalized French Jew born in Kovno, Lithuania, 92 percent of whose 30,000 Jews were murdered by the Germans (including most of his family), Levinas survived the war as a French officer in a pow camp near Hanover, studying Hegel, Proust, Diderot, and Rousseau between shifts of forced labor in the German forests.7 It is likely that he experienced the "belated shame" which, according to Primo Levi in The Drowned and the Saved, "gnaws and rasps" at every survivor of the Holocaust:Are you ashamed because you are alive in place of another? And in particular, of a man more generous, more sensitive, more useful, wiser, worthier of living than you? You cannot block out such feelings. . . . It is no more than a supposition, indeed the shadow of a suspicion: that each man is his brothers Cain, that each of us . . . has usurped his neighbors place and lived in his stead. (81-82)It is likely that Levinas was tormented by such shame, because his entire philosophy grows out of the inchoate anxiety, which parallels Levis "shadow of a suspicion," that one persons life usurps anothers. All those who lived through the years 1939 to 1945 "retained a burn on their sides," he remarks, "as though they had to bear for ever the shame of having survived" ("From the Rise of Nihilism" 221). Levinas argues that human subjectivity or self-consciousnessthe foundation of the selfis mauvaise conscience, the feeling of being "not guilty, but accused." Stripped of its intentionality, its reaching out to grasp an object of knowledge ("an other of consciousness"), existing in a condition of passivity, the human subject is put into question. What am I? To be, I have to respond. "But, from that point," Levinas explains, "in affirming this me being, one has to respond to ones right to be." Self-consciousness is selfjustification, because it is consciousness of being without the intention of being. I am aware of my existence, but I did nothing to bring about my existence. And therefore I am prey to the gnawings of conscience. Is it possible that I came into being as the result of a crime of which I am unaware? Levinas puts it even more strongly:My being-in-the-world or my "place in the sun," my being at home, have these not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the other man whom I have already oppressed or starved, or driven out into a third world; are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing? Pascals "my place in the sun" marks the beginning of the image of the usurpation of the whole earth. ("Ethics as First Philosophy" 81-82)Since the first stirrings of consciousness are the gnawings of conscience, the first question before the human subject is the ethical: how are you going to respond to this uneasy sense of being "not guilty, but accused"? All human action, every effort to budge from the passivity of subjectivity, is a response to ethical challenge. Hence ethics are "first philosophy," logically prior to any other mode of thought.Socrates deontological advice that it is better to suffer injustice than to cause it (Gorgias 469c) is of small assistance to him who is rasped by the mauvaise conscience that he has already caused injustice. "Self-consciousness is not an inoffensive action in which the self takes note of its being," Levinas says; "it is inseparable from a consciousness of justice and injustice" ("Religion for Adults" 16). What he proposes is to replace deontology with a counterfactual ethics of responsibility. If I am not guilty of hurting another I cannot be blamed for it, but if I nevertheless feel accused of it I can take responsibility for it. In this way perhaps I can both ease my conscience and begin to repair any damage that I might have caused. My responsibility to the person I might have hurtthe human Other or Autrui, in Levinass terminologypreempts any claims of my own. Because the injury is counterfactual, because it is not specified and therefore not limited, my relation to the other is a relation of infinite responsibility, which means there is no escaping it ("Transcendence and Height" 20-21).8 In Bubers familiar terms, not to respond is to treat the other as an It rather than a Thou, an object to which things are done rather than a person with whom I might speak. But for Levinas there is no not responding. To ignore another to shame her, to make her aware of her isolation from me, and thus to duck the responsibility for not hurting her in these ways.
Everyone is responsible to another whether he knows it or not. Being human is living in responsibility . Levinass ethics are not
prescriptive, then, but descriptive. It is not that I should be responsible; I already am responsible by virtue of having consciousness. Every new encounter with another raises the question how I am going to respond to her. Although it is not prescribed, how to respond is a decision entirely within my command. Either I can accept responsibility or I can defaultthere is no third alternative. The injustice to another "imposes itself upon me," Levinas says, "without my being able to be deaf to its call or to forget it, that is, without my being able to suspend my responsibility for its distress"
9. We know death is bad there is a material difference between existence and non-existence
Paul Wapner, 2003 (associate professor and director of the Global Environmental Policy Program at American University. Leftist Criticism of. Accessed at http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=539) THE THIRD response to eco-criticism would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they themselves silence nature and then to respect the sheer otherness of the nonhuman world. Postmodernism prides itself on criticizing the urge toward mastery that characterizes modernity. But isn't mastery exactly what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman world within its own conceptual domain? Doesn't postmodern cultural criticism deepen the modernist urge toward mastery by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world? What else could it mean to assert that there is no such thing as nature? I have already suggested the postmodernist response: yes, recognizing the social construction of "nature" does deny the self-expression of the nonhuman world, but how would we know what such self-expression means? Indeed, nature doesn't speak; rather, some person always speaks on nature's behalf, and whatever that person says is, as we all know, a social construction. All attempts to listen to nature are social constructions-except one. Even
the most radical postmodernist must acknowledge the distinction between physical existence and non-existence. As I have said, postmodernists accept that there is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world even if they argue about the different meanings we ascribe to it. This acknowledgment of physical existence is crucial. We can't ascribe meaning to that which doesn't appear. What doesn't exist can manifest no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should rightly worry about interpreting nature's expressions. And all of us should be wary of those who claim to speak on nature's behalf (including environmentalists who do that). But we need not doubt the simple idea that a prerequisite of expression is existence. This in turn suggests that preserving the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be seen by eco-critics as a fundamental good. Eco-critics must be supporters, in some fashion, of environmental preservation.
A2: Time-Space Compression K

1. Framework we can weigh the effects of the plan and the negative gets the status quo or competitive policy option; best for fairness because there are an infinite number of philosophical ideas we have to research, and education because its key to learning about the actual topic. And, roleplaying is awesome - it creates a competitive space to imagine new ideas and translate them into practical suggestionsplaying devils advocate challenges the status quo and results in emancipatory change Andrews 06 (Peter, Consulting Faculty Member at the IBM Executive Business Institute in Palisades, New York, Executive Technology Report,
August, www-935.ibm.com/services/us/bcs/pdf/g510-6313-etr-unlearn-to-innovate.pdf) High stakes innovation
requires abandoning conventional wisdom, even actively unlearning things we know are true. As science only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 1 Venturing into the impossible carries many risks: discouragement, failure, loss of reputation and even ridicule. The trials of innovators those who had the courage to be disruptive are the stuff of legends. But their contributions have changed our world. Not everyone aspires to innovations that are high impact. Small but profitable innovations are welcome and essential contributors to the growth and well-being of corporations and societies. But, even if your goal is modest, a look at unlearning can be of value since taking even a few steps at unlearning can lead to fresh ideas. In an article, William Starbuck of New York University said, learning often cannot occur until after there has
fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said, The been unlearning. Unlearning is a process that shows people they should no longer rely on their current beliefs and methods. But, how do we unlearn? Five steps seem to be essential. We
need to: 1) Create space for thinking 2) Play with ideas 3) Dare to believe that the impossible ideas might be true
4) Adapt the ideas to useful contexts 5) Take action, despite objections of experts and authorities. Create space for thinking A classic Far Side cartoon shows a student raising his hand, asking to be excused because his brain is full. In these days of information overload, most of us have the same problem. We have been exposed to huge numbers of ideas, often at a rate that makes analysis and selection difficult. How do we put these aside? One technique is to list
what we know about a subject. Then challenge each one. What happens if you exaggerate the statement? What are the drawbacks? Does it become absurd? What does the world look like if the opposite is true? Conventional wisdom at many levels from the humors theory of disease to the inevitability of slavery, to the spoke and hub design of airlines has been successfully challenged. The unthinkable has become thinkable, and then the world has changed. The purpose of questioning is both to clear away clutter and create doubt. Starbuck focuses on this and suggests that we stop thinking of things theories, products and processes as finished. He says we should start from the premises that current beliefs and methods are not good enough or merely experimental. 3 This is an emancipating concept, but there is still work to do. What can be
put into the empty space that was created? This is where popular tricks for generating ideas can be valuable. Play with ideas The classic technique for idea generation is a freewheeling, nonjudgmental brainstorming session. And, bringing
in people with different knowledge and perspectives can help push the limits. To push even further, the process can be made competitive, using Red Team approaches (Red Teams assume the role of the outsider to challenge assumptions, look for unexpected alternatives and find the vulnerabilities of a new idea or approach).
2. Aff impacts come first - extinction from nuclear war is the end of all human aspiration; outweighs their suffering and violence claims which are inevitable. 3. No prior questions in IR- problem driven approaches are best Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton, Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)
has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of ontology and epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two were merely a simple function of the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive power of a theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of

problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective action are foregrounded.
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for
4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt. 5. Time-Space Compression theory wrong place still matters in the world Agnew 01 (John Agnew, Professor and Chair of Geography, University of California, THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMY: TIME-SPACE COMPRESSION,
GEOPOLITICS, AND GLOBAL UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT Los Angeles, Lecture presented at the Center for Globalization and Policy Research, UCLA, Wednesday, April 18, 2001)
A rather different approach to time-space compression emphasizes more the role of speed in postmodernity than the enhanced importance of local places or lived space. Indeed, in this understanding, the power of pace is outstripping the power of place (Luke and Tuathail 1998, 72). Accepting the rhetoric of the gurus of the Internet world and the Third Wave, this perspective sees the world as on a technological trajectory in which global space is being re-mastered by a totally new geopolitical imagination in which accelerating flows of information and identities undermine modernist territorial formations. Drawing on such writers as Paul Virilio (1986), Places are conceptualized in terms of their ability to accelerate or hinder the exchanges of global flowmations (Luke and Tuathail 1998, 76). Space is reimagined not as fixed masses of territory, but rather as velocidromes, with high traffic speedways, big band-width connectivities, or dynamic web configurations in a worldwide network of massively parallel kineformations (Luke and Tuathail 1998, 76). The main danger here, as McKenzie Wark (1994, 93) notes, is that of mistaking a trend towards massively accelerated information flow with a deterritorialized world in which where you are no longer matters . It still matters immensely . Some places are well-connected, others are not; media and advertising companies work out of some locations and cultures and not out of others. The simulations of the media are still distinguishable (for some people) from the perils and dilemmas of everyday life. Pace is itself problematic when the images and information conveyed lead to information overload and fatigue more than accurate and real-time decision-making. The much hyped televisual world must still engage with an actual world in which most people still have very limited daily itineraries that root them to very particular places. To think that geopolitics is being replaced by chronopolitics is to project the desire for a boundaryless world characteristic of an older utopianism onto an actual world in which the old geopolitical
imagination is still very much alive and well. History has not yet ended in instant electronic simulation. History is not the same as the History Channel. 6. Vague alts without any blueprint failure to have a concrete option we can debate against guarantees that oppression continues and efforts for change backfire Steve 07 (Anonymous member of Black Block and Active Transformation who lives in East Lansing, MI, Date Last Mod. Feb 8,
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/global/a16dcdiscussion.htm) What follows is not an attempt to discredit our efforts. It was a powerful and inspiring couple of days. I feel it is important to always analyze our actions and be self-critical, and try to move forward, advancing our movement. The
State has used Seattle as an excuse to beef up police forces all over the country. In many ways Seattle caught us off-guard, and we will pay the price for it if we don't become better organized. The main weakness of the Black Block in DC was that clear goals were not elaborated in a strategic way and tactical leadership was not developed to coordinate our actions. By leadership I don't mean any sort of authority, but some coordination beside the call of the mob. We were being led around DC by any and everybody. All someone would do is make a call loud enough, and
the Black Block would be in motion. We were often lead around by Direct Action Network (DAN - organizers of the civil disobedience) tactical people, for lack of our own. We
were therefore used to assist in their strategy, which was doomed from the get go, because we had none of our own. The DAN strategy was the same as it was in Seattle, which the DC police learned how to police. Our only chance at disrupting the
IMF/WB meetings was with drawing the police out of their security perimeter, therefore weakening it and allowing civil disobedience people to break through the barriers. This needs to be kept in mind as we approach the party conventions this summer. Philadelphia is especially ripe for this new strategy, since the convention is not happening in the business center. Demonstrations should be planned all over the city to draw police all over the place. On Monday the event culminated in the ultimate anti-climax, an arranged civil disobedience. The civil disobedience folks arranged with police to allow a few people to protest for a couple minutes closer to where the meetings were happening, where they would then be arrested. The CD strategy needed arrests. Our movement should try to avoid this kind of stuff as often as possible. While this is pretty critical of the DAN/CD strategy, it is so in hindsight. This is the same strategy that succeeded in shutting down the WTO ministerial in Seattle. And, while we didn't shut down the IMF/WB meetings, we did shut down 90 blocks of the American government on tax day - so we should be empowered by their fear of us! The root of the movement. We
lack of strategy problem is a general problem within the North American anarchist get caught up in tactical thinking without establishing clear goals. We need to elaborate how our actions today fit into a plan that leads to the destruction of the state and capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. Moving away from strictly tactical thinking toward political goals and long term strategy needs to be a priority for the anarchist movement. No longer can we justify a moralistic approach to the latest outrage - running around like chickens with their heads cut off. We need to prioritize developing the political unity of our affinity groups and collectives, as well
as developing regional federations and starting the process of developing the political principles that they will be based around (which will be easier if we have made some headway in our local groups). The NorthEastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) is a good example of doing this. They have prioritized developing the political principles they are federated around. The set in stone. They will
strategies that we develop in our collectives and networks will never be blueprints be documents in motion, constantly being challenged and adapted. But without a specific elaboration of what we are working toward and how we plan to get there, we will always end up making bad decisions. If we just assume everyone is on the same page, we will find out otherwise really quick when shit gets critical. Developing regional anarchist federations and networks is a great step for our movement. We should start getting these things going all over the
continent. We should also prioritize developing these across national borders, which NEFAC has also done with northeastern Canada. Some of the errors of Love and Rage were that it tried to cover too much space too soon, and that it was based too much on individual membership, instead of collective membership. We need
a forum among a lot of people to have a lot of political discussion and try to develop strategy in a collective way. This, along with mutual aid and security, could be the priorities of the regional anarchist federations. These regional federations could also form the basis for tactical leadership at demonstrations. Let me
to keep these in mind as we start to develop these projects. One of the benefits of Love and Rage was that it provided first give one example why we need tactical teams at large demos. In DC the Black Block amorphously made the decision to try to drive a dumpster through one of the police lines. The people in front with the dumpster ended up getting abandoned by the other half of the Black Block who were persuaded by the voice of the moment to move elsewhere. The people up front were in a critical confrontation with police when they were abandoned. This could be avoided if the Black Block had a decision making system that slowed down decision making long enough for the block to stay together. With this in mind we must remember that the chaotic, decentralized nature of our organization is what makes us hard to police. We must maximize the benefits of decentralized leadership, without establishing permanent leaders and targets. Here is a proposal to consider for developing tactical teams for demos. Delegates from each collective in the regional federation where the action is happening would form the tactical team. Delegates from other regional federations could also be a part of the tactical team. Communications between the tactical team and collectives, affinity groups, runners, etc. could be established via radio. The delegates would be recallable by their collectives if problems arose, and as long as clear goals are elaborated ahead of time with broader participation, the tactical team should be able to make informed decisions. An effort should be made to rotate delegates so that everyone develops the ability. People with less experience should be given the chance to represent their collectives in less critical situations, where they can become more comfortable with it. The reality is that liberal politics will not lead to an end to economic exploitation, racism, and sexism. Anarchism offers a truly radical alternative. Only a radical critique that links the oppressive nature of global capitalism to the police state at home has a chance of diversifying the movement against global capitalism. In
order for the most oppressed people here to get involved the movement must offer the possibility of changing their lives for the better. A vision of what "winning" would look like must be elaborated if people are going to take the risk with tremendous social upheaval, which is what we are calling for. We cannot afford to give the old anarchist excuse that "the people will decide after the revolution" how this or that will work. We must have plans and ideas for things as diverse as transportation, schooling, crime prevention, and criminal justice. People don't want to hear simple solutions to complex questions, that only enforces people's opinions of us as naive. We need
practical examples of what we are fighting for. People can respond to examples better than unusual theory. While we
understand that we will not determine the shape of things to come, when the system critically fails someone needs to be there with anti-authoritarian suggestions for how to run all sorts of things. If or a new state.
we are not prepared for that we can assume others will be prepared to build up the state
7. Nothing can outweigh extinction even if the risk is miniscule Matheny 7 (Jason, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Reducing the Risk of Human
We may be poorly equipped to recognize or plan for extinction risks (Yudkowsky, 2007). We may not be good at grasping the significance of very large numbers (catastrophic outcomes) or very small numbers (probabilities) over large timeframes. We struggle with estimating the probabilities of rare or unprecedented events (Kunreuther et al., 2001). Policymakers may not plan far beyond current political administrations and rarely do risk assessments value the existence of future generations.18 We may unjustifiably discount the value of future lives. Finally, extinction risks are market failures where an individual enjoys no perceptible benefit from his or her investment in risk reduction. Human survival may thus be a good requiring deliberate policies to protect. It might be feared that consideration of extinction risks would lead to a reductio ad absurdum: we ought to invest all our resources in asteroid defense or nuclear disarmament, instead of AIDS, pollution, world hunger, or other problems we face today. On the contrary, programs that create a healthy and content global population are likely to reduce the probability of global war or catastrophic terrorism. They should thus be seen as an essential part of a portfolio of risk-reducing projects. Discussing the risks of nuclear winter, Carl Sagan (1983) wrote: Some have argued that the difference between the deaths of several hundred million people in a nuclear war (as has been thought until recently to be a reasonable upper limit) and the death of every person on Earth (as now seems possible) is only a matter of one order of magnitude. For me, the difference is considerably greater. Restricting our attention only to those who die as a consequence of the war conceals its full impact. If we are required to calibrate extinction in numerical terms, I would be sure to include the number of people in future generations who would not be born. A nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the population remains static, with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of a successful species (roughly ten million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes are one million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill only hundreds of millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential lossincluding culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise. In a similar vein, the philosopher Derek Parfit (1984) wrote: I believe
that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare three outcomes: 1. Peace 2. A nuclear war that kills 99% of the worlds existing population 3. A nuclear war that kills 100% 2 would be worse than 1, and 3 would be worse than 2. Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between 1 and 2. I believe that the difference between 2 and 3 is very much greater . . . . The
Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilization began only a few thousand years ago. Ifwe do not destroy mankind, these thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history. The difference between 2 and 3 may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. Human extinction in the next few centuries could reduce the number of future generations by thousands or more. We take extraordinary measures to protect some endangered species from extinction. It might be reasonable to take extraordinary measures to protect humanity from the same.19 To decide whether this is so requires more discussion of the methodological problems mentioned here, as well as research on the
extinction risks we face and the costs of mitigating them.20
*A2: Transport Rationality K
A2: Virilio K
4. Perm do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alt.
5. Technological advancement solves its own impactaccelerated progress will make us more likely to prevent accidents Bostrom 03 (Nick, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, Transhumanism FAQ, October,

http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/68/)
Superintelligence is an example of a technology that seems especially worth promoting because it can help reduce a broad range of threats. Superintelligent systems could advise us on policy and make the progress curve for nanotechnology steeper, thus shortening the period of vulnerability between the development of dangerous nanoreplicators and the deployment of effective defenses. If we have a choice, it seems preferable that superintelligence be developed before advanced nanotechnology, as superintelligence could help reduce the risks of nanotechnology but not vice versa. Other technologies that have wide risk-reducing uses include intelligence augmentation, information technology, and surveillance. These can make us smarter individually and collectively or make enforcement of necessary regulation more feasible. A strong
prima facie case therefore exists for pursuing these technologies as vigorously as possible. Needless to say, we should also promote non-technological developments that are beneficial in almost all scenarios, such as peace and international cooperation.
6. This argument is nonsensical and non-falsifiable; it applies to everything such as life being the invention of death. Just because something bad might occur doesnt mean we shouldnt take action. And, doesnt make sense with our aff the worst accident that can happen is that the icebreakers dont work and there will be conflicts which will happen in the status quo anyways.
7. If some technologies fail this doesnt mean the plan willtech change is good even if its only partial Bostrom 03 (Nick, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, Transhumanism FAQ, October, http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/88/)
Success in the transhumanist endeavor is not an all-or-nothing matter. There is no it that everything hinges on. Instead, there are many incremental processes at play, which may work better or worse, faster or more slowly. Even if we cant cure all diseases, we will cure many. Even if we dont get immortality, we can have healthier lives. Even if we cant freeze whole bodies and revive them, we can learn how to store organs for transplantation. Even if we dont solve world hunger, we can feed a lot of people. With many potentially transforming technologies already available and others in the pipeline, it is clear that there will be a large scope for human augmentation. The more powerful transhuman technologies, such as machine-phase nanotechnology and superintelligence, can be reached through several independent paths. Should we find one path to be blocked, we can try another one. The multiplicity of routes adds to the probability that our journey will not come to a premature halt. 8. Virilios theory is flawed his analogies are flawed and he makes incoherent, baseless statements Sokal and Bricmont 98 *Professor of Physics at NYU AND **Belgian theoretical physicist, philosopher of science and a professor at the Universit
catholique de Louvain (December 1998, Alan and Jean, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data, pg. 169-170) MGM
The writings of Paul Virilio revolve principally around the themes of technology, communication, and speed. They contain a plethora of references to physics, particularly the theory of relativity. Though Virilio's sentences are slightly more meaningful than those of Deleuze-Guattari, what is presented as "science" is a mixture of monumental confusions and wild fantasies. Furthermore, his analogies between physics and social questions are the most arbitrary imaginable, when he does not simply become intoxicated with his own words. We confess our sympathy with many of Virilio's political and social views; but the cause is not, alas, helped by his pseudo-physics. Let us start with a minor example of the astonishing erudition vaunted by Le Monde: Recent MEGALOPOLITAN hyperconcentration (Mexico City, Tokyo ... ) being itself the result of the increased speed of economic exchanges, it seems necessary to reconsider the importance of the notions of ACCELERATION and DECELERATION (what physicists call positive and negative velocities [vitesses positive et negative selon les physiciens]) ... (Virilio 1995, p. 24, capitals in the original 220) Here Virilio mixes up velocity (vitesse) and acceleration, the two basic concepts of kinematics (the description of motion), which are introduced and carefully distinguished at the beginning of every introductory physics course. 221 Perhaps this confusion isn't worth stressing; but for a purported specialist in the philosophy of speed, it is nonetheless a bit surprising.
*A2: Zizek K Cap
*A2: Zizek K Psychoanalysis
***GENERIC K ANSWERS***
A2: Biopower
1. Democracy checks the impact Dickinson 04 (Edward Ross, Associate Professor of History at the University of California-Davis, Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our
Discourse about "Modernity", in Central European History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2004), pg 18-19.) In an important programmatic statement of 1996 Geoff Eley celebrated the fact that Foucault's
ideas have "fundamentally directed attention away from institutionally centered conceptions of government and the state ... and toward a dispersed and decentered notion of power and its 'microphysics.'"48 The "broader, deeper, and less visible ideological consensus" on "technocratic reason and the ethical unboundedness of science" was the focus of his interest.49 But the "power-producing effects in Foucault's 'microphysical' sense" (Eley) of the construction of social bureaucracies and social knowledge, of "an entire institutional apparatus and system of practice" (Jean Quataert), simply do not explain Nazi policy.50 The destructive dynamic of Nazism was a product not so much of a particular modern set of ideas as of a particular modern political structure, one that could realize the disastrous
potential of those ideas. What was critical was not the expansion of the instruments and disciplines of biopolitics, which occurred everywhere in Europe. Instead, it was the principles that guided how those instruments and disciplines were organized and used, and the external constraints on them. In National Socialism, biopolitics was shaped by a totalitarian conception of social management focused on the power and ubiquity of the volkisch state. In
democratic societies, biopolitics has historically been constrained by a rights-based strategy of social management. This is a
point to which I will return shortly. For now, the point is that what was decisive was actually politics at the level of the state. A comparative framework can help us to clarify this point. Other
states passed compulsory sterilization laws in the 1930s. Indeed, individual states in the United States had they did not proceed to the next steps adopted by National Socialism, mass sterilization, mass "eugenic" abortion and murder of the "defective." Individual figures in, for example, the U.S. did make such
already begun doing so in 1907. Yet suggestions. But neither the political structures of democratic states nor their legal and political principles permitted such poli? cies actually being enacted. Nor did the scale of forcible sterilization in other countries match that of the Nazi program. I do not mean to suggest that such programs were not horrible; but in
democratic political context they did not develop the dynamic of constant radicalization and escalation that
characterized Nazi policies.
2. Biopower does not cause racism or massacresit is only when it is in the context of a violent or racist government that it is dangerous. Ojakangas, 05 - PhD in Social Science and Academy research fellow @ the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies @ University of Helsinki 2005 (Mika,
The Impossible Dialogue on Biopower: Foucault and Agamben, May 2005, Foucault Studies, No. 2, http://wlt-studies.com/no2/ojakangas1.pdf)
It is the logic of racism, according to Foucault, that makes killing acceptable in modern biopolitical societies. This is not to say, however, that biopolitical societies are necessarily more racist than other societies. It is to say that in the era of biopolitics, only racism, because it is a determination immanent to life, can justify the murderous function of the State.89 However, racism can only justify killing killing that does not follow from the logic of biopower but from the logic of the sovereign power. Racism is, in other words, the only way the sovereign power,
the right to kill, can be maintained in biopolitical societies: Racism is bound up with workings of a State that is obliged to use race, the elimination of races and the purification of the race, to exercise its sovereign power.90 Racism is, in other words, a discourse quite compatible91 with biopolitics through which biopower can be most smoothly transformed into the form of sovereign power. Such transformation, however, changes everything. A biopolitical society that wishes to exercise the old sovereign right to kill, even in the name of race, ceases to be a mere biopolitical society, practicing merely biopolitics. It becomes a demonic combination of sovereign power and biopower, exercising sovereign means for biopolitical ends. In its most monstrous form, it becomes the Third Reich. For this reason, I cannot subscribe to Agambens thesis, according to which biopolitics is absolutized in the Third Reich.93 To be sure, the Third Reich used biopolitical means it was a state in which insurance and reassurance were universal94 and aimed for biopolitical ends in order to improve the living conditions of the German people -- but so did many
What distinguishes the Third Reich from those other nations is the fact that, alongside its biopolitical apparatus, it erected a massive machinery of death. It became a society that unleashed murderous power, or in other words, the old sovereign right to take life throughout the entire social body, as Foucault puts it.95 It is not, therefore, biopolitics that was absolutized in the Third Reich as a matter of fact, biopolitical measures in the Nazi Germany were, although harsh, relatively modest in scale compared to some present day welfare states but rather the sovereign power: This power to kill, which ran through the entire social body of Nazi society, was first
other nations in the 1930s. manifested when the power to take life, the power of life and death, was granted not only to the State but to a whole series of individuals, to a considerable number of people (such as the SA, the SS, and so on). Ultimately, everyone in the Nazi State had the power of life and death over his or her neighbours, if only because of the practice of informing, which effectively meant doing away with the people next door, or having them done
The only thing that the Third Reich actually absolutizes is, in other words, the sovereignty of power and therefore, the nakedness of bare life at least if sovereignty is defined in the Agambenian manner: The
away with.96 sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially homines sacri, and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men act as sovereigns.97
3. Biopower does not make massacres vitala specific form of violent sovereignty is also required.
Ojakangas, 05 - PhD in Social Science and Academy research fellow @ the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies @ University of Helsinki 2005 (Mika,
The Impossible Dialogue on Biopower: Foucault and Agamben, May 2005, Foucault Studies, No. 2, http://www.foucault-studies.com/no2/ojakangas1.pdf)
Admittedly, in the era of biopolitics, as Foucault writes, even massacres have become vital. This is not the case, however, because violence is hidden in the foundation of biopolitics, as Agamben believes. Although the twentieth century thanatopolitics is the reverse of biopolitics, it should not be understood, according to Foucault, as the effect, the result, or the logical consequence of biopolitical rationality. Rather, it should be understood, as he suggests, as an outcome of the demonic combination of the sovereign power and biopower, of the city-citizen game and the
shepherd-flock game or as I would like to put it, of patria potestas (fathers unconditional power of life and death over his son) and cura maternal (mothers unconditional duty to take care of her children). Although
massacres can be carried out in the name of care, they do not follow from the logic of biopower or which death is the object of taboo.They follow from the logic of sovereign power, which legitimates killing by whatever arguments it chooses, be it God, Nature, or life.
A2: D-Rule
1. No reason to prefer the violations they solve for over preventing war or our other impacts. They dont have a single piece of evidence that compares D-rules with extinction. Their evidence that says we should act regardless of consequences doesnt assume that those consequences result in mass death and extinction.
And, nuclear war is a D-rule because it causes lots of deaths, suffering, and extinction.
2. The advent of the nuclear age necessitates utilitarianism absolutist ethics are self-contradictory Nye 86 (Joseph S. 1986; Phd Political Science Harvard. University; Served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Nuclear Ethics pg.
18-19) JFS The significance and the limits of the two broad traditions can be captured by contemplating a hypothetical case.34 Imagine that you are visiting a Central American country and you happen upon a village square where an
army captain is about to order his men to shoot two peasants lined up against a wall. When you ask the reason, you are told someone in this village shot at the captain's men last night. When you object to the killing
of possibly innocent people, you are told that civil wars do not permit moral niceties. Just to prove the point that we all have dirty hands in such situations, the captain hands you a rifle and
tells you that if you will shoot one peasant, he will free the other. Otherwise both die. He warns you not to try any tricks because his men have their guns trained on you. Will you shoot one person with the consequences of saving one, or will you allow both to die but preserve your moral integrity by refusing to play his dirty game? The point of the story is to show the value and limits of both traditions. Integrity is clearly an important value, and many of us would refuse to shoot. But at what point does the principle of not taking an innocent life collapse before the consequentialist burden? Would it matter if there were twenty or 1,000 peasants to be saved? What if killing or torturing one innocent person could save a city of 10 million persons from a terrorists' nuclear device? At
some point does not integrity become the ultimate egoism of fastidious self-righteousness in which the purity of the self is more important than the lives of countless others?
Is it not better to follow a consequentialist approach, admit remorse or regret over the immoral means, but justify the action by the consequences? Do absolutist approaches to integrity become self-contradictory in a world of nuclear
weapons? "Do what is right though the world should perish" was a difficult principle even when Kant expounded it in the eighteenth century, and there is some evidence that he did not mean it to be taken literally even then. Now
that it may be literally possible in the nuclear age, it seems more than ever to be self-contradictory.35 Absolutist ethics bear a heavier burden of proof in the nuclear age than ever before.
--Constitution =/= D-Rule

The Constitution is open-endedno d-rule. Litchwick 11 Dahlia Lithwick, journalist covering courts and the law for Slate, 2011 (Read It and Weep, Slate, January 4th, Available Online at
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/01/read_it_and_weep.single.html, Accessed 04-30-2012) This newfound attention to the relationship between Congress and the Constitution is thrilling and long overdue. Progressives, as Greg Sargent points out, are wrong to scoff at it. This is an opportunity to engage in a reasoned discussion of what the Constitution does and does not do. It's an opportunity to point out that no matter how many times you read the document on the House floor, cite it in your bill, or how many copies you can stuff into your breast pocket without looking fat, the
Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers and confound more readers than it comforts. And that isn't
because any one American is too stupid to understand the Constitution. It's because the Constitution wasn't written to reflect the views of any one American. The problem with the Tea Party's new Constitution fetish is that it's hopelessly selective. As Robert Parry notes, the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can't read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment. They don't get to support Madison and renounce Jefferson, then claim to be restoring the vision of "the Framers." Either the Founders got it right the first time they calibrated the balance of power between the federal government and the states, or they got it so wrong that we need to pass a "Repeal Amendment" to fix it. And unless Tea Party Republicans are willing to stand proud and announce that they adore and revere the whole Constitution as written, except for the First, 14, 16th, and 17th amendments, which totally blow, they should admit right now that they are in the same conundrum as everyone else: This
document no more commands the specific policies they espouse than it commands the specific policies their opponents support. This should all have been good news. The fact that the Constitution is sufficiently open-ended to infuriate all Americans almost equally is part of its enduring genius. The Framers were no more interested in binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would wish to be bound by them. As Justice Stephen Breyer explains in his recent book, Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View, Americans cannot be controlled by the "dead hands" of one moment frozen in time. The Constitution created a framework, not a Ouija board, precisely because the Framers understood that the prospect of a nation ruled for centuries by dead prophets would be the very opposite of freedom.
A2: Ethics
1. Since the concept of ethics is a universal value, they have to defend ethical equality for all people, or they dont have an advantage; because of this universal concept, if we prove an instance where one person is treated unequally, all their offense is gone. Just regular racism that is inherent in various parts of every day social life means the totality of humanity will never achieve equal moral status.
2. War is the ultimate turn to ethics Maiese 03, Assistant professor of philosophy at Emmanuel College (Michelle, July, 2003, http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/dehumanization/,
Dehumanization, University of Colorado at Boulder Beyond Intractability, DA: 8/2/10, JPL rc)
Dehumanization is a psychological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration. Jews in the eyes of Nazis and Tutsis in the eyes of Hutus (in the Rwandan genocide) are but two examples. Protracted conflict strains relationships and makes it difficult for parties to recognize that they are part of a shared human community. Such conditions often lead to feelings of intense hatred and alienation among conflicting parties. The more severe the conflict, the more the psychological distance between groups will widen. Eventually, this can result in moral exclusion. Those excluded are typically viewed as inferior, evil, or criminal.[1] We typically think that all people have some basic human rights that should not be violated.
Innocent people should not be murdered, raped, or tortured. Rather, international law suggests that they should be treated justly and fairly, with dignity and respect. They deserve to have their basic needs met, and to have some freedom to make autonomous decisions. In times of war, parties must take care to protect the lives of innocent civilians on the opposing side. Even those guilty of breaking the law should receive a fair trial, and should not be subject to any sort of cruel or unusual punishment. However, for individuals viewed as outside the scope of morality and justice, "the concepts
of deserving basic needs and fair treatment do not apply and can seem irrelevant."[2] Any harm that befalls such individuals seems warranted, and perhaps even morally justified. Those excluded from the scope of morality are typically perceived as psychologically distant, expendable,
and deserving of treatment that would not be acceptable for those included in one's moral community. Common criteria for exclusion include ideology, skin color, and cognitive capacity. We typically dehumanize
those whom we perceive as a threat to our well-being or values.[3] Psychologically, it is necessary to categorize one's enemy as sub-human in order to legitimize increased violence or justify the violation of basic human
rights. Moral exclusion reduces restraints against harming or exploiting certain groups of people.
3. Even if their values are good, policymaking necessitates consequentialism we cant take the time to evaluate how every action we will take could possibly harm any ethical value.
Brock, 87 [Dan W. Brock, Professor of Philosophy and Biomedical Ethics, and Director, Center for Biomedical Ethics at Brown University, Ethics, Vol.
97, No. 4, (Jul., 1987), pp. 786-791, JSTOR]JFS
When philosophers become more or less direct participants in the policy-making process and so are no longer academics just hoping that an occasional policymaker might read their scholarly journal articles, this scholarly virtue of the unconstrained search for the truth-all assumptions open to question and follow the arguments wherever they lead-comes under a variety of related pressures. What arises is an intellectual variant of the political problem of "dirty hands" that those who hold political power often face. I emphasize that I
do not conceive of the problem as one of pure, untainted philosophers being corrupted by the dirty business of politics. My point is rather that the different goals of academic scholarship and public policy call in turn for different virtues and behavior in their practitioners. Philosophers who steadfastly maintain their academic ways in the public policy setting are not to be admired as islands of integrity in a sea of messy political compromise and corruption. Instead, I believe that if
philosophers maintain the academic virtues there they will not only find themselves often ineffective but will as well often fail in their responsibilities and act wrongly. Why is this so? The central point of conflict is that the first concern of those responsible for public policy is, and ought to be, the consequences of their actions for public policy and the persons that those policies affect. This is not to say that they should not be concerned with the moral evaluation of those consequences-they should; nor that they must be moral consequentialists in the evaluation of the policy, and in turn human, consequences of their actionswhether some form of consequentialism is an adequate moral theory is another matter. But it is to say that persons who directly participate in the formation of public policy would be irresponsible if they did not focus their concern on how their actions will affect policy and how that policy will in turn affect people. The virtues of academic research and scholarship that consist in an unconstrained search for truth, whatever the consequences, reflect not only the different goals of scholarly work but also the fact that the effects of the scholarly endeavor on the public are less direct, and are mediated more by other institutions and events, than are those of the public policy process. It is in part the very impotence in terms of major, direct effects on people's lives of most academic scholarship that makes it morally acceptable not to worry much about the social consequences of that scholarship. When philosophers move into the policy domain, they must shift their primary commitment from knowledge and truth to the policy consequences of what they do. And if they are not prepared to do this, why
did they enter the policy domain? What are they doing there?
Extinction 1st
1. Nothing can outweigh extinction even if the risk is miniscule Matheny 7 (Jason, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Reducing the Risk of Human
We may be poorly equipped to recognize or plan for extinction risks (Yudkowsky, 2007). We may not be good at grasping the significance of very large numbers (catastrophic outcomes) or very small numbers (probabilities) over large timeframes. We struggle with estimating the probabilities of rare or unprecedented events (Kunreuther et al., 2001). Policymakers may not plan far beyond current political administrations and rarely do risk assessments value the existence of future generations.18 We may unjustifiably discount the value of future lives. Finally, extinction risks are market failures where an individual enjoys no perceptible benefit from his or her investment in risk reduction. Human survival may thus be a good requiring deliberate policies to protect. It might be feared that consideration of extinction risks would lead to a reductio ad absurdum: we ought to invest all our resources in asteroid defense or nuclear disarmament, instead of AIDS, pollution, world hunger, or other problems we face today. On the contrary, programs that create a healthy and content global population are likely to reduce the probability of global war or catastrophic terrorism. They should thus be seen as an essential part of a portfolio of riskreducing projects. Discussing the risks of nuclear winter, Carl Sagan (1983) wrote: Some have argued that the difference between the deaths of several hundred million people in a nuclear war (as has been thought until recently to be a reasonable upper limit) and the death of every person on Earth (as now seems possible) is only a matter of one order of magnitude. For me, the difference is considerably greater. Restricting our attention only to those who die as a consequence of the war conceals its full impact. If we are required to calibrate extinction in numerical terms, I would be sure to include the number of people in future generations who would not be born. A nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the population remains static, with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of a successful species (roughly ten million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes are one million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill only hundreds of millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential lossincluding culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise. In a similar vein, the philosopher Derek Parfit (1984) wrote: I believe that if we destroy mankind, as
we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare three outcomes: 1. Peace 2. A nuclear war that kills 99% of the worlds existing population 3. A nuclear war that kills 100% 2 would be worse than 1, and 3 would be worse than 2. Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between 1 and 2. I believe that the difference between 2 and 3 is very much greater . . . . The
Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilization began only a few thousand years ago. Ifwe do not destroy mankind, these thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history. The difference between 2 and 3 may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. Human extinction in the next few centuries could reduce the number of future generations by thousands or more. We take extraordinary measures to protect some endangered species from extinction. It might be reasonable to take extraordinary measures to protect humanity from the same.19 To decide whether this is so requires more discussion of the methodological problems mentioned here, as well as
research on the extinction risks we face and the costs of mitigating them.20
2. Extinction outweighs no coping mechanisms, no experience, no trial-and-error, future generations Bostrom 2 (Nick Professor of Philosophy and Global Studies at Yale.. www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html.)
Risks in this sixth category are a recent phenomenon. This is part of the reason why it is useful to distinguish them from other risks. We have not evolved mechanisms, either biologically or culturally, for managing such risks. Our intuitions and coping strategies have been shaped by our long experience with risks such as dangerous animals, hostile individuals or tribes, poisonous foods,
automobile accidents, Chernobyl, Bhopal, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, draughts, World War I, World War II, epidemics of influenza, smallpox, black plague, and AIDS. These types of disasters have occurred many times and our cultural attitudes towards risk have been shaped by trial-and-error in managing such hazards. But tragic as such events are to the people immediately affected, in the big picture of things from
the perspective of humankind as a whole even the worst of these catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life. They havent significantly affected the total amount of human suffering or happiness or determined the long-term fate of our species. With
the exception of a species-destroying comet or asteroid impact (an extremely rare occurrence), there were probably no significant existential risks in human history until the mid-twentieth century, and certainly none that it was within our power to do something about. The
first manmade existential risk was the inaugural detonation of an atomic bomb. At the time, there was some concern that the explosion might start a runaway chain-reaction by
igniting the atmosphere. Although we now know that such an outcome was physically impossible, it qualifies as an existential risk that was present at the time. For there to be a risk, given the knowledge and understanding available, it suffices that there is some subjective probability of an adverse outcome, even

if it later turns out that objectively there was no chance of something bad happening. If
we dont know whether something is objectively risky or not, then it is risky in the subjective sense. The subjective sense is of course what we must base our decisions on.[2]At any given time we must use our best current subjective estimate of what the objective risk factors are.[3]A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up
of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that mighthave been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankinds potential permanently. Such a war might however be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted. Unfortunately, we shall see that
nuclear Armageddon and comet or asteroid strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the 21st century. The special nature of the challenges posed by existential risks is illustrated by the following points: Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and
economic) of such actions. We cannot necessarily rely on the institutions, moral norms, social attitudes or national security policies that developed from our experience with managing other sorts of risks. Existential risks are a different kind of beast. We
might find it hard to take them as seriously as we should simply because we have never yet witnessed such disasters.[5] Our collective fear-response is likely ill calibrated to the magnitude of threat. Reductions in existential risks are global public goods [13] and may therefore be undersupplied
by the market [14]. Existential risks are a menace for everybody and may require acting on the international plane. Respect for national sovereignty is not a legitimate excuse for failing to take countermeasures against a major existential risk. If
we take into account the welfare of future generations, the harm done by existential risks is multiplied by another factor, the size of which depends on whether and how much
we discount future benefits [15,16]. In view of its undeniable importance, it is surprising how little systematic work has been done in this area. Part of the explanation may be that many of the recently begun
gravest risks stem (as we shall see) from anticipated future technologies that we have only to understand. Another part of the explanation may be the unavoidably interdisciplinary and speculative nature of the subject. And in part the neglect may also be attributable to an aversion against thinking seriously about a depressing topic. The point, however, is not to wallow in gloom and doom but simply to take a sober look at what could go wrong so we can create responsible strategies for improving our chances of survival. In order to do that, we need to know where to focus our efforts.
3. Large impacts should always outweigh small onestheir argument is an example of illogical scope neglect Yudkowsky 6 (Eliezer, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks, forthcoming in Global
Catastrophic Risks, August 31)
Three groups of subjects considered three versions of the above question, asking them how high a tax increase they would accept to save 2,000, 20,000, or 200,000 birds. The response - known as Stated Willingness-To-Pay, or SWTP - had a mean of $80 for the 2,000-bird group, $78 for 20,000 birds, and $88 for 200,000 birds. (Desvousges et. al. 1993.) This phenomenon is known as scope insensitivity or scope neglect. Similar studies have shown that Toronto residents would pay little more to clean up all
polluted lakes in Ontario than polluted lakes in a particular region of Ontario (Kahneman 1986); and that residents of four western US states would pay only 28% more to protect all 57 wilderness areas in those states than to protect a single area (McFadden and Leonard, 1995). The most widely accepted explanation for scope neglect appeals to the affect heuristic. Kahneman et. al. (1999) write: "The story constructed by Desvouges et. al. probably evokes for many readers a mental representation of a prototypical incident, perhaps an image of an exhausted bird, its feathers soaked in black oil, unable to escape. The hypothesis of valuation by prototype asserts that the affective value of this image will dominate expressions of the attitute to the problem - including the willingness to pay for a solution. Valuation by prototype implies extension neglect." Two other hypotheses accounting for scope neglect include purchase of moral satisfaction (Kahneman and Knetsch, 1992) and good cause dump (Harrison 1992). Purchase of moral satisfaction suggests that people spend enough money to create a 'warm glow' in themselves, and the amount required is a property of the person's psychology, having nothing to do with birds. Good cause dump suggests that people have some amount of money they are willing to pay for "the environment", and any question about environmental goods elicits this amount. Scope
neglect has been shown to apply to human lives. Carson and Mitchell (1995) report that increasing the alleged risk associated with
chlorinated drinking water from 0.004 to 2.43 annual deaths per 1,000 (a factor of 600) increased SWTP from $3.78 to $15.23 (a factor of 4). Baron and Greene (1996) found no effect from varying lives saved by a factor of ten. Fetherstonhaugh et. al. (1997), in a paper entitled "Insensitivity to the Value of Human Life: A Study of Psychophysical Numbing", found evidence that our
perception of human deaths, and valuation of human lives, obeys Weber's Law - meaning that we use a logarithmic scale. And indeed, studies of scope neglect in which the quantitative variations are huge enough to elicit any sensitivity at all, show small linear increases in Willingness-To-Pay corresponding to exponential increases in scope. Kahneman et. al. (1999) interpret this as an additive effect of scope affect and prototype affect - the prototype image elicits most of the emotion, and the scope elicits a smaller amount of emotion which is added (not multiplied) with the first amount. Albert Szent-Gyrgyi said: "I am deeply moved if I see one man suffering and would risk my life for him. Then I talk impersonally about the possible pulverization of our big cities, with a hundred million dead. I am unable to multiply one man's suffering by a hundred million." Human emotions take place within an analog brain. The human brain cannot release enough neurotransmitters to feel emotion a thousand times as strong as the grief of one funeral. A prospective risk going from 10,000,000 deaths to 100,000,000 deaths does not multiply by ten the strength of
our determination to stop it. It adds one more zero on paper for our eyes to glaze over, an effect so small that one must usually jump several orders of magnitude to detect the difference experimentally.
A2: Fiat = Illusion

1. They get links to the kritik because of the case, so we should be able to defend advantages from it. 2. Saying fiat is illusory doesnt mean that we shouldnt debate about the hypothetical implementation of the plan thats what debate is about. We know the plan wont happen if the judge votes aff. 3. This is a bad way to view the debate: a. Fairnessthe neg will always win because to be topical, the aff always has to defend fiat and government action b. Education- policy debate loses all of its educational value if we dont talk about government action because that is the focus of the resolution and policy debate.
A2: Generic Indicts

1. Their authors are biased too they are paid off by _____ - dont evaluate any of their claims, at worst this is a reason the bias arguments goes away. 2. Dont let them indict our claims without answering our warrants first, their indicts means nothing if they cant disprove our impact claims Yudkowsky 6 [Eliezer, research and fellow director, singularity institute for artificial intelligence, Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global
risks, Aug 31, http://singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf] Every true idea which discomforts you will seem to match the pattern of at least one psychological error. Robert Pirsig said: "The
world's biggest fool can say the sun is shining, but that doesn't make it dark out." If you believe someone is guilty of a psychological error, then demonstrate your competence by first demolishing their consequential factual errors. If there are no factual errors, then what matters the psychology? The temptation of psychology is that, knowing a little psychology, we can meddle in arguments where we have no technical expertise - instead sagely analyzing the psychology of the disputants. If someone wrote a novel about an asteroid strike destroying modern civilization, then someone might criticize that novel as extreme, dystopian, apocalyptic; symptomatic of the author's naive inability to deal with a complex technological society. We should recognize this as a literary criticism, not a scientific one; it is about good or bad novels, not good or bad hypotheses. To quantify
the annual probability of an asteroid strike in real life, one must study astronomy and the historical record: no amount of literary criticism can put a number on it. Garreau (2005) seems to hold that a scenario of a mind slowly increasing in capability, is more mature and sophisticated than a scenario of extremely rapid intelligence increase. But that's a technical question, not a matter of taste; no amount of psychologizing can tell you the exact slope of that curve. It's harder to abuse heuristics and biases than psychoanalysis. Accusing someone of conjunction fallacy leads naturally into listing the specific details that you think are burdensome and drive down the joint probability. Even so, do not lose track of the real-world facts of primary interest; do not let the argument become about psychology. Despite all dangers and temptations, it is better to know about psychological biases than to not know. Otherwise we will walk directly into the whirling helicopter blades of life. But be very careful not to have too much fun accusing others of biases. That is the road that leads to becoming a sophisticated arguer - someone who, faced with any discomforting argument, finds at once a bias in it. The one whom you must watch above all is yourself. Jerry Cleaver said: "What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It's overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball."
--Cap Specific
Prefer our evidence: The negatives arguments are written by hacks that are only attempting to make their place in the capitalist society they kritik Saunders in 7 Peter Saunders, professor emeritus at the Centre for Independent Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management.
He was previously of University of Sussex in England, WHY CAPITALISM IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL, 2007, http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer%200708/saunders_summer07.html Joseph Schumpeter offered part of the answer. He
observed that capitalism has brought into being an educated class that has no responsibility for practical affairs, and that this class can only make a mark by criticising the system that feeds them.(27) Intellectuals attack capitalism because that is how they sell books and build careers. More recently, Robert Nozick has noted that intellectuals spend their childhoods excelling at school, where they occupy the top positions in the hierarchy, only to find later in life that their market value is much lower than they believe they are worth. Seeing mere traders enjoying higher pay than them is unbearable, and it generates irreconcilable disaffection with the market system.(28) But the best explanation for the intellectuals distaste for capitalism was offered by Friedrich Hayek in The Fatal Conceit.(29) Hayek understood that capitalism offends intellectual pride, while socialism flatters it . Humans like to believe they can design better systems than those that tradition or evolution have bequeathed. We distrust evolved systems, like markets, which seem to work without intelligent direction according to laws and dynamics that no one fully understands. Nobody planned the global capitalist system, nobody runs it, and nobody really comprehends it. This particularly offends intellectuals, for capitalism renders them redundant. It gets on perfectly well without them. It does not need them to make it run, to coordinate it, or to redesign it. The intellectual critics of capitalism believe they know what is good for us, but millions of people interacting in the marketplace keep rebuffing them. This, ultimately, is why they believe capitalism is bad for the soul: it fulfils human needs without first seeking their moral approval.
The anti-capitalist intellectuals only critique capitalism because they believe that they would have more control in a socialist society. Nozick in 97 Robert Nozick, an American philosopher, and professor at Harvard University, SOCRATIC PUZZLES, 1997, page 283.
Various explanations
have been proposed for the opposition of intellectuals to capitalism. One favored by the neothey do well economically under capitalism, they would do even better, they think, under a socialist society where their power would be greater. In a market society, there is no central
conservatives focuses on the group interests of intellectuals. Though concentration of power and if anyone has power or appears to have it, it is the successful entrepreneur and businessman. The rewards of material wealth certainly are his. In
a socialist society, however, it would be wordsmith intellectuals who staff the government bureaucracies, who suggest its policies, formulate them, and oversee their implementation. A socialist society, the intellectuals think, is one in which they would rulean idea, unsurprisingly, that they find appealing. (Recall Platos description in the Republic of the best society as one
in which they philosophers rule.)
A2: Genocide
1. They dont have a single piece of evidence that compares genocide with extinction. Their evidence that says we should act regardless of consequences doesnt assume that those consequences result in more people being killed. 2. Extinction is an extremely large-scale genocide that means it outweighs. 3. Every life is an end in and of itself All lives are infinitely valuable, the only ethical option is to maximize the number saved Cummisky 96 (David, professor of philosophy at Bates, Kantian Consequentialism, p. 131)
Finally, even
if one grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for killing one because dignity cannot be added and summed in this waythis point still does not justify deontological constraints. On the extreme interpretation, why would not killing one person be a stronger obligation than saving two persons? If I am concerned with the priceless dignity of each, it would seem that I may still save two; it is just that my reason cannot be that the two
compensate for the loss of the one. Consider Hill's example of a priceless object: If I can save two of three priceless statutes only by destroying one, then I cannot claim that saving two makes up for the loss of the one. But similarly, the loss of the two is not outweighed by the one that was not destroyed. Indeed, even
if dignity cannot be simply summed up, how is the extreme interpretation inconsistent with the idea that I should save as many priceless objects as possible? Even if two do not simply outweigh and thus compensate for the loss of the one, each is priceless; thus, I have good reason to save as many as I can. In short, it is not clear how the extreme interpretation justifies the ordinary killing/letting-die distinction or even how it conflicts with
the conclusion that the more persons with dignity who are saved, the better.8
4. Exclusion is a reason to vote aff They advocate that the group they save is more important than the rest of humanity Since all lives are equal, you should treat them that way by protecting the greatest number Dworkin 77 (Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University (Ronald 1977, Taking Rights Seriously pg 274-5)
The liberal conception of equality sharply limits the extent to which ideal arguments of policy may be used to justify any constraint on liberty. Such arguments cannot be used if the idea in question is itself controversial within the community. Constraints cannot be defended, for example, directly on the ground that they contribute to a culturally sophisticated community, whether the community wants the sophistication or not, because that argument would violate the canon of the liberal conception of
Utilitarian argument of policy, however, would seem secure from that objection. They do not suppose that any form of life is inherently more valuable than any other, but instead base their claim, that constraints on liberty are necessary to advance some collective goal of the community, just on the fact that that goal happens to be desired more widely or more deeply than any other. Utilitarian arguments of policy, therefore, seem not to oppose but on the contrary to embody the fundamental right of equal concern and respect, because they treat the wishes of each member of the community on a par with the wishes of any other, with no bonus or discount reflecting the view that that member is more or less worthy of concern, or his views more or less worthy of
equality that prohibits a government from relying on the claim that certain forms of life are inherently more valuable than others. respect, than any other. This appearance of egalitarianism has, I think, been the principal source of the great appeal that utilitarianism has had, as a general political philosophy, over the last century. In Chapter 9, however, I pointed out that the egalitarian character of a utilitarian argument is often an illusion. I will not repeat, but only summarize, my argument here. Utilitarian arguments fix on the fact that a particular constraint on liberty will make more people happier, or satisfy more of their preferences, depending upon whether psychological or preference utilitarianism is in play. But people's overall preference for one policy rather than another may be seen to include, on further analysis, both preference that are personal, because they state a preference for the assignment of one set of goods or opportunities to him and preferences that are external, because they state a preference for one assignment of goods or opportunities to others. But a utilitarian argument that assigns critical weight to the external preferences of members of the community will not be egalitarian in the sense under consideration. It will not respect the right of everyone to be treated with equal concern and respect.
A2: _______ology
1. Extinction outweighs- life is a pre-requisite, we can alter our way of thinking only if we are alive to do so. 2. Policy change is necessary to alleviate real and on-going suffering. Abstract claims of epistemology and ontology and non-impacts like technological rationality are ivory-tower constructions that condemn millions to death Jarvis 00 (Darryl, Senior Lecturer in International Relations University of Sydney, International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism, p. 128-130)
Questions of Relevance, Rhetoric, Fiction, and Irrationalism While Ashley's rhetoric serves to effect a number of political moves, it also helps conceal a series of blatant weaknesses implicit in his poststructural theory. The first of these we might identify as the rhetorical invention and reification of fictitious enemies, a mechanism that not only validates Ashley's project but gives it meaning. Frequently, for example, what Ashley
purports to be attacking turns out to be a
fictitious, or at best grossly exaggerated, entity. In his adoption of the "megahistorical unit, modernity," for example, Ashley presupposes an
homogeneous, coherent phenomenon able to be studieda suggestion most would find outrageous. As Tony Porter notes, "giving coherence to such a phenomenon requires doing violence to its diversity." Enlightenment thought can no more be reduced to a symmetric intellectual tradition or historical moment than can postmodernism." Indeed, emasculating such an intellectual potpourri of ideas whose only similarity is dissonance seems peculiar considering Ashley's persistent commitment to venerate difference and discursive practices. To suppose that liberalism, Marxism, conservatism, fascism, leninism, or assorted other -isms that fall under the modernist rubric are contiguous is as preposterous as conflating Derrida with Foucault, Lyotard, and Baudrillard. Yet the hubris of Ashley's entire poststructural theory rests on such simplification and not only with the concept of modernity. Positivism, realism, or technical rationality, for instance, are all reduced to overly simplistic caricatures, assumed ubiquitous, and distilled into three or four rudimentary propositions that Ashley then sets about deconstructing. Technical
rationality simply becomes nonreflexive problem-solving; positivism, a system of thought that divides subject from object and fact from value; while realism is reduced to the ontological presumption of the state-as-actor. While simplicity has unquestionable heuristic value, crude reductionism for the sake of political opportunism is plainly defamatory. Rather than parsimonious theory, what Ashley delivers is a series of fictitious straw men, theoretically fabricated along with crude ontological and epistemological presumptions that render them congenitally deformed and thus susceptible to Ashley's poststructural interpretivism. In reality, of course, no such caricatures exist.
Positivists, realists, and modernists alike are considerably more complex, divergent, and reflexive than Ashley would have us believe. In the case of realism, for example, Ashley conflates the writings of Kenneth Waltz, Robert Keohane, Stephen Krasner, Robert W. Tucker, George Modelski, Charles Kindleberger, and Robert Gilpin, disregarding the disparate set of professional and political perspectives that makes each one distinctive and debate among them ferocious." However, it is on the basis of these exaggerated caricatures that Ashley's raison d'tre for poststructural theory and political transformation ultimately rests. Perhaps more alarming though is the outright violence Ashley recommends in response to what at best seem trite, if not imagined, injustices. Inculpating
modernity, positivism, technical rationality, or realism with violence, racism, war, and countless other crimes not only smacks of anthropomorphism but, as demonstrated by Ashley's torturous prose and reasoning, requires a dubious logic to make such connections in the first place. Are we really to believe that ethereal entities like positivism, modernism, or realism emanate a "violence" that marginalizes dissidents? Indeed, where is this violence, repression, and marginalization? As selfprofessed dissidents supposedly exiled from the discipline, Ashley
and Walker appear remarkably well integrated into the academyvocal, published, and at the center of the Third Debate and the forefront of theoretical research. Likewise, is Ashley seriously suggesting that, on the basis of this largely imagined violence, global transformation (perhaps even revolutionary violence) is a necessary, let alone desirable, response? Has the rationale for emancipation or the fight for justice been reduced to such vacuous revolutionary slogans as "Down with positivism and rationality"? The point is surely trite. Apart
from members of the academy, who has heard of positivism and who for a moment imagines that they need to be emancipated from it, or from modernity, rationality, or realism for that matter? In an era of unprecedented change and turmoil, of new political and military configurations, of war in the Balkans and ethnic cleansing, is Ashley really suggesting that some of the greatest threats facing humankind or some of the great moments of history rest on such innocuous and largely unknown nonrealities like positivism and realism? These are imagined and fictitious enemies, theoretical fabrications that represent arcane, self-serving debates superfluous to the lives of most people and,
arguably, to most issues of importance in international relations. More is the pity that such irrational and obviously abstruse debate should so occupy us at a time of great global turmoil. That it does and continues to do so reflects our lack of judicious criteria for evaluating theory and, more importantly, the lack of attachment theorists have to the real world. Certainly it is right and proper that we ponder the depths of our theoretical imaginations, engage in epistemological and ontological debate, and analyze the sociology of our knowledge." But to
suppose that this is the only task of international theory, let alone the most important one, smacks of intellectual elitism and displays a certain contempt for those who search for guidance in their daily struggles as actors in international politics. What does [this] Ashley's project, his deconstructive efforts, or valiant fight against positivism say to the truly marginalized, oppressed, and destitute? How does it help solve the plight of the poor, the displaced refugees, the casualties of war, or the emigres of death squads? Does it in any way speak to those whose actions and thoughts comprise the policy and practice of international relations? On all these questions one must answer no. This is not to say, of course, that all theory should be judged by its technical rationality and problem-solving capacity as Ashley forcefully argues. But to suppose that problem-solving technical theory is not necessaryor is in some way badis a contemptuous position that abrogates any hope of solving some of the
nightmarish realities that millions confront daily. As Holsti argues, we need ask of these theorists and their theories the ultimate question, "So what?" To what purpose do they deconstruct, problematize, destabilize, undermine, ridicule, and belittle modernist and rationalist approaches? Does this get us any further, make the world any better, or enhance the human condition? In what sense can this "debate toward [a] bottomless pit of epistemology and metaphysics" be judged pertinent, relevant, helpful, or cogent to anyone other than those foolish enough to be scholastically excited by abstract and recondite debate." Contrary to Ashley's assertions, then, a poststructural approach fails to empower the marginalized and, in fact, abandons them. Rather than analyze the political
economy of power, wealth, oppression, production, or international relations and render an intelligible understanding of these processes, Ashley succeeds in ostracizing those he portends to represent by delivering an obscure and highly convoluted discourse. If Ashley wishes to chastise structural realism for its abstractness and detachment, he must be prepared also to face similar criticism, especially when he so adamantly intends his work to address the real life plight of those who struggle at marginal places. If the relevance of Ashley's project is questionable, so too is its logic and cogency. First, we might ask to what extent the postmodern "emphasis on the textual, constructed nature of the world" represents "an unwarranted extension of approaches appropriate for literature to other areas of human practice that are more constrained by an objective reality."" All regimes, or transnational agencies are
theory is socially constructed and realities like the nation-state, domestic and international politics, obviously social fabrications. But to what extent is this observation of any real use? Just because we acknowledge that the state is a socially fabricated entity, or that the division between domestic and international society is arbitrarily inscribed does not make the reality of the state disappear or render invisible international politics. Whether socially constructed or objectively given, the argument over the ontological status of the state is of no particular moment. Does this change our experience of the state or somehow diminish the political-economic-juridical-military functions of the state? To recognize that states are not naturally inscribed but dynamic entities continually in the process of being made and reimposed and are therefore culturally dissimilar, economically different, and politically atypical, while perspicacious to our historical and theoretical understanding of the state, in no way detracts from its reality, practices, and consequences. Similarly, few would object to Ashley's hermeneutic interpretivist understanding of the international sphere as an artificially
inscribed demarcation. But, to paraphrase Holsti again, so what? This does not make its effects any less real, diminish its importance in our lives, or excuse us from paying serious attention to it. That international politics and states would not exist without subjectivities is a banal tautology. The
point, surely, is to move beyond this and study these processes. Thus, while intellectually interesting, constructivist theory is not an end point as Ashley seems to think, where we all throw up our hands and announce there are no foundations and all reality is an arbitrary social construction. Rather, it should be a means of recognizing the structurated nature of our being and the reciprocity between subjects and structures through
history. Ashley, however, seems not to want to do this, but only to deconstruct the state, international politics, and international theory on the basis that none of these is objectively given but fictitious entities that arise out of modernist practices of representation. While an interesting theoretical enterprise, it is of no great consequence to the study of international politics. Indeed, structuration theory has long taken care of these ontological dilemmas that otherwise seem to preoccupy Ashley."
3. No prior questions in IR- problem driven approaches are best Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton, Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)
this is the case, it is a philosophical weaknessbut this does not undermine the point that, for a certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theory-construction from philosophical first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problem-driven approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action,
event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises.
A2: Reps 1st

1. Reps not 1st a. Reality shapes discourse the way the international arena changes shapes the way we perceive and talk about it; what we say in this round will in no way affect anything in reality. b. Discursive justification of saying we need to do the plan for good reasons and to save lives outweigh any negative affects from using apocalyptic rhetoric. c. Double bind - if discourse comes first, they attempt to maintain the system as much as the aff, their contradictory rhetoric undermines the ability of their alt to solve. Or it proves that the perm can overcome the link.
2. Changing representational practices hinders understanding of policy by overlooking questions of agency and material structures
Tuathail, 96
(Gearoid, Department of Georgraphy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Political Geography, 15(6-7), p. 664, science direct)
While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse and concerns of foreign-policy decision- makers are quite different, so different that they constitute a distinctive problem- solving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a danger that academics assume that the discourses they engage are more significant in the practice of foreign policy and the exercise of power than they really are. This is not,
however, to minimize the obvious importance of academia as a general institutional structure among many that sustain certain epistemic communities in particular states. In general, I do not disagree with Dalbys fourth point about politics and discourse except to note that his statement-Precisely
because reality could be represented in particular ways political decisions could be taken, troops and material moved and war fought-evades the important question of agency that I noted in my review essay. The assumption that it is representations that make action possible is inadequate by itself. Political, military and economic structures, institutions, discursive networks and leadership are all crucial in explaining social action and should be theorized together with representational practices. Both here and earlier, Dalbys reasoning inclines towards a form of idealism. In response to Dalbys fifth point (with its three subpoints), it is worth
noting, first, that his book is about the CPD, not the Reagan administration. He analyzes certain CPD discourses, root the geographical reasoning practices of the Reagan administration nor its public-policy reasoning on national security. Dalbys book is narrowly textual; the general contextuality of the Reagan administration is not dealt with. Second, let me simply note that I find that the distinction between critical theorists and post- structuralists is a little too rigidly and heroically drawn by Dalby and others. Third, Dalbys interpretation of the reconceptualization of national security in Moscow as heavily influenced by dissident peace researchers in Europe is highly idealist, an interpretation that ignores the structural and ideological crises facing the Soviet elite at that time. Gorbachevs reforms and his new security discourse were also strongly self- interested, an ultimately futile attempt to save the Communist Party and a discredited regime of power from disintegration. The issues raised by Simon Dalby in his comment are important ones for all those interested in the practice of critical geopolitics. While I agree with Dalby that questions of discourse are extremely important ones for political geographers to engage, there
is a danger of fetishizing this concern with discourse so that we neglect the institutional and the sociological, the materialist and the cultural, the political and the geographical contexts within which particular discursive strategies become significant. Critical geopolitics, in
other words, should not be a prisoner of the sweeping ahistorical cant that sometimes accompanies poststructuralism nor convenient reading strategies like the identity politics narrative; it needs to always be open to the patterned mess that is human history.
3. Recognizing international relations is socially constructed is uselesschanging representational practices doesnt alter the material reality of state practices or help create better policy for the oppressed Jarvis, 00 (Darryl, lecturer in IR at the University of Sydney, International relations and the challenge of postmodernism, 2000, p. 128-130)
Perhaps more alarming though is the outright violence Ashley recom-mends in response to what at best seem trite, if not imagined, injustices. Inculpating modernity, positivism, technical rationality, or realism with violence, racism, war, and countless other crimes not only smacks of anthropomorphism but, as demonstrated by Ashley's torturous prose and reasoning, requires a dubious logic to malce such connections in the first place. Are we really to believe that ethereal entities like positivism, mod-ernism, or realism emanate a "violence" that marginalizes dissidents? Indeed, where is this violence, repression, and marginalization? As selfprofessed dissidents supposedly exiled from the discipline, Ashley and Walker appear remarkably well integrated into the academy-vocal, pub-lished, and at the center of the Third Debate and the forefront of theo-retical research. Likewise, is Ashley seriously suggesting that, on the basis of this largely imagined violence, global transformation (perhaps even rev-olutionary violence) is a necessary, let alone desirable, response? Has the rationale for emancipation or the fight for justice been reduced to such vacuous revolutionary slogans as "Down with positivism and rationality"? The point is surely trite. Apart from members of the academy, who has heard of positivism and who for a moment imagines that they need to be emancipated from it, or from modernity, rationality, or realism for that matter? In
an era of unprecedented change and turmoil, of new political and military configurations, of war in the Balkans and ethnic cleansing, is Ashley really suggesting that some of the greatest threats facing humankind or some of the great moments of

history rest
on such innocu-ous and largely unknown nonrealities like positivism and realism? These are imagined and fictitious enemies, theoretical fabrications that represent arcane, self-serving debates superfluous to the lives of most people and, arguably, to most issues of importance in international relations. More is the pity that such irrational and obviously abstruse debate should so occupy us at a time of great global turmoil. That it does and continues to do so reflects our lack of judicious criteria for evaluating the-ory and, more importantly, the lack of attachment theorists have to the real world. Certainly it is right and proper that we ponder the depths of our
theoretical imaginations, engage in epistemological and ontological debate, and analyze the sociology of our lmowledge.37 But to suppose that this is the only task of international theory, let alone the most important one, smacks of intellectual elitism and displays a certain contempt for those who search for guidance in their daily struggles as actors in international politics. What
does Ashley's project, his deconstructive efforts, or valiant fight against positivism say to the truly marginalized, oppressed, and des-titute? How does it help solve the plight of the poor, the displaced refugees, the casualties of war, or the emigres of death squads? Does it in any way speak to those whose actions and thoughts comprise the policy and practice of international relations? On all these questions one must answer no. This is not to say, of course, that all theory should be judged by its technical rationality and problem-solving capacity as Ashley forcefully argues. But to suppose that problem-solving technical theory is not necessary-or is in some way bad-is a contemptuous position that abrogates any hope of solving some of the nightmarish realities that millions confront daily. As Holsti argues, we need ask
of these theorists and their theories the ultimate question, "So what?" To what purpose do they deconstruct, problematize, destabilize, undermine, ridicule, and belittle modernist and rationalist approaches? Does this get us any further, make the world any better, or enhance the human condition? In what sense can this "debate toward [a] bottomless pit of epistemology and metaphysics" be judged pertinent, relevant, help-ful, or cogent to anyone other than those foolish enough to be scholasti-cally excited by abstract and recondite debate.38 Contrary to Ashley's assertions, then, a
poststructural approach fails to empower the
marginalized and, in fact, abandons them. Rather than ana-lyze the political economy of power, wealth, oppression, production, or international relations and render an intelligible understanding of these processes, Ashley succeeds in ostracizing those he portends to represent by delivering an obscure and highly convoluted discourse. If Ashley wishes to chastise structural realism for its abstractness and detachment, he
must be prepared also to face similar criticism, especially when he so adamantly intends his work to address the real life plight of those who struggle at marginal places. If the relevance of Ashley's project is questionable, so too is its logic and cogency. First, we
might ask to what extent the postmodern "empha-sis on the textual, constructed nature of the world" represents "an unwar-ranted extension of approaches appropriate for literature to other areas of human practice that are more constrained by an objective reality. "39 All theory is socially constructed and realities like the nation-state, domestic and international politics, regimes, or transnational agencies are obviously social fabrications. But to what extent is this observation of any real use? Just because we acknowledge that the state is a socially fabricated entity, or that the division between domestic and international society is arbitrar-ily inscribed does not make the reality of the state disappear or render invisible international politics. Whether socially constructed or objectively given, the argument over the ontological status of the state is of no particular moment. Does this change our experience of the state or somehow diminish the political-economic-juridical-military functions of the state? To recognize
that states are not naturally inscribed but dynamic entities continually in the process of being made and reimposed and are therefore culturally dissimilar, economically different, and politically atypical, while perspicacious to our historical and theoretical understanding of the state, in no way detracts from its reality, practices, and consequences. Similarly, few would object to Ashley's hermeneutic interpretivist understanding of the international sphere as an artificially inscribed demarcation. But, to paraphrase Holsti again, so what? This does not malce its effects any less real, diminish its importance in our lives, or excuse us from paying serious attention to it.
That international politics and states would not exist with-out subjectivities is a banal tautology. The point, surely, is to move beyond this and study these processes. Thus, while intellectually interesting, con-structivist theory is not an end point as Ashley seems to think, where we all throw up our hands and announce there are no foundations and all real-ity is an arbitrary social construction. Rather, it should be a means of rec-ognizing the structurated nature of our being and the reciprocity between subjects and structures through history. Ashley, however, seems not to want to do this, but only to deconstruct the state, international politics, and international theory on the basis that none of these is objectively given but fictitious entities that arise out of modernist practices of representation. While an interesting theoretical enterprise, it is of no great consequence to the study of international politics. Indeed, structuration theory has long talcen care of
these ontological dilemmas that otherwise seem to preoccupy Ashley.40
A2: Role of the Ballot

1. The ballot doesnt do anything, it just represents that one team debated better than the other, giving them the ballot wont change anything. 2. The role of the ballot argument just says that the judge should prioritize one type of impact over another the role of the ballot should be to reduce existential risk because life is a pre-requisite to their impacts, we can alter our epistemology, regain our value to life, or fight social problems only if we are alive to do so.
A2: Root Cause

1. No root cause the idea that there is a single concept that caused all war and violence in history doesnt make any sense; various political, cultural, and other differences are causes of conflict.
And, we control uniqueness, even if they win they control the root cause of conflict they cant act fast enough to solve our specific claims. 2. Wars dont have single causes consensus of experts Cashman 00 (Greg, Professor of Political Science at Salisbury State University What Causes war?: An introduction to theories of international conflict pg. 9)
Two warnings need to be issued at this point. First, while we have been using a single variable explanation of war merely for the sake of simplicity, multivariate
explanations of war are likely to be much more powerful. Since social and political behaviors are extremely complex, they are almost never explainable through a single factor. Decades of research have led most analysts to reject monocausal explanations of war. For instance, international relations theorist J. David Singer suggests that we ought to move away from
the concept of causality since it has become associated with the search for a single cause of war; we should instead redirect our activities toward discovering explanationsa term that implies multiple causes of war, but also [there
is] a certain element of randomness or chance in their
occurrence. 3. Monocausal explanations impoverish scholarship Martin 90 Brian Martin, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Wollongong, Australia, Uprooting War, 1990 edition
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw13.html In this chapter and in the six preceding chapters I have examined a
number of structures and factors which have some connection with the war system. There is much more that could be said about any one of these structures, and other factors which could be examined. Here I wish to note one important point: attention should not be focussed on one single factor to the exclusion of others. This is often done for example by some Marxists who look only at capitalism as a root of war and other social problems, and by some feminists who attribute most problems to patriarchy. The danger of monocausal explanations is that they may lead to an inadequate political practice. The revolution may be followed by the persistence or even expansion of many problems which were not addressed by the single-factor perspective. The one connecting feature which I perceive in the structures underlying war is an unequal distribution of power. This unequal distribution is socially
organised in many different ways, such as in the large-scale structures for state administration, in capitalist ownership, in male domination within families and elsewhere, in control over knowledge by experts, and in the use of force by the military. Furthermore, these different systems of power are interconnected. They often support each other, and sometimes conflict. This means that the struggle
against war can and must be undertaken at many different
levels. It ranges from struggles to undermine state power to struggles to undermine racism, sexism and other forms of domination at the level of the individual and
the local community. Furthermore, the different struggles need to be linked together. That is the motivation for analysing the roots of war and developing strategies for grassroots movements to uproot them.
--Cap =/= Root Cause

[ ] Capitalism not the root cause of war- empirics prove, and the alt doesnt solve Martin 90 (Brian Martin, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Wollongong, Australia, Uprooting War, 1990 edition,
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw13.html) The discussion so far concerns capitalist firms within a particular state. The wider question is, what
role does the world capitalist system play in the war system? When examining particular wars, the immediate role of profit and accumulation are often minimal. Examples are World War Two, the Indochinese War and the many Middle East wars. Even in many colonial empires, immediate economic advantages for the capitalist class have played a minor role compared to issues
of expansion and maintenance of state power. The role of capitalism mainly entered through its structuring of economic relations which are supervised separately and jointly by capitalist states. The main military service of the state to capitalists in the international system is to oppose movements which threaten the viability of capitalist economic relations. This includes state socialism and all movements for self-management. At the same time, the way this state intervention operates, namely through separate and potentially competing state apparatuses, can conflict with the security of capitalism. Wars
and military expenditures can hurt national economies, as in the case of US government expenditures for fighting in Vietnam. Only some struggles against
capitalism have potential for challenging the war system. Efforts to oppose capital by mobilising the power of the state do little in this direction. In particular, promotion of state socialism (the destruction of capitalism within a state mode, with the maintenance of bureaucratic control and military power) does little to address the problem of war. The trouble here is that much
of the socialist left sees capitalism as the sole source of evil in the world. This approach is blind to the roots of social problems that do not primarily grow out of class domination, including racism, sexism, environmental degradation and war. Because of this blindness, even the struggle against capitalism is weakened, since attention is not paid to systems of power such as patriarchy and bureaucracy which are mobilised to support capitalism as well as other interests.
--Otherization =/= Root Cause

[ ] Otherness not the root cause of war Volf 2 [Miroslav Volf (Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Croatia and Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.]) has been Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale
Divinity School since 1998. Educated at the University of Zagreb, Evangelical Theological Seminary in Zagreb, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Eberhard-KarlsUniversitat, Tubingen (Dr. theol., 1986; Dr. theol, habil., 1995), he also taught at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia (1979-80, 1984-91) and Fuller Theological Seminary (1991-98). Journal of Ecumenical Studies 1-1-02]
Though othernesscultural, ethnic, religious, racial differenceis an important factor in our relations with others, we should not [be] overestimate[d] it as a cause of conflict. During the war in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, I was often asked, What is this war about? Is it about religious and cultural differences? Is it about economic advantage? Is it about political power? Is it about land? The correct response was, of course, that the war was about all of these things. Monocausal explanations of major eruptions of violence are rarely right. Moreover, various causes are intimately intertwined, and each contributes to others. That holds true also for otherness, which I am highlighting here.
--Patriarchy =/= Root Cause

[ ] Patriarchy is not the root cause of war.
Martin 90 Brian Martin. 1990.
(Professor of Social Sciences in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Uprooting War. http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/uw10.html) While these connections between war and male domination are suggestive, they do not amount to a clearly defined link between the two.
It is too simplistic to say that male violence against women leads directly to organised mass warfare. Many soldiers kill in combat but are tender with their families; many male doctors are dedicated professionally to relieving suffering but batter their wives. The problem of war cannot be reduced to the problem of individual violence. Rather, social relations are structured to promote particular kinds of violence in particular circumstances. While there are some important connections between individual male violence and collective violence in war (rape in war is a notable one), these connections are more symptoms than causes of the relationship between patriarchy and other war-linked structures. [ ] Identifying patriarchy as the root cause of violence cause ignorance about other forms of oppression like racism, especially in the context of policy debate Crenshaw 02 (Carrie, PhD, Former President of CEDA, Perspectives In Controversy: Selected Articles from Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, 2002,
p. 119-126) Feminism is not dead. It is alive and well in intercollegiate debate.
resolutions. While I applaud these initial efforts to explore feminist thought, I am concerned that
Increasingly, students rely on feminist authors to inform their analysis of such arguments only exemplify the general
absence of sound causal reasoning in debate rounds. Poor causal reasoning results from a debate practice that privileges empirical proof over rhetorical proof, fostering ignorance of the subject matter being debated. To illustrate my point, I claim that debate arguments about feminists suffer from a reductionism that tends to marginalize the voices of significant feminist authors. David Zarefsky made a persuasive case for the value of causal reasoning in intercollegiate debate as far back as 1979. He argued that causal arguments are desirable for four reasons. First, causal analysis increases the control of the arguer over events by promoting understanding of them. Second, the use of causal reasoning increases rigor of analysis and fairness in the decision-making process. Third, causal arguments promote understanding of the philosophical paradox that presumably good people tolerate the existence of evil. Finally, causal reasoning supplies good reasons for "commitments to policy choices or to systems of belief which transcend whim, caprice, or the non-reflexive "claims of immediacy" (117-9). Rhetorical proof plays an important role in the analysis of causal relationships.
This is true despite the common assumption that the identification of cause and effect relies solely upon empirical investigation. For Zarefsky, there are three types of causal reasoning. The first type of causal reasoning describes the application of a covering law to account for physical or material conditions that cause a resulting event This type of causal reasoning requires empirical proof prominent in scientific investigation. A second type of causal reasoning requires the assignment of responsibility. Responsible human beings as agents cause certain events to happen; that is, causation resides in human beings (107-08). A third type of causal claim explains the existence of a causal relationship. It functions "to provide reasons to justify a belief that a causal connection exists" (108). The second and third types of causal arguments rely on rhetorical proof, the provision of "good reasons" to substantiate arguments about human responsibility or explanations for the existence of a causal relationship (108). I contend that the practice of intercollegiate debate privileges the first type of causal analysis. It reduces questions of human motivation and explanation to a level of empiricism appropriate only for causal questions concerning physical or material conditions. Arguments about feminism clearly illustrate this phenomenon. Substantive debates about feminism usually take one of two forms. First, on the affirmative, debaters argue that some aspect of the resolution is a manifestation of patriarchy. For example, given the spring 1992 resolution, "[rjesolved: That advertising degrades the quality of life," many affirmatives argued that the portrayal of women as beautiful objects for men's consumption is a manifestation of patriarchy that results in tangible harms to women such as rising rates of eating disorders. The fall 1992 topic, "(rjesolved: That the welfare system exacerbates the problems of the urban poor in the United States," also had its share of patriarchy cases. Affirmatives typically argued that women's dependence upon a patriarchal welfare system results in increasing rates of women's poverty. In addition to these concrete harms to individual women, most affirmatives on both topics, desiring
"big impacts," argued that the effects of patriarchy include nightmarish totalitarianism and/or nuclear annihilation. On the negative, many debaters countered with arguments that the some
aspect of the resolution in some way sustains or energizes the feminist movement in resistance to patriarchal harms. For example, some negatives argued that sexist advertising provides an impetus for the reinvigoration of the feminist movement and/or feminist consciousness, ultimately solving the threat of patriarchal nuclear annihilation. likewise, debaters negating the welfare topic argued that the state of the welfare system is the key issue around which the feminist movement is mobilizing or that the consequence of the welfare system - breakup of the patriarchal nuclear family -undermines patriarchy as a whole. Such
arguments seem to have two assumptions in common. First, there is a single feminism. As a result, feminists are transformed into feminism. Debaters speak of feminism as a single, monolithic, theoretical and pragmatic entity and feminists as women with identical m otivations, methods, and goals. Second, these arguments assume that patriarchy is the single or root cause of all forms of oppression. Patriarchy not only is responsible for sexism and the consequent oppression of women, it also is the cause of totalitarianism, environmental degradation, nuclear war, racism, and capitalist exploitation. These reductionist arguments reflect an unwillingness to debate about the complexities of human motivation and explanation. They betray a reliance upon a framework of proof that can explain only material conditions and physical

realities through empirical quantification. The transformation of feminists to feminism and the identification
of patriarchy as the sole cause of all oppression is related in part to the current form of intercollegiate debate practice. By "form," I refer to Kenneth Burke's
notion of form, defined as the "creation of appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite" (Counter-Statement 31). Though the framework for this understanding of form is found in literary and artistic criticism, it is appropriate in this context; as Burke notes, literature can be "equipment for living" (Biilosophy 293). He also suggests that form "is an arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence" (Counter-Statement 124). Burke observes that there are several aspects to the concept of form. One of these aspects, conventional form, involves to some degree the appeal of form as form. Progressive, repetitive, and minor forms, may be effective even though the reader has no awareness of their formality. But when a form appeals as form, we designate it as conventional form. Any form can become conventional, and be sought for itself whether it be as complex as the Greek tragedy or as compact as the sonnet (Counter-Statement 126). These concepts help to explain debaters' continuing reluctance to employ rhetorical proof in arguments about causality. Debaters
practice the convention of poor causal reasoning as a result of judges' unexamined reliance upon conventional form. Convention is the practice of arguing single-cause links to monolithic impacts that arises out of custom or usage. Conventional form is the expectation of judges that an argument will take this form. Common practice
or convention dictates that a case or disadvantage with nefarious impacts causally related to a single link will "outweigh" opposing claims in the mind of the judge. In this sense, debate arguments themselves are conventional. Debaters
practice the convention of establishing single-cause relationships to large monolithic impacts in order to conform to audience expectation. Debaters practice poor causal
reasoning because they are rewarded for it by judges. The convention of arguing single-cause links leads the judge to anticipate the certainty of the impact and to be gratified by the sequence. I suspect that the
sequence is gratifying for judges because it relieves us from the responsibility and difficulties of evaluating rhetorical proofs. We are caught between our responsibility to evaluate rhetorical proofs and our reluctance to succumb to
complete relativism and subjectivity. To take responsibility for evaluating rhetorical proof is to admit that not every question has an empirical answer. However, when we abandon our responsibility to rhetorical proofs, we sacrifice our students' understanding of causal reasoning. The
sacrifice has consequences for our students' knowledge of the subject matter they are debating. For example, when feminism is defined as a single entity, not as a pluralized movement or theory, that single entity results in the identification of patriarchy as the sole cause of oppression. The result[s] [in] is ignorance of the subject position of the particular feminist author, for highlighting his or her subject position might draw attention to the incompleteness of the causal relationship between link and impact Consequently, debaters do not challenge the basic assumptions of such argumentation and ignorance of feminists is perpetuated. Feminists are not feminism. The topics of feminist
inquiry are many and varied, as are the philosophical approaches to the study of these topics. Different authors have attempted categorization of various feminists in distinctive ways. For example, Alison Jaggar argues that feminists can be divided into four categories: liberal feminism, marxist feminism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism. While each of these feminists may share a common commitment to the improvement of women's situations, they differ from each other in very important ways and reflect divergent philosophical assumptions that make them each unique. Linda Alcoff presents an entirely different categorization of feminist theory based upon distinct understandings of the concept "woman," including cultural feminism and post-structural feminism. Karen Offen utilizes a comparative historical approach to examine two distinct modes of historical argumentation or discourse that have been used by women and their male allies on behalf of women's emancipation from male control in Western societies. These include relational feminism and individualist feminism. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron describe a whole category of French feminists that contain many distinct versions of the feminist project by French authors. Women of color and third-world feminists have argued that even these broad categorizations of the various feminism have neglected the contributions of non-white, non-Western feminists (see, for example, hooks; Hull; Joseph and Lewis; Lorde; Moraga; Omolade; and Smith). In this literature, the very definition of feminism is contested. Some feminists argue that "all feminists are united by a commitment to improving the situation of women" (Jaggar and Rothenberg xii), while others have resisted the notion of a single definition of feminism, bell hooks observes, "a central problem within feminist discourse has been our inability to either arrive at a consensus of opinion about what feminism is (or accept definitions) that could serve as points of unification" (Feminist Theory 17). The
controversy over the very definition of feminism has political implications. The power to define is the power both to include and exclude people and ideas in and from that feminism. As a result, [bjourgeois white women interested in women's rights issues have been satisfied with simple definitions for obvious reasons.
Rhetorically placing themselves in the same social category as oppressed women, they were not anxious to call attention to race and class privilege (hooks. Feminist Wieory 18). Debate
arguments that assume a singular conception of feminism include and empower the voices of race- and class-privileged women while exclude[e]ing and silenc[e]ing the voices of feminists marginalized by race and class status. This position becomes clearer when we examine the second assumption of arguments about feminism in intercollegiate debate - patriarchy is the sole cause of oppression. Important feminist thought has resisted this assumption for good reason. Designating patriarchy as the sole cause of oppression allows the subjugation of resistance to other forms of oppression like racism and classism to the struggle against sexism. Such subjugation has the effect of denigrating the legitimacy of resistance to racism and classism as struggles of equal importance. "Within feminist movement in the West, this led to the assumption that resisting patriarchal domination is a more legitimate feminist action than resisting racism and other forms of domination" (hooks. Talking Back 19). The relegation of struggles against racism and class exploitation to offspring status is not the only implication of the "sole cause" argument In addition, identifying patriarchy as the single source of oppression obscures women's perpetration of other forms of subjugation and domination, bell hooks argues that we should not obscure the reality that women can and do participate in politics of domination, as perpetrators as well as victims - that we dominate, that we are dominated. If focus on patriarchal domination masks this reality or becomes the means by which women deflect attention from the real conditions and circumstances of our lives, then women cooperate in suppressing and promoting false consciousness, inhibiting our capacity to assume responsibility for transforming ourselves and society (hooks. Talking Back 20). Characterizing
patriarchy as the sole cause of oppression allows mainstream feminists to abdicate responsibility for the exercise of class and race privilege. It casts the struggle against class exploitation and racism as secondary concerns. Current debate practice promotes ignorance of these issues because debaters appeal to conventional form, the expectation of judges that they will isolate a single link
to a large impact Feminists become feminism and patriarchy becomes the sole cause of all evil. Poor causal arguments arouse and fulfill the expectation of judges by allowing us to surrender our responsibility to evaluate rhetorical proof for complex causal relationships. The
result is either the mar-ginalization or colonization of certain feminist voices. Arguing feminism in debate rounds risks trivializing feminists. Privileging the act of speaking about feminism over the content of speech "often turns the voices and beings of non-white women into commodity, spectacle" (hooks, Talking Back 14). Teaching sophisticated causal reasoning enables our students to learn more concerning the subject matter about which they argue. In this case, students would learn more about the multiplicity of feminists instead of reproducing the marginalization of many feminist voices in the debate itself.
The content of the speech of feminists must be investigated to subvert the colonization of exploited women. To do so, we must explore alternatives to the formal expectation of single-cause links to enormous impacts for appropriation of the marginal voice threatens the very core of self-determination and free self-expression for exploited and oppressed peoples. If the identified audience, those spoken to, is determined solely by ruling groups who control production and distribution, then it is easy for the marginal voice striving for a hearing to allow what is said to be overdetermined by the needs of that majority group who appears to be listening, to be tuned in (hooks, Talking Back 14). At this point, arguments
about feminism in intercollegiate debate seem to be overdetermined by the expectation of common practice, the "game" that we play in assuming there is such a thing as a direct and sole causal link to a monolithic impact To play that game, we have gone along with the idea that there is a single feminism and the idea that patriarchal impacts can account for all oppression. In making this critique, I am by no means
discounting the importance of arguments about feminism in intercollegiate debate. In fact, feminists contain the possibility of a transformational politic for two reasons. First, feminist concerns affect each individual intimately. We are most likely to encounter patriarchal domination "in an ongoing way in everyday life. Unlike other forms of domination, sexism directly shapes and determines relations of power in our private lives, in familiar social spaces..." (hooks. Talking Back 21). Second, the methodology of feminism, consciousness-raising, contains within it the possibility of real societal transformation. "lE]ducation for critical consciousness can be extended to include politicization of the self that focuses on creating understanding the ways sex, race, and class together determine our individual lot and our collective experience" (hooks, Talking Back 24). Observing the incongruity between advocacy of single-cause relationships and feminism does not discount the importance of feminists to individual or societal consciousness raising.
--Poverty =/= Root Cause

[ ] Poverty not a statically significant cause of war Smoke and Harman 87 (Richard Smoke BA Harvard magna cum laude, PhD MIT, Prof. @ Brown, Winner Bancroft Prize in History, AND Willis
Harman M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University , Paths To Peace 1987 p. 34-35) 0
The connection between poverty and war is less direct and less immediately obvious in the other direction. It is difficult to find wars that were directly caused by poverty. National leaders have not yetdeclared that more national wealth is their war aim. Statistically there is no relationship between the degree of national poverty or wealth and the frequency of warfare. Poor nations fight even though they can't afford it, as Ethiopia, one of the world's poorest countries, has been demonstrating for many years. Rich nations fight even though they have no pressing economic needs to satisfy, as Britain demonstrated in the
Falklands/Malvinas War.
A2: Util Bad

1. Every life is an end in and of itself All lives are infinitely valuable, the only ethical option is to maximize the number saved Cummisky 96 (David, professor of philosophy at Bates, Kantian Consequentialism, p. 131)
Finally, even
if one grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for killing one because dignity cannot be added and summed in this waythis point still does not justify deontological constraints. On the extreme interpretation, why would not killing one person be a stronger obligation than saving two persons? If I am concerned with the priceless dignity of each, it would seem that I may still save two; it is just that my reason cannot be that the
two compensate for the loss of the one. Consider Hill's example of a priceless object: If I can save two of three priceless statutes only by destroying one, then I cannot claim that saving two makes up for the loss of the one. But similarly, the loss of the two is not outweighed by the one that was not destroyed. Indeed, even
if dignity cannot be simply summed up, how is the extreme interpretation inconsistent with the idea that I should save as many priceless objects as possible? Even if two do not simply outweigh and thus compensate for the loss of the one, each is priceless; thus, I have good reason to save as many as I can. In short, it is not clear how the extreme interpretation justifies the ordinary killing/letting-die
distinction or even how it conflicts with the conclusion that the more persons with dignity who are saved, the better.8
2. Exclusion is a reason to vote for us They advocate that the group they save is more important than the rest of humanity Since all lives are equal, you should treat them that way by protecting the greatest number Dworkin 77 (Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University (Ronald 1977, Taking Rights Seriously pg 274-5)
The liberal conception of equality sharply limits the extent to which ideal arguments of policy may be used to justify any constraint on liberty. Such arguments cannot be used if the idea in question is itself controversial within the community. Constraints cannot be defended, for example, directly on the ground that they contribute to a culturally sophisticated community, whether the community wants the sophistication or not, because that argument would violate the canon of the liberal conception of equality that prohibits a government from relying on the claim that certain forms of life are inherently more valuable than others.
Utilitarian argument of policy, however, would seem secure from that objection. They do not suppose that any form of life is inherently more valuable than any other, but instead base their claim, that constraints on liberty are necessary to advance some collective goal of the community, just on the fact that that goal happens to be desired more widely or more deeply than any other. Utilitarian arguments of policy, therefore, seem not to oppose but on the contrary to embody the fundamental right of equal concern and respect, because they treat the wishes of each member of the community on a par with the wishes of any other, with no bonus or discount reflecting the view that that member is more or less worthy of
concern, or his views more or less worthy of respect, than any other. This appearance of egalitarianism has, I think, been the principal source of the great appeal that utilitarianism has had, as a general political philosophy, over the last century. In Chapter 9, howsever, I pointed out that the egalitarian character of a utilitarian argument is often an illusion. I will not repeat, but only summarize, my argument here. Utilitarian arguments fix on the fact that a particular constraint on liberty will make more people happier, or satisfy more of their preferences, depending upon whether psychological or preference utilitarianism is in play. But people's overall preference for one policy rather than another may be seen to include, on further analysis, both preference that are personal, because they state a preference for the assignment of one set of goods or opportunities to him and preferences that are external, because they state a preference for one assignment of goods or opportunities to others. But a utilitarian argument that assigns critical weight to the external preferences of members of the community will not be egalitarian in the sense under consideration. It will not respect the right of everyone to be treated with equal concern and respect.
A2: VTL
1. Life outweighs the claim to its value because life is a prerequisite even if value is somehow lost it can always be regained; life cant. 2. Theres always value to life Prefer our ev because of Frankls subject position. Coontz 1 Phyllis D. Coontz, PhD Graduate School of Public and International Affairs University of Pittsburgh, et al, JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY HEALTH
NURSING, 2001, 18(4), 235-246 J-Stor In the 1950s, psychiatrist
and theorist Viktor Frankl (1963) described an existential theory of purpose and meaning in life. Frankl, a long-time prisoner in a concentration camp, related several instances of transcendent states that he experienced in the midst of that terrible suffering using his own experiences and observations. He believed that these experiences allowed him and others to maintain their sense of dignity and self-worth. Frankl (1969) claimed that transcendence occurs by giving to others, being open to others and the environment, and coming to accept the reality that some situations are unchangeable. He hypothesized that life always has meaning for the individual; a person can always decide how to face adversity. Therefore, self-transcendence provides meaning and enables the discovery of meaning for a person (Frankl, 1963). Expanding Frankl's work, Reed (1991b) linked self-transcendence with mental health. Through a developmental process individuals gain an increasing understanding of who they are and are able to move out beyond themselves despite the fact that they are experiencing physical and mental pain. This expansion beyond the self occurs through in- trospection, concern about others and their well-being, and integration of the past and future to strengthen one's present life (Reed, 1991b). 3. Human extinction destroys the value to life Bostrom 11 (Nick, Prof. of Philosophy at Oxford, The Concept of Existential Risk (Draft), http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html)
We have thus far considered existential risk from the perspective of utilitarianism (combined with several simplifying assumptions). We may briefly consider how the issue might appear when viewed through the lenses of some other ethical outlooks. For example, the philosopher Robert Adams outlines a different view on these matters: I believe a better basis
for ethical theory in this area can be found in quite a different directionin a commitment to the future of humanity as a vast project, or network of overlapping projects, that is generally shared by the human race. The aspiration for a better societymore just, more rewarding, and more peacefulis a part of this project. So are the potentially endless quests for
scientific knowledge and philosophical understanding, and the development of artistic and other cultural traditions. This includes the particular cultural traditions to which we belong, in all their accidental historic and ethnic diversity. It also includes our interest in the lives of our children and grandchildren, and the hope that they will be able, in turn, to have the lives of their children and grandchildren as projects. To the extent that a policy or practice seems likely to be favorable or unfavorable
Continuity is as important to our commitment to the project of the future of humanity as it is to our commitment to the projects of our own personal futures. Just as the shape of my whole life, and its connection with my present and past, have an interest that goes beyond that of any isolated experience, so too the shape of human history over an extended period of the future, and its connection with the human present and past, have an interest that goes beyond that of the (total or average) quality of life of a population- at-a-time, considered in isolation from how it got that way. We owe, I think, some loyalty to this project of the human future. We also owe it a respect that we would owe it even if we were not of the human race ourselves, but beings from another planet who had some understanding of it. (28: 472-473) Since an existential catastrophe would either put an end to the project of the future of humanity or drastically curtail its scope for development, we would seem to have a strong prima facie reason to avoid it, in Adams view. We also note that an existential catastrophe would entail the frustration of many strong preferences, suggesting that from a
to the carrying out of this complex of projects in the nearer or further future, we have reason to pursue or avoid it. preference-satisfactionist perspective it would be a bad thing. In a similar vein, an ethical view emphasizing that public policy should be determined through informed democratic deliberation by all stakeholders would favor existential-risk mitigation if we suppose, as is plausible, that a majority of the worlds population would come to favor such policies upon reasonable deliberation (even if hypothetical future people are not included as stakeholders). We might also have custodial duties to preserve the inheritance of humanity passed on to us by our ancestors and convey it safely to our descendants.[24] We do not want to be the failing link in the chain of generations, and we ought not to delete or abandon the great epic of human civilization that humankind has been working on for thousands of years, when it is clear that the narrative is far from having reached a natural terminus. Further, many theological perspectives deplore naturalistic existential catastrophes, especially ones induced by human activities: If God created the world and the human species, one would imagine that He might be displeased if we took it upon ourselves to smash His masterpiece (or if, through our negligence or hubris, we allowed it to come to irreparable harm).[25]
4. Their no value to life is ignores the subjectivity of each persons values. Life should be first. Lee, 90 Steven Lee is the H.L.A. Hart Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Philosophy of Law and University College for Michaelmas, as
well as Visiting Research Fellow at the Changing Character of War Programme. He is a Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Reviewed work(s): Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism. by John Finnis ; Joseph M. Boyle, Jr. ; Germain Grisez ; Jefferson McMahan Source: Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1990), pp. 93-106 Published by: Blackwell Publishing Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265364 The claim that nuclear devastation and Soviet domination cannot be compared in consequentialist terms rests largely on the claim that the kinds of harm or evil involved in these outcomes are incommensurable. For, "the values of life, liberty, fairness, and so on, are diverse. How many people's lives are
equivalent to the liberty of how many-whether the same or other-persons? No one can say" (p. 241). When one considers the two outcomes, "[e]ach seems the more repugnant while one is focusing upon it" (p. 240). But this incommensurability claim is not plausible. Life and political liberty are diverse goods, but
having liberty is only part of what makes life worth living. Certainly most people would prefer loss of liberty to loss of life, and even if consequential value is not a function solely of preferences, the preferences in this case reflect a real difference in value. Even where liberty is lacking, a life has much potential for value. Of course, it is
unlikely that everyone would die in a nuclear war, but it is likely that many of the living would envy the dead. As the authors point out, however, we do not know how destructive the nuclear war might be, nor how repressive the Soviet domination. A very limited nuclear war might be preferable to a very repressive Sovietim- posed regime. But these are unlikely extremes. In terms of expected util- ities, domination is preferable to war. In this sense, Red
is better than dead,
and the consequentialist comparison can be made.
5. Human life is valuable not for its faculties or agency, but for its existence and connection with other lives deeming life as meaningless destroys the ontological core of humanity Torchia 2, Professor of Philosophy, Providence College, Phd in Philosophy, Fordham College (Joseph, Postmodernism and the Persistent Vegetative State, The
National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly Summer 2002, Vol. 2, No. 2, http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/torc/torc_01postmodernismandpvs1.html) Ultimately, Aquinas'
theory of personhood requires a metaphysical explanation that is rooted in an understanding of the primacy of the existence or esse of the human person. For humans beings, the upshot of this position is clear: while human personhood is intimately connected with a broad range of actions (including consciousness of oneself and others), the definition of personhood is not based upon any specific activity or capacity for action, but upon the primacy of esse. Indeed, human actions would have neither a cause nor any referent in the absence of a stable, abiding self that is rooted in the person's very being. A
commitment to the primacy of esse, then, allows for an adequate recognition of the importance of actions in human life, while providing a principle for the unification and stabilizing of these behavioral features. In this respect, the
human person is defined as a dynamic being which actualizes the potentiality for certain behavior or operations unique to his or her own existence. Esse thereby embraces all that the person is and is capable of doing. In the final analysis, any attempt to define the person in terms of a single attribute, activity, or capability (e.g., consciousness) flies in the face of the depth and multi-dimensionality which is part and parcel of personhood itself. To do so would abdicate the ontological core of the person and the very center which renders human activities intelligible. And Aquinas' anthropology, I submit, provides an effective philosophical lens through which the depth and profundity of the human reality comes into sharp focus. In this respect, Kenneth Schmitz draws an illuminating distinction between "person" (a term which conveys such hidden depth and profundity) and "personality" (a term which pertains to surface impressions and one's public image).40 The preoccupation with the latter term, he shows, is very much an outgrowth of the eighteenth century emphasis upon a human individuality that is understood in terms of autonomy and privacy. This notion of the isolated, atomistic individual was closely linked with a subjective focus whereby the "self" became the ultimate referent for judging reality. By extension, such a presupposition led to the conviction that only selfconsciousness provides a means of validating any claims to personhood and membership in a community of free moral agents capable of responsibilities and worthy of rights. In contrast to such an isolated and enclosed conception (i.e., whereby one is a person by virtue of being "set apart" from others as a privatized entity), Schmitz focuses upon an intimacy which presupposes a certain relation between persons. From this standpoint, intimacy is only possible through genuine self-disclosure, and the sharing of self-disclosure that allows for an intimate knowledge of the other.41 For Schmitz, such a revelation of one's inner self transcends any specific attributes or any overt capacity the individual might possess Ultimately, Schmitz argues, intimacy is rooted in the unique act of presencing, whereby the person reveals his or her personal existence. But such a
mystery only admits of a metphysical explanation, rather than an epistemological theory of meaning which confines itself to what is observable on the basis of perception or sense experience. Intimacy, then, discloses
a level of being that transcends any distinctive properties. Because intimacy has a unique capacity to disclose being, it places us in touch with the very core of personhood. Metaphysically speaking, intimacy is not grounded in the recognition of this or that characteristic a person has, but rather in the simple unqualified presence the person is.43 On the basis of my own experience with a patient in an apparently
irreversible coma state (who exhibited all of the characteristics of a PVS patient), I can personally attest to the power of intimacy to affirm a sense of that individual's dignity and worth. During the course of a ministry to people in the final stages of terminal cancer, I encountered a formerly homeless man who had been brought to the hospice after he was diagnosed with advanced brain cancer. The man was unconscious at the time of his admittance, and continued in this condition until his death some six months later. Accordingly, neither his name nor history were known to the staff. For all practical purposes, his background was and remained a complete mystery. From the postmodernist perspective, the only conclusion that could be drawn was that this man had ceased to be a person in any true moral sense, even while retaining his biological humanity (as indicated by his general appearance, vital signs, and general physiological functioning). But in all of the time that I was acquainted with him (providing him with general patient care on several occasions over a ten-week period of ministry), I never questioned the possibility that he might still enjoy an active inner life. (By what right could I have drawn a conclusion to the contrary?) This assumption, of course, was not based upon evidence derived from any overt behavior on his part (other than the inner peacefulness which he exuded). I reached this conclusion as the result of what can best be described as an intuitive awareness of what Schmitz calls "a personal presence that transcends its formalities even while it retains them."44 In short, I never doubted that the man I encountered was a person in the fullest metaphysical sense of that term. After seeing this man, touching him, and praying in his presence, I had a clear sense of a certain integrity, wholeness, and dignity that simply could not be appreciated on the basis of anything he was capable of saying or doing. It was an awareness that was rooted in my response to his very being. Such an awareness on my part, I believe, was rooted in what Schmitz describes as intimacy. But as I reflect on my encounter with this man, it seems clear that intimacy must be understood from two perspectives. On the one hand, the man himself expressed the
intimacy of his personhood by virtue of the inner self he communicated through the presence of his being. But I in turn, was receptive to this intimacy, and allowed the special communication that it afforded to transpire. This could only occur if I really opened myself to the possibility of his personhood, despite his cognitive impairment and lack of a personal history (at least one that was publicly knowable). Such
an attitude on my part, of course, took for granted the link between humanity and personhood. And such an attitude is a far cry from one which assumes from the outset that such an individual is not (and can no longer qualify as) a member of the moral community of persons.
6. Post-modern attempts to deny the intrinsic value of human existence justify the premature termination of life Torchia 2, Professor of Philosophy, Providence College, Phd in Philosophy, Fordham College (Joseph, Postmodernism and the Persistent Vegetative State, The
National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly Summer 2002, Vol. 2, No. 2, http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/torc/torc_01postmodernismandpvs1.html) I am by no means motived by some ghoulish interest in prolonging the lives of the irreversibly unconscious indefinitely, without any consideration of the circumstances or extrinsic factors surrounding individual cases. On purely humanistic grounds, I am inclined to say "Their time has come, and they should be allowed to die with dignity." But even
if one decides that it is morally permissible to "pull the plug" on PVS patients, it is vital that we reach an adequate understanding of the ontological status of these individuals. Indeed, the postmodernist outlook is fast becoming a salient feature of bioethics, and even beginning to influence public health policy decisions. In my opinion, the concept of personhood is now used in far too cavalier a fashion in contemporary bioethical discussions. It is all too easy to justify the termination of life-support by recourse to nebulous criteria of what it means to be fully human or a full moral agent. In the face of such developments, people must be encouraged to rely upon their own fundamental moral instincts for the good. Regardless of the divisiveness of moral pluralism, I believe that we are naturally inclined to sustain human life and to struggle for survival. Decisions which run counter to this pro-life inclination, I believe, are largely the result of social conditioning and a desensitizing to the moral dimension of our decisions.

2AC K Blocks

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2AC K Blocks

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2AC K Blocks 1/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 2/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 3/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 4/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 5/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

frenzy for words like epistemology and ontology

2AC K Blocks 6/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 7/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 8/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)

2AC K Blocks 9/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 10/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 11/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 12/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 13/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 14/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)

2AC K Blocks 15/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 16/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 17/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

A2: Apocalyptic Rhetoric K

Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)

2AC K Blocks 18/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 19/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 20/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 21/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 22/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

exuberant violence of Batailles texts is matched only by

the pointless dissipation of the energies they invoke.

2AC K Blocks 23/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)

2AC K Blocks 24/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 25/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 26/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 27/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah

2AC K Blocks 28/165

Valley High School Rishi Shah