133 ss morality

DDI SS Morality4/10/2023 Carlotti

Morality

Meta Information.....................................................................................................................................................3

Utilitarianism GoodUtilitarianism Good Frontline..................................................................................................................................4Utilitarianism Good Frontline..................................................................................................................................5Utilitarianism Good Frontline..................................................................................................................................6EXT – Schell 2NC...................................................................................................................................................7EXT – Extinction Mandates Util.............................................................................................................................8EXT – Extinction Mandates Util.............................................................................................................................9EXT – Nye 2NC....................................................................................................................................................10EXT – Deontology Flawed....................................................................................................................................11EXT – Goodin 2NC...............................................................................................................................................12EXT – Util K2 Policymaking................................................................................................................................13EXT – Harsanyi 2NC.............................................................................................................................................14EXT – Mulholland 2NC........................................................................................................................................15EXT – Conflicting Morals.....................................................................................................................................16Util Good – Deterrence..........................................................................................................................................17Util Good – Deterrence..........................................................................................................................................18Util Good – Rights.................................................................................................................................................19Util Good – Life Outweighs Rights.......................................................................................................................20AT: UtilRights Violations..................................................................................................................................21AT: No Ontological Foundation............................................................................................................................22AT: UtilEvil (Santos).........................................................................................................................................23AT: UtilEvil (Santos).........................................................................................................................................24AT: UtilDehumanization...................................................................................................................................25AT: Util is Selfish..................................................................................................................................................26AT: Cultural Relativism........................................................................................................................................27AT: Justifies GENOCIDE!!!..................................................................................................................................28

Deontology Not CoolDeontology Bad – Foreign Policy.........................................................................................................................29Deontology Bad – Foreign Policy.........................................................................................................................30AT: Calculation Bad (Dillon)................................................................................................................................31AT: Calculation Bad (Dillon)................................................................................................................................32AT: Calculation Bad (Dillon)................................................................................................................................33AT: Calculation Bad (Dillon)................................................................................................................................34AT: Economic Evaluation Bad..............................................................................................................................35AT: Economic Evaluation Bad..............................................................................................................................36AT: No War (Mendelbaum)..................................................................................................................................37AT: The Other (Levinas).......................................................................................................................................38AT: The Other (Levinas).......................................................................................................................................39AT: The Other (Levinas).......................................................................................................................................40<Index Continues…>

1


Morality

<Index Continues…>AT: Rescher...........................................................................................................................................................41AT: Callahan..........................................................................................................................................................42AT: Gewirth...........................................................................................................................................................43AT: Gewirth...........................................................................................................................................................44Utopianism Turn....................................................................................................................................................45

Deontology GoodDeontology Good Frontline...................................................................................................................................46Deontology Good Frontline...................................................................................................................................47Deontology Good Frontline...................................................................................................................................48No War (Mandelbaum)..........................................................................................................................................49No War (Mandelbaum)..........................................................................................................................................50No War (Nye)........................................................................................................................................................51Probability Outweighs (Rescher)...........................................................................................................................52EXT – Callahan 2AC/1AR....................................................................................................................................53EXT – Rights Outweigh........................................................................................................................................54AT: Extinction Outweighs.....................................................................................................................................55EXT – Rights Solve Extinction.............................................................................................................................56AT: Util Solves Rights...........................................................................................................................................57AT: Rights Calculation Requires Util....................................................................................................................58AT: Deontology Utopian.......................................................................................................................................59Utilitarianism Bad..................................................................................................................................................60Util Bad – Don’t Fear the Reaper..........................................................................................................................61Consequentialism Bad...........................................................................................................................................62

Needs More Consequentialism…Consequentialism Good Frontline.........................................................................................................................63Consequentialism Good Frontline.........................................................................................................................64AT: Not Responsible for Consequences................................................................................................................65AT: Moral Obligation............................................................................................................................................66AT: Moral Obligation............................................................................................................................................67EXT – Moral ObligationIsolationism................................................................................................................68

2


Meta Information

Ok, just a couple notes about the file –

1. All the answers to deontology can be used along with both Util and Consequentialism, so if you are advocating consequentialism you will still need some of those cards.

2. More stuff will be coming from the book Ken told me about, I am simply in the process of acquiring the book itself.

That’s all.

3


Utilitarianism Good Frontline

1. A risk of nuclear war precludes any deontological framework – uncertainty mandates that every policy decision must be able to guarantee the continued existence of the human race, and to ignore this possibility is in itself immoral and unjustified.

*This card has been gender-modified.Schell, policy analyst and proliferation expert, 2000 (Jonathan, “The Fate of the Earth”, p. 94-5)

To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation—just as it would be a misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects, in the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate. And if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand them without breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be extinguished in a nuclear holocaust,

or even that extinction in a holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and reduce our sense of urgency. Yet at the same time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we are as yet unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere may suffer

catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished. We are left with uncertainty, and are forced to make our decisions in a state of uncertainty. If we wish to act to save our species, we have to muster our resolve in spite of our awareness that the life of the species may not now in fact be jeopardized.

On the other hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the species may be in danger of imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful people everywhere in the world realized that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later face the possibility of extinction. They also realized that in the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would probably occur. They

knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass—of “the basic power of the universe”—and of a means by which man could release that energy altered the relationship between [humans] and the source of [their] life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and the life of the human species doubtful. In that sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the world ever since the first nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely

knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than, that of any other risk, and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the frame of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all human purposes would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risks that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history. To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically

speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now pose to the earth and to ourselves.

4



2. Only utilitarianism takes into account the inevitability of sacrifices and compromise – any other framework is utopian and inevitably fails.

Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 (Joseph, “Nuclear Ethics”, p. 24)

Whether one accepts the broad consequentialist approach or chooses some other, more eclectic way to include and reconcile the three dimensions of complex moral issues, there will often be a sense of uneasiness about the answers, not just because of the complexity of the problems “but simply that there is no satisfactory solution to these issues – at least none that appears to avoid in practice what most men would still regard as an intolerable sacrifice of value.” When value is sacrificed, there is often the problem of “dirty hands.” Not all ethical decisions are pure ones. The absolutist may avoid the problem of dirty hands, but often at the cost of having no hands at all. Moral theory cannot be “rounded off and made complete and tidy.” That is part of the modern human condition. But that does not exempt us from making difficult moral choices.

3. Policymakers specifically must act through utilitarianism because they can only make decisions based on the good of the public.

Goodin, fellow in philosophy at Australian National Defense University, 1990 (Robert, “The Utilitarian Response”, p. 141-2)

My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty , and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it at all – to chose general rules or conduct.

5



4. Double bind – either no human lives are equally valuable, which forces them to prove why the lives they save are worth it, or all human life is equally valuable, which necessitates utilitarianism.

Harsanyi, prof. of economics at UC Berkeley, 1982 (John, “Utilitarianism and Beyond”, p. 26-7)

Some further notes on this suggestion will be in place here. First, it is sometimes alleged that justice has to be at odds with utility. But if we ask how we are to be just between the competing interests of different people, it seems hard to give any other answer than it is by giving equal weight, impartially to the interests of everybody. And this is precisely what yields the utility principle. It does not necessarily yield equality in the resulting distribution. There are certainly very good utilitarian reasons for seeking equality in distribution too; but justice is something distinct. The utilitarian is sometimes said to be indifferent between equal and unequal distributions provided that total utility is equal. This is so; but it conceals two important utilitarian grounds for a fairly high degree of actual goods (tempered, of course, as in most systems including Rawls’s by various advantages that are secured by moderate inequalities). The second is that inequalities tend to produce, at any rate in educated societies, envy hatred and malice whose disutility needs no emphasizing. I am convinced that when these two factors are taken into account, utilitarians have no feed to fear the accusation that they could favor extreme inequalities of distribution in actual modern societies. Fantastic hypothetical cases can no doubt be invented in which they would have

to favor them; but as, as we shall see, this is an illegitimate form of argument.

5. Conflicting moral claims are inevitable – this necessitates utilitarianism.Mulholland, prof. of philosophy at the University of Newfoundland, 1986 (Leslie, Journal of Philosophy, June, p. 328)

For many, the persuasiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory lies in its power to provide a way out of difficulties arising from the conflict of moral principles. The contention that utilitarianism permits people to override rights in case of conflict of principles or in those cases where some recognized utility requires that a right be disregarded, is then not an internal objection to utilitarianism. Nor does it even indicate a plausible alternative to the convinced utilitarian. For him,

utilitarianism has its force partly in the coherence and simplicity of the principle in explaining the morality of such cases.

6


EXT – Schell 2NC

Extend Schell – the presence of nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war puts the human race in a constant state of uncertainty, and that very uncertainty mandates we take every action necessary to prevent nuclear war. Not doing so is immoral by putting the human race and all that is good in jeopardy from another ideological agenda, which is shattered by the possibility of extinction because any other framework assumes the ongoing existence of humans. Finally, as long as we win a risk of our scenario occurring we win – Schell indicates that because extinction is an infinite impact, a fraction of that impact is still infinity.

7


EXT – Extinction Mandates Util

One is morally obligated to divert to utilitarianism if the alternative is extinction.Kateb, prof. of politics at Princeton University, 1992 (George, “The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture”, p. 12)

The main point, however, is that utilitarianism has a necessary pace in any democratic country's normal political deliberations. But its advocates must know its place, which ordinarily is only to help to decide what the theory of rights leaves alone. When may rights be overridden by government? I have two sorts of cases in mind: overriding a particular right of some persons for the sake of preserving the same right of others, and overriding the same right of everyone for the sake of what I will clumsily call "civilization values." An advocate of rights could countenance, perhaps must countenance, the state's overriding of rights for these two reasons. The subject is painful and liable to dispute every step of the way. For the state to override is,

sacrifice—a right of some so that others may keep it. the situation must be desperate. I have in mind, say, circumstances in which the choice is between sacrificing a right of some and letting a right of all be lost. The state (or some other agent) may kill some (or allow them to he killed), if the only alternative is letting every-one die. It is the right to life which most prominently figures in thinking about desperate situations. I cannot see any resolution but to heed the precept that "numbers count." Just as one may prefer saving one's own life to

saving that of another when both cannot be saved, so a third parry—let us say, the state—can (perhaps must) choose to save the greater number of lives and at the cost of the lesser number, when there is otherwise no hope for either group. That choice does not mean that those to be sacrificed are immoral if they resist being sacrificed. It follows, of course, that if a third party is right to risk or sacrifice the lives of the lesser for the lives of the greater number when the lesser would otherwise live, the lesser are also not wrong if they resist being sacrificed.

Survival is a prerequisite to ethical considerations.Stensli, commander of the Norwegian Naval Forces, 2003 (Olva, PACEM, http://www.pacem.no/2003/1/debatt/stensli/)

Political realism is certainly not incompatible with democracy, toleration, and the defence of human rights. But PR is

not a theory about these phenomena as such! Rather, PR is a school of thought overwhelmingly preoccupied by how to protect these values. Morgenthau has never claimed to present a Theory of Ethics, simply because politics always is about the tension between ethics (including “ultimate aims”, in the words of Morgenthau) and feasible actions and outcomes (immediate aims). When political realism was constructed in the Western World in the 20th Century, it was implicitly in defence against appeasement as well as against what Kissinger called revolutionary powers. By revolutionary powers, Kissinger meant the powers that seek destruction of others in order to secure themselves. To avoid the destruction of its own polity clearly must be given priority in times of crises. Furthermore, there has never existed a modern democracy without a functioning state. And in modern history, the rule of law and respect for basic human rights has hardly existed outside of democracies. It is for these reasons political scientists have been so occupied with the study of the relations between states, state institutions

and democratisation.

The very risk of nuclear war outweighs any consideration – universal ethics demand our disad comes first.Seeley, central committee for conscientious objectors, 1986 (Robert, “The Handbook of Non-Violence”, p. 269-70)

In moral reasoning prediction of consequences is nearly always impossible. One balances the risks of an action against its benefits; one also considers what known damage the action would do. Thus a surgeon in deciding

whether to perform an operation weighs the known effects (the loss of some nerve function, for example) and risks (death) against the benefits, and weighs also the risks and benefits of not performing surgery.

Morally, however, human extinction is unlike any other risk. No conceivable human good could be worth the extinction of the race, for in order to be a human good it must be experienced by human beings. Thus extinction is one result we dare not-may not-risk. Though not conclusively established, the risk of extinction is real enough to make nuclear war utterly impermissible under any sane moral code.

8


EXT – Extinction Mandates Util

Double-bind, either they defend deontology unless faced with nuclear war which means you vote on our impacts or they defend deontology regardless and they allow for nuclear war.Hardin and Mearsheimer, profs. of political science at U of Chicago, 1985 (Russell and John, “Ethics”, April, p. 418)

Discussion among philosophers often stops at the point of fundamental disagreement over moral principles, just as discussion among strategists often stops at the point of disagreement over hypothetical assertions about

deterrence. But most moral theorists -- and all utilitarians -- also require consideration of hypothetical assertions to reach their conclusions, although they are typically even less adept at objective, causal argument than are strategists, who are themselves often quite casual with their social scientific claims . Even if one wishes to argue principally from deontological principles, one must have some confidence in one's social scientific expectations to decide whether consequences might not in this instance be overriding. Only a deontologist who held the extraordinary position that consequences never matter could easily reach a conclusion on nuclear weapons without considering the quality of various outcomes. Alas, on this dreadful issue good causal arguments are desperately needed.

Extraordinary circumstances demand utilitarianism.Donnelly, prof. at the College of the Holy Cross, 1985 (Jack, “The Concept of Human Rights”, p. 58)

But suppose that the sacrifice of one innocent person would save not ten but a thousand, or a hundred thousand, or a million people. All things considered, trading one innocent life for a million, even if the victim resists most forcefully, would seem to be not merely justifiable but demanded. Exactly how do we balance rights (in the sense of 'having a right'), wrongs (in the sense of 'what is right') and interests? Do the numbers count? If so, why, and in what way? If not, why not? Ultimately the defender of human rights is forced back to human nature, the source of natural or human rights. For a natural rights theorist there are certain attributes, potentialities and holdings that are essential to the maintenance of a life worthy of a human being. These are given the special protection of natural rights; any ‘utility’ that might be served by their infringement or violation would be indefensible, literally inhuman — except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances, the possibility of which cannot be denied, but the probability of which should not be overestimated. Extraordinary circumstances do force us to admit that, at some point, however rare, the force of utilitarian considerations builds up until quality is transformed into quality.

9


EXT – Nye 2NC

Extend the Nye evidence – Utilitarianism is the best framework because it accepts the inevitability of compromise and sacrifices, allowing one to make the most rational and just decisions for each individual context. Any other moral calculus ignores this inevitability, making it utopian and guaranteeing catastrophic failure.

10


EXT – Deontology Flawed

Only empirically testable and falsifiable moral frameworks are able to achieve political and social relevance – frameworks that simply assert moral clarity aren’t viable.Stensli, commander of the Norwegian Naval Forces, 2003 (Olva, PACEM, http://www.pacem.no/2003/1/debatt/stensli/)

I applaud all scholars who seek to construct an alternative to political realism as description of and prescription for international politics. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is a considerable gap between practitioners and students of foreign policy on the one hand, and theologians and philosophers interested in ethics and politics on the other. To us empirical social scientists, and to officers, I dare say, such alternative modes of thinking about politics should seek certain criteria. First, it should be rather consistent.. Second, it should be possible to check the theory on the phenomena with the corresponding, observable real world-phenomena. Thus, the theory must principally be of such character that its basic assumptions and deductions can be refuted by empirical observations. Thirdly, it should be substantial. I believe that Rolfsen`s “Ethics of vulnerability” (in contrast to his analysis of realism) meets the first and third criteria. He might argue that the second criterion is irrelevant, since his contribution primarily is in the field of ethics. But in that case, he supports Morgenthau`s assertions about the autonomy of the political, ethical and economic spheres of thought. In my view, Rolfsen has to accept criteria number two in order to present an alternative framework for thinking about security. In the social sciences, as well as in operational art, military theory and strategy, we construct theories that simplify complex reality. These devices then help us understand parts of more complex systems or processes. But in order to construct theories and hypothesis, we must make our assumptions explicit; that is, make them available and open to debate and refutation. Morgenthau did just that in his classical work Politics Among Nations. Although Morgenthau was overly

ambitious, it is clear that his aim was to see what scope and limitations there was in the construction he called “A Realist Theory of International Politics”; The test by which such a theory must be judged is not a priori and abstract but empirical and pragmatic. The theory, in other words, must be judged not by some preconceived abstract principle or concept unrelated to reality, but by its purpose: to bring order and meaning to a mass of phenomena which without it would remain disconnected and unintelligible. It must meet a dual test, an empirical and a logical one. To me, as an officer with at least some training in the social sciences, theories that do not meet the criteria above remain purely theoretical constructions that cannot help us interpret our environment. As Morgenthau stressed repeatedly, in the study of war and peace as empirical phenomena, we are forced to make assumptions about human behaviour and the system we call society. Against this, the scholar of ethics will argue that he is doing normative theory. But in that case, normative theory will still occupy its own sphere, distinct from empirical or descriptive theories and research. I am a strong supporter of debates on ethics and moral conduct both in politics and in the use of violence by military units as ordered by the modern state apparatus. Thus, Feltprestkorpset should continue to raise questions concerning both

jus ad bellum and certainly concerning jus in bello.

Inevitable tradeoffs demand utilitarianism – deontology is too utopian.Spragens, prof. of polisci at Duke, 2000 (Thomas, “Political Theory and Partisan Politics”, p. 81-2)

My thesis that all three layers/forms of political association are important in a well-ordered liberal democracy also implies the untenability of Rawls's argument that agreement regarding norms of social justice is a possible and sufficient way to overcome the deficiencies of the modus vivendi approach. In the first place, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere, the fundamental unfairness of life and the presence of gratuitous elements in the moral universe make it impossible to settle rationally upon a single set of distributive principles as demonstrably fair (See also, Spragens 1993). Simply put, the problem is that the contingencies of the world ineluctably

allocate assets and sufferings quite unfairly. We can cope with and try to compensate for these "natural injustices," but only at the price of introducing other elements of unfairness or compromising other moral values. The other major problem in this context is that real world human beings are not deontologists: their moral intuitions about distributive justice are permeated and influenced by their moral intuitions about the good. The empirical consequence of these two difficulties is the

falsification of Rawls's hermeneutic claims about an overlapping consensus. Rational people of good will with a liberal democratic persuasion will be able to agree that some possible distributive criteria are morally unacceptable. But, as both experience and the literature attest, hopes for a convergence of opinion on definitive principles of distributive justice are chimerical.

11


EXT – Goodin 2NC

Extend Goodin – policymakers must always act as utilitarians because they are held responsible for the good of the public, and not their own good or any other individual’s good. This is the death knell of their morality claims – Goodin is the ONLY evidence in this round that makes the distinction between policymakers and just individuals, and at the point where the point of the round is to debate between policy options utilitarianism is the only applicable moral framework.

12


EXT – Util K2 Policymaking

Util is the only way to fulfill policymaking interests – considering individual duties on a public scale is impossible.Goodin, philosopher at the Research School of the Social Sciences, 1998 (Robert, “Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy”, p. 38)

The great advantage of utilitarianism as a guide to public conduct is that it avoids gratuitous sacrifices, it ensures as best we are able to ensure in the uncertain world of public policy-making that policies are sensitive to people's interests or desires or preferences. The great failing of more deontological theories applies to those realms, is that they fixate upon duties done for the sake of duty rather than for the sake of any good that is done by doing one's duty. Perhaps it is permissible (perhaps it is even proper) for private individuals in the course of their personal affairs to fetishize duties done their own sake. It would be a mistake for public officials to do likewise, not least because it is impossible.

Uncertainty demands policymakers act from utility – deontology on an individual level solves their offense.Goodin, philosopher at the Research School of the Social Sciences, 1998 (Robert, “Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy”, p. 43)

Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at

that. All choices - public and private alike - are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices. But that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus - if they want to use it at all - to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the utility payoffs from adopting each alternative possible general rule.

It is impossible for policymakers to evaluate moral claims because they aren’t universal.Little, senior scholar in ethics and human rights at the US Institute for Peace, 1991 (David, “Morality and Foreign Policy”)

Even more explicitly, Kerman wrote in the Winter 1985/1986 issue of Foreign Affairs (in an article reprinted in the appendix to this volume) that the fundamental concerns of government, namely, the protection of its people, have no moral quality. He acknowledges that government will have to respond to the moral and other concerns of their citizens. However,

such a response is a completely open-ended affair, subject to the vagaries and fluctuations of public opinion. There is no reason, he writes, to believe that morality can serve “as a general criterion for the determination of the behavior of states and above all as a criterion for measuring and comparing the behavior of different states. Here other criteria, sadder, more limited, more practical, must be allowed to prevail.” According to Keenan, morality—understood here as a commitment to protecting human rights, raising living standards, and democratization-–is in the realm of subjective aspiration, a realm that varies to some extent from individual to individual,

and to a great extent from society to society. The moral claims of one culture are inevitably doubted by another; there is nothing universal about such claims.

13


EXT – Harsanyi 2NC

Extend Harsanyi – operating under the assumption that all life has equal value means we must divert to util because making any decision for the minority would automatically do less good objectively. Any arguments they make about why not all life has equal value internally link turns their advocacy because that justifies reducing the value to people’s lives to zero.

14


EXT – Mulholland 2NC

Extend Mulholland – utilitarianism is the only fair and just moral framework because deontology makes it impossible to resolve any issue due to conflicting and overlapping morality claims. Only utilitarianism can make objective decisions for the common good.

15


EXT – Conflicting Morals

Conflict is inherent in deontology.Singer, prof. of philosophy at Monash University, 1972 (Peter, “Practical Ethics”, p. 80)

In unusual situations, simple rules conflict; and even when they do not, following a rule can lead to disaster. It may normally be wrong to lie, but if you were living in Nazi Germany and the Gestapo came to your door looking for Jews, it would surely be right to deny the existence of the Jewish family hiding in your attic.

Deontology prevents us from acting on real concern through conflicting moral constraints.Waldron, liberal rights activist, 1993 (Jeremy, “Collected Papers: Cambridge University Press”)

I have some sympathy with this, but, as I also argue in Chapter 9, the insistence on absolutism does not make the conflicts go away; it doesn't make the situations that appear to call for trade-offs disappear. Those situations

are not some-thing that consequentialists and their fellow travelers have perversely invented in order to embarrass moral absolutists. It is not the theorist's fault that there are sometimes several drowning people and only one lifeguard. As I said earlier, the world turns out not to be the sort of place to which absolute moral requirements are an apt response. If we insist on the absoluteness of rights, there is a danger that we may end up with no rights at all, or, at least, no rights embodying the idea of real concern for the individuals whose rights they are. At best, we will end up with a set of moral constraints whose absoluteness is secured only by the contortions of agent-relativity, that is, by their being understood not as concerns focused on those who may be affected by our actions but as concerns focused on ourselves and integrity.

Absolute commitment to deontology forces situations where one is forced into unethical action – proves its fallacy.Brook, New School for Social Research, 1991 (David, “The Journal of Philosophy”)

Captured by the enemy and under some pressure, I reveal the hiding place of two comrades,. They will be killed if discovered. I could prevent this by revealing the whereabouts of a third comrade, perhaps of more importance to the enemy. Whether or not I reveal here whereabouts, I have intentionally betrayed someone/. An equally important, if I fail to betray the third comrade I still remain directly involved in the betrayal of the first two.

Deontological obligations contradict one another.Brook, New School for Social Research, 1991 (David, “The Journal of Philosophy”)

Consider the following case. You are at a zoo with two children who are making a scene. Becoming angry, you toss them into the lion’s den. Horrified, you come to your senses and notice that they can only be saved if you toss a third child (who just toddled along) into the back of the den. The beast would be distracted and you could leap in and save the first two. What should you do? Whatever you do, you have initiated a chain of events that results in a child’s death. If you do nothing, you have intentionally killed the first two children. If you sacrifice the third child, you kill it using it a s a mere means to save the others. Or consider

this variation of Darwall’s example about betrayal. Captured by the enemy and under some pressure, I reveal the hiding place of two comrades. They will be killed if discovered,. I could prevent this by revealing the whereabouts of a third comrade, perhaps of more importance to the enemy. Whether or not I reveal her whereabouts, I have intentionally betrayed someone. And equally important, I fail to betray the third comrade I still remain directly involved in the betrayal of the first two.

16


Util Good – Deterrence

A. Utilitarianism is key to nuclear deterrence.Hardin and Mearsheimer, profs. of polisci at U of Chicago, 1985 (Russell and John, “Ethics”, April, p. 417)

Yet it should be clear that the diverse conclusions of philosophers, unlike those of the strategists, are not principally determined by differences in their objective assessments of what systems would work best for deterrence.

Rather, what most divides philosophers on the issue of which nuclear policy should be adopted are basic assumptions of moral theory. In rough outline, the two principal positions are deontological and utilitarian. Deontologists are concerned with the nature of actions, including the nature of threatened actions. Utilitarians are concerned with likely outcomes of actions, as, of course, are strategists. Most philosophers who are inclined to defend the morality of nuclear deterrence through the threat of massive retaliation even against innocents are , utilitarians, who share with strategists the view that the world with nuclear deterrence is likely to be better than the world without it.

B. Deterrence solves every scenario for nuclear war – BLADOW!Robinson, director of the Sandia National Laboratories, 2001 (Paul, “A White Paper: Pursuing a Nuclear Weapons Policy for the 21st Century”, http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Nuclear-Weapons-Policy-21stC.htm)

Additionally, throughout the Cold War and ever since, there has been a steady proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction by other nations around the globe. The vast majority of these newly armed states are not U.S. allies, and some already are exhibiting hostile behaviors, while others have the potential to become aggressors toward the U.S., our allies, and our international interests. Russia has already begun to emphasize the importance of its arsenal of nuclear weapons to compensate for its limited conventional capabilities to deal

with hostilities that appear to be increasing along its borders. It seems inescapable that the U.S. must carefully think through how we should be preparing to deal with new threats from other corners of the world, including the role that nuclear weapons might serve in deterring these threats from ever reaching actual aggressions. I personally see the abolition of nuclear weapons as an impractical dream in any foreseeable future. I came to this view from several directions. The first is the impossibility of ever "uninventing" or erasing from the human mind the knowledge of how to build such weapons. While the sudden appearance of a few tens of nuclear weapons causes only a small stir in a world where several thousands of such weapons already exist, their appearance in a world without nuclear weapons would produce huge effects. (The impact of the first two weapons in ending World War II should be a sufficient example.) I believe that the words of Winston Churchill, as quoted by Margaret Thatcher to a special joint session of the U.S. Congress on February 20, 1985, remain convincing on this point: "Be careful above all things not to let go of the atomic weapon until you are sure, and more sure than sure, that other means of preserving the peace are in your hands." Similarly, it is my sincere view that the majority of the nations who have now acquired arsenals of nuclear weapons believe them to be such potent tools for deterring conflicts that they would never surrender them. Against this backdrop, I recently began to worry that because there were few public statements by U.S. officials in reaffirming the unique role which nuclear weapons play in ensuring U.S. and world security, far too many people (including many in our own armed forces) were beginning to believe that perhaps nuclear weapons no longer had value. It seemed to me that it was time for someone to step forward and articulate the other side of these issues for the public: first, that nuclear weapons remain of vital importance to the security of the U.S. and to our allies and friends (today and for the near future); and second, that nuclear weapons will likely have an enduring role in preserving the peace and preventing world wars for the foreseeable future. These are my purposes in writing this paper. For the past eight years, I have served several Commanders-in-Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command by chairing the Policy Subcommittee of the Strategic Advisory Group (SAG). This group was asked to help develop a new terms of reference for nuclear strategy in the post-Cold War world. This paper draws on many of the discussions with my SAG colleagues (although one must not assume their endorsement of all of the ideas presented here). We addressed how nuclear deterrence might be extended-not just to deter Russia-but how they might serve a continuing role in deterring wider acts of aggression from any corner of the world, including deterring the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. [Taken together, these are normally referred to as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).] My approach here will be to: (1) examine what might be the appropriate roles for nuclear weapons for the future, (2) propose some new approaches to developing nuclear strategies and policies that are more appropriate for the post-Cold War world, and (3) consider the kinds of military systems and nuclear weapons that would be needed to match those policies. The Role(s) of Nuclear Weapons The Commander-in-Chief of the

Strategic Command, Admiral Rich Mies, succinctly reflected the current U.S. deterrent policy last year in testimony to the U.S. Senate: "Deterrence of aggression is a cornerstone of our national security strategy, and strategic nuclear forces serve as the most visible and most important element of our commitment ... (further) deterrence of major military attack on the United States and its allies, particularly attacks involving weapons of mass destruction, remains our highest defense priority." While the application of this policy seemed clear, perhaps we could have said even "straightforward," during the Cold War; application of that policy becomes even more complicated if we consider applying it to any nation other than Russia. Let me first stress that nuclear arms must never be thought of as a single "cure-all" for security concerns. For the past 20 years, only 10 percent of the U.S. defense budget has been spent on nuclear forces. The other 90 percent is for "war fighting" capabilities. Indeed, conflicts have continued to break out every few years in various regions of the globe, and these nonnuclear capabilities have been regularly employed. By contrast, we have not used nuclear weapons in conflict since World War II. This is an important distinction for us to emphasize as an element of U.S. defense policy, and one not well understood by the public at large. Nuclear weapons must

never be considered as war fighting tools. Rather we should rely on the catastrophic nature of nuclear weapons to achieve war prevention, to prevent a conflict from escalating (e.g., to the use of weapons of mass destruction), or to help achieve war termination when it cannot be achieved by other means, e.g., if the enemy has already escalated the conflict through the use of weapons of mass destruction. Conventional armaments and

forces will remain the backbone of U.S. defense forces, but the inherent threat to escalate to nuclear use can help to prevent conflicts from ever starting, can prevent their escalation, as well as bring these conflicts to a swift and certain end. In contrast to the situation facing Russia, I believe we cannot place an over-reliance on nuclear weapons, but that we must maintain adequate conventional capabilities to manage regional conflicts in any part of the world. Noting that the U.S. has always considered nuclear weapons as "weapons of last resort," we need to give constant attention to improving conventional munitions in order to raise the threshold for which we would ever consider nuclear use. It is just as important for our policy makers to understand these interfaces as it is for our commanders. Defenses Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to strictly consider "defensive" tactics and armaments, I believe it is important for the United States to consider a continuum of defensive capabilities, from boost phase intercept to terminal defenses. Defenses have always been an important element of war fighting, and are likely to be so when defending against missiles. Defenses will also provide value in deterring conflicts or limiting escalations. Moreover, the existence of a credible defense to blunt attacks by armaments emanating from a rogue state could well

eliminate that rogue nation's ability to dissuade the U.S. from taking military actions. If any attack against the U.S., its allies, or its forces should be

<Continues…>

17


Util Good – Deterrence

<Continued…>undertaken with nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, there should be no doubt in the attacker's mind that the United States might retaliate for such an attack with nuclear weapons ; but the choice would be in our hands. If high effectiveness defenses can be achieved, they will enhance deterrence by eliminating an aggressor's confidence in attacking the U.S. homeland with long-range missiles, and thus make our use of nuclear weapons more credible (if the conflict could not be terminated otherwise.) Whereas, nuclear weapons should always remain weapons of last resort, defensive systems would likely be our weapons of first resort. Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Strategic Tool? Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to participate in a number of "war games" in which the roles and uses of nuclear weapons had to be faced in scenarios that imagined military conflicts developing between the U.S. and other potential adversaries. The totality of those games brought new realizations as to the role and purpose of nuclear weapons, in particular, how essential it is that deterrence be tailored in a different way for each potential aggressor nation. It also seemed abundantly clear that any use of nuclear weapons is, and always will be, strategic. Thus, I would propose we ban the term "nonstrategic nuclear weapons" as a non sequitur. The intensity of the environment of any war game also demonstrates just how critical it is for the U.S. to have thought through in advance exactly what messages we would want to send to other nations (combatants and noncombatants) and to "history," should there be any future use of nuclear weapons-including threatened use-in conflicts. Similarly, it is obvious that we must have policies that are well thought through in advance as to the role of nuclear weapons in deterring the use of, or retaliating for the use of, all weapons of mass destruction. Let me then state my most important conclusion directly: I believe nuclear weapons must have an abiding place in the international scene for the foreseeable future. I believe that the world, in fact, would become more dangerous, not less dangerous, were U.S. nuclear weapons to be absent. The most important role for our nuclear weapons is to serve as a "sobering force," one that can cap the level of destruction of military conflicts and thus force all sides to come to their senses. This is the enduring purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War world. I regret that we have not yet captured such thinking in our public statements as to why the U.S. will retain nuclear deterrence as a cornerstone of our defense policy, and urge that we do so in the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review. Nuclear deterrence becomes in my view a "countervailing" force and, in fact, a potent antidote to military aggression on the part of nations. But to succeed in harnessing

this power, effective nuclear weapons strategies and policies are necessary ingredients to help shape and maintain a stable and peaceful world.

18


Util Good – Rights

Utilitarianism upholds self-ownership and thus liberty.Bailey, lecturer in politics at Princeton University, 1997 (James, “Utilitarianism, Institutions, and Justice”, Oxford University Press, p. 160)

I have also tried to show that attempts to subvert utilitarianism through appeals to formal properties about theories of justice—such as finality and publicity—do not work either. The finality of utilitarianism is unlikely to be in jeopardy in a world in which people cannot suffer horrible acts as patients or alienating acts as agents. The rules protecting self-ownership, which are necessary to prevent exploitation, also forbid the horrible acts and allow individuals the liberty to do much of what they see as with their lives. The question of utilitarianism's subversion in its finality by grossly, unfair distributive arrangements is answered by a set of institutions in which no deep suffering is allowed and a generous provision is made for educational opportunities for all.

Utilitarianism is best – it protects rights while not totally rejecting all policies that might infringe.Harvey, J.D. at Yale Law School, 2002 (Philip, “Human Rights and Economic Policy Discourse: Taking Economic and Social Rights Seriously”, Spring, Human Rights Law Review, 33 Colum., Human Rights L. Rev. 363, lexis)

Perhaps the clearest illustration of this compromise or balancing principle is the distinction drawn in constitutional jurisprudence between the standard of review applied by courts in deciding whether legislative enactments

comply with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Laws that do not infringe on certain constitutionally protected rights will pass muster if there is a mere rational basis for their enactment, whereas laws that do infringe on such rights require more compelling justification, with the level of justification varying depending on the right at issue. 196 Human rights claims have bite precisely because they declare that certain actions may be improper, even if those actions are supported by a majority of the population, indeed, even if the actions in question would increase the total utility of the population as a whole. But it is not necessary to take the position that rights-based claims should always trump conflicting utility-maximizing purposes. 197 It should be possible to honor multiple goals in public policy decision-making.

Util protects rights in social and constitutional hierarchies.Bailey, lecturer in politics at Princeton University, 1997 (James, “Utilitarianism, Institutions, and Justice”, Oxford University Press, p. 153-4)

Even in a world full of rules and institutions—like that of Imperfectia—there is still normative work for utilitarianism to do. The foundation for this work stems from an argument in chapter 1 that the work of utilitarianism is more likely a form of local rather than global maximizing, of making the best use of new information and opportunities on the margin rather than a complete revolution of social relations. In imperfect worlds, this work thus includes local maximization, constitutional change, and exceptional case guidance. In addition there is a kind of distinctive normative work specifically for utilitarians in venal oligarchies. To provide anything like a full theory of any of these things here would require an entire new book. What I do provide is merely a series of thumbnail sketches of the problems. The aim is to show that there is still plenty of value in a consciously held global theory of utilitarianism, and therefore we should not fall hack only on common sense and whatever reasonable institutions are lying about.

19


Util Good – Life Outweighs Rights

Upholding life is the ultimate moral standard.Uyl and Rasmussen, profs. of philosophy at Bellarmine College and St. John’s University, 1981 (Douglas Den and Douglas, “Reading Nozick”, p. 244)

Rand has spoken of the ultimate end as the standard by which all other ends are evaluated. When the ends to be evaluated are chosen ones the ultimate end is the standard for moral evaluation. Life as the sort of thing a living entity is, then, is the ultimate standard of value; and since only human beings are capable of choosing their ends, it is the life as a human being-man's life qua man-that is the standard for moral evaluation.

Life is the end toward which all purposeful action is directed.Uyl and Rasmussen, profs. of philosophy at Bellarmine College and St. John’s University, 1981 (Douglas Den and Douglas, “Reading Nozick”, p. 244-5)

Why should this be the standard for moral evaluation? Why must this be the ultimate moral value? Why not "death" or "the greatest happiness for the greatest number"? Man's life must be the standard for judging moral value because this is the end toward which all goal-directed action (in this case purposive action) is directed, and we have already shown why goal-directed behavior depends on life. Indeed, one cannot make a choice without implicitly choosing life as the end.

Life is the prerequisite to all other value.Uyl and Rasmussen, profs. of philosophy at Bellarmine College and St. John’s University, 1981 (Douglas Den and Douglas, “Reading Nozick”, p. 245)

In so far as one chooses, regardless of the choice, one choose (value) man's life. It makes no sense to value some X without also valuing that which makes the valuing of X possible ~:notice that this is different from saying

"that which makes X possible"). If one lets X be equivalent to "death" or "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," one is able to have such a valuation only because of the precondition of being a living being. Given that life is a necessary condition for valuation, there is no other way we can value something without also (implicitly at least) valuing that which makes valuation possible.

20


AT: UtilRights Violations

UTILITY CAN’T BE MAXIMIZED OVER THE LONG TERM BY VIOLATING RIGHTS

Robert Goodin, fellow in philosophy, Australian National Defense University, THE UTILITARIAN RESPONSE, 1990, p. 148

My main argument, though, is that at the level of social policy the problem usually does not even arise. When promulgating policies, public officials must respond to typical conditions and common circumstances. Policies, by their nature, cannot be case- by-case affairs. In choosing general rules ot govern a wide range of circumstances, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the greatest happiness can ever be realized by systematically violating people’s rights. Liberties or integrity – or even, come to that, by systematically contravening the Ten Commandments. The rules that maximize utility over the long haul and over the broad range of applications are also rules that broadly conform to deontologists’ demands.

UTILITARIANISM PROTECTS FAIRNESS

Robin Barrow, professor at Simon Fraser University, UTILITARIANISM, 1991, p. 29

However the principle of justice may also be equated with the principle of fairness, and utilitarianism does have such a principle, as it must do, since a fully fledged ethical theory tells us what is right, and no account of what is right can compete if it makes no reference to the distribution of the good.

21


AT: No Ontological Foundation

UTILITARIANISM IS FOUNDED ON HUMAN INSTINCT

Robin Barrow, professor at Simon Fraser University, UTILITARIANISM, 1991, p. 29

Such then is utilitarianism as I understand it. Not a matter of the selfish pursuit of pleasure, not a Philistione creed of calculated enjoyment, not a non-moral doctrine that denies our moral sentiments, but a reasonable and plausible account of what lies behind our moral instincts, the majority of which may, in the light of the theory, be seen to be well founded. The strength of the theory is that , in contract to many, perhaps all others, it has no obvious defect. Perhaps that is why it refuses to go away.

SURVIVAL IS THE ULTIMATE HUMAN VALUE

Leonard Ratner, law professor, USC, HOFSTRA LAW JOURNAL, Spring 1984, p. 171

The goal of enhanced human need/want fulfillment implies that such enhanced fulfillment is possible and will facilitate long-run human existence. Goals that facilitate human existence are persistently chosen by most humans, because human structure and function have evolved and are evolving to facilitate such existence. The decisionmaking organism is structured to generally prefer survival, although some may trade long-term existence for short-term pleasure, and physiological malfunction or traumatic experience may induce the preference of a few for personal nonsurvival. Intermediate human goals change with human structure and function: long-run human survival remains the ultimate human goal as long as there are humans.

22


AT: UtilEvil (Santos)

UTILITARIANISM CAN’T RATIONALIZE EVIL BECAUSE IT DOESN’T PROMOTE THE GREATES GOOD

Leonard Ratner, law professor, USC, HOFSTRA LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1984, pp. 751-2

The survival costs of clearly “asocial” behavior exceed the survival value of fulfillments derived from such behavior. The anger or hatred of a murderer , the gratification of a sadist, the malice of a defamer, and the greedy indolence of a thief lacks significant long-run survival values and are therefore subordinated to the existence , health, dignity, and productivity of the victims. The gratification derived by a few from the torture of animals not only lacks survival value; it may stimulate an appetite for infliction of pain on humans, whit countersurvival consequences, while concern for needless suffering of living creatures contributes to long-run human survival.

TWO REASONS UTILITARIANISM DOESN’T JUSTIFY EVIL ACTS

Leonard Ratner, law professor, USC, HOFSTRA LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1984, pp. 753-4

Some nonutilitarians derive the possibility of a monstrous utilitarian result from the premise that the social benefit of monstrous conduct could conceivably exceed the social harm. In such a case, they insista utilitarians must either approve the monstrous conduct or cease to be utilitarians. The premise, however, is fallacious. First, if such a case is conceiveable, nonutilitarians have the burden of conceiving it, and the conception must be viable, .i.e., consistent with reality and in sufficient detal to permit a utilitarian costbenefit analysis. The fulfillment consequences of fanciful or conclusory assumptions cannot be ascertained. Second, the required utilitarian evalution resolves the pseudo dilemma. Conduct that reduces long-run per capital fulfillment is indisputably objectionable, whether or not labeled “monstrous.” Conduct that is necessary to such fulfillment, i.e., to facilitate long-run human survival, is not socially perceived as monstrous.

HORRIFIC ACTS NEVER SUPPORT LONG-TERM NEED FULFILLMENT

Leonard Ratner, law professor, USC, HOFSTRA LAW JOURNAL, Spring, 1984, p. 750

These fervent anti-utilitarian attacks ignore the priority of need fulfillment and the eventual antisurvival consequences of short-run oppression. “Monstrous” results do not increase per capital need/want fulfillment in the long term.

23


AT: UtilEvil (Santos)

SACRIFICING SOME DOESN’T PROMOT THE OVERALL BALANCE OF UTLITY – IT DAMAGES THE BENEFICIARIES, UNDERMINING THE BASIS OF SELF-RESPECT

Geoffrey Scarre, philosophy professor, University of Durham, UTILITARIANISM, 1988, p. 184

Utilitarians, then, can respond to the charge that they fail to draw sufficiently strong protective barriers around individuals by showing that on a suitably refined view of what makes lives go as well, there will rarely be a case for sacrificing the crucial interests of some individuals for the sake of others’ benefit. A utilitarian may favour making a millionare disgorge his surplus wealth in order to help the needy, but that is no more than what most civilized countries do anyway, through their tax systems. (The practice can be justified on the ground that while enough is as good as a feat, less than enough means starvation). Harming people in regard to their essential interests is another matter. Not only does this hardly ever produce a positive balance of utility: it can also subtly damage the seeming beneficiaries, by undermining the basis of their self-respect. How this happens will be explained below.

24


AT: UtilDehumanization

NO LINK TO THIS ARGUMENT IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE – THE PUBLIC AGENT’S JOB IS TO MAXIMIZE UTILITY

Robert Goodin, fellow in philosophy, Australian National Defense University, THE UTILITARIAN RESPONSE, 1990, p. 150-1

None of those standard examples of agent-relative duties survive transposition to the macro-level at all well. It may be wrong for a politician or civil servant, in his personal capacity, not to feed his own children’ but it would be wrong for him, in his official capacity, to feed his own children before anyone else’s in programmes of disaster relief. It may be wrong for him, in his personal capacity, not to honour his promises or repay his debts; but it would be wrong for him, in his official capacity, to peddle influence, awarding public contracts to his past benefactors rather than to the lowest bidder. The classic sorts of special, agent-relative duties thus seem irrelevant at best (and utterly inappropriate, at worst) for guidance of officials in making and implementing public policies. Impersonality is not here a criticism. It is precisely what we expect of public officials in the discharge of their official duties.

25


AT: Util is Selfish

UTILITARIANISM INCREASES ALTERUISM

Leonard Ratner, law professor, USC, HOFSTRA LAW JOURNAL, Spring 1984, p. 183

Although self interest implies a personal utilitarian decision that turns on individual, rather than per capita, need/want fulfillment, in the long run the two are not incompatible. Self interest includes a concern for others because reciprocity reduces conflict, amerioliorates adversity, and promotes mutually beneficial arrangements. Altruism results not from innate goodness but from (1) the benefits of affection, friendship, and group approval; (2) identification with, i.e., self substitution for, those in need; (3) guilt feelings evoked by the distress of others and engendered by social conditioning; (4) the satisfaction of self esteem; (5) an awareness that the altruist or the altruist’s family may someday need help (i.e., that sharing survival costs provides survival insurance); and (6) the perception that help for those in need helps everyone by reducing discontent and increasing productivity.

26


AT: Cultural Relativism

Only util can accommodate cultural differences.Robin Barrow, professor, Simon Fraser, UTILITARIANISM, 1991, p. 14

Nonetheless, it is one of the few ethical theories , perhaps the only one, that can both explain and accept a great deal of cultural variation. This comes about because of the nature of its pivotal concept, happiness. As we shall see in Chapter 4, happiness and human nature being what they are, quite different systems of social organization and behavior may be morally acceptable on utilitarian terms.

27


AT: Justifies GENOCIDE!!!

Their vulnerability argument isn’t competitive – we feel vulnerable, that’s why we say we should avoid the use of nuclear weapons.KATEB Professor of Philosophy – Princeton 1992 The Inner Ocean

The doctrine of no-use is based on the possibility of extinction. Schell’s perspective transforms the subject. He takes us away from the arid stretches of strategy and asks us to feel continuously, if we can, and feel keenly if only for an instant now and then, how utterly distinct the nuclear world is. Nuclear discourse must vividly register that distinctiveness. It is of no moral account that extinction may be only a slight possibility. No one can say how great the possibility is, but no one has yet credibly denied that by some sequence or other a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural extinction. If it is not impossible, it must be treated as certain: the loss signified by extinction nullifies all calculations of probability as it nullifies al calculations of costs and benefits .

<Insert AT: UtilEvil>

28


Deontology Bad – Foreign Policy

The affirmative’s uncompromising deontological stance necessitates a global war on oppression, ensuring the proliferation of nuclear weapons and global war and instability.Ellworth, VP of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and director of the Nixon Center, 2005 (Robert, The National Interest, Winter, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_78/ai_n8686608)

But how foreign policy is conducted also matters, and here it is vitally important that President Bush, in his second term, avoid wrong choices that may bring catastrophic consequences. The second Bush Administration will have to deal with two fundamental dilemmas: first, how to reconcile the war against terror with a commitment to make the world safe for democracy; and second, how to assure that unchallenged U.S. military supremacy is

used to enhance America's ability to shape the world rather than provoke global opposition to the United States, making us more isolated and accordingly less secure. The neoconservative vision for conducting American foreign policy is fraught with risks. And continuing to follow the prescriptions of the neoconservative faction in the Republican party may damage President Bush's legacy, imperil the country's fiscal stability and complicate America's ability to exercise global leadership. It has become an article of faith for the increasingly influential alliance of liberal interventionists and neoconservatives that the United States , as the world's democratic hegemonic power, is both entitled and even morally bound to use whatever tools are necessary to save the world from brutality and oppression and to promote democratization around the globe. Up to a point, the War on Terror and encouraging democracy worldwide are mutually reinforcing. President Bush is quite right that democracy, particularly if we are talking about democracy in a stable society coupled with a rule of law and with adequate protection of minority rights, is not only morally preferable to authoritarian rule, but also is the best prescription against the emergence of deeply alienated radical groups prone to terrorism. The

"democracy project" also appeals to the highest aspirations of the American people. After all, the Cold War was never driven solely by the need to contain Soviet power, but by the moral conviction that defending freedom in the United States and in the world in general was something worth fighting and dying for--even, in the Berlin Crisis, risking nuclear war itself. High-minded realists do not disagree with the self-appointed champions of global democracy (the neoconservatives and the liberal interventionists) that a strong preference for liberty and justice should be an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. But they realize that there are tradeoffs between pushing for democracy and working with other sovereign states--some not always quite democratic--to combat global terror. Realists also, following the advice

of General Charles Boyd, understand the need to "separate reality from image" and "to tell the truth, if only to ourselves"--not to play fast and loose with facts to create the appearance of acting morally. And they are aware that there are important differences in how the United States helps the world achieve freedom. Indeed, in his first press conference after his triumph at the polls, President Bush used three different terms in talking about America's global pro-democracy effort. He discussed the need "to encourage freedom and democracy", to "promote free societies", and to "spread freedom and democracy." "Encouraging" democracy is not a controversial position. Nearly everyone in the world accepts that the sole superpower is entitled and indeed expected to be true to its core beliefs. "Promoting" democracy is vaguer and potentially more costly. Still, if the United States does so without resorting to military force and takes into account the circumstances and perspectives of other nations, then it is likely not to run into too much

international opposition. "Spreading" democracy, however, particularly spreading it by force, coercion and violent regime change, is a different thing altogether . Those who suspect they may be on the receiving end of such treatment are unlikely to accept American moral superiority, are bound to feel threatened, and cannot reasonably be expected to cooperate with the United States on other important American priorities, including the War on Terror and nuclear proliferation. Worse still, they may decide that acquiring nuclear weapons is the last--perhaps their only--option to deter an American attempt to overthrow their governments. This already appears to be the dynamic in the case of Iran and North Korea. Also, in dealing with the likes of Tehran

and Pyongyang, there can be no certainty with whom they may share nuclear technology. Accordingly, there is a clear and present danger that pro-democracy zeal may enhance the greatest possible threat to U.S. security and the American way of life--the threat of nuclear terrorism.

29


Deontology Bad – Foreign Policy

Deontology in foreign policy leads to messianic wars – crusades prove.Harries, The National Interest, 2005 (Owen, Fall, p. 66)

The danger implicit in an approach to foreign policy based on the ‘‘ethic of ultimate ends,’’ one which insists on the existence of only one valid and universal moral code which must always be adhered to, is that, by ruling out compromise and flexibility, it will either immobilize a leader, or, if the leader feels powerful enough, lead to a messianic, crusading policy to ensure that the one true good prevails. In the name of untainted virtue, it will tend to rule out—as either cynical or feeble—a tolerant, compromising approach to different interests, values, and institutions. And, again as we have witnessed recently, when such an approach is adopted by some actors it will tend to produce its mirror image in others and to harden the whole climate of international affairs.

Deontology is counterproductive – it produces global wars that only utilitarian realism can solve.Frankel, prof. of philosophy and public affairs at Columbia University, 1975 (Charles, “Morality and U.S. Foreign Policy”, http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/v18_i006_a006.pdf)

It is in this context that the emergence of that approach to American foreign policy known as realism ust be understood. The realists, chastened by the consequences of the combination of isolationism and high pronunciamento that characterized American policy during the long armistice of 1918-39, wanted the United States to become a member, permanent, duespaying, active, of the interstate system of continuous negotiations. But they did not believe that this system would be or could be a redeemed system. They were internationalists who agreed, philosophically, with Henry Cabot Lodge’s jaundiced estimate of the diplomatic world. They needed to put American participation in the international system, therefore, on a new basis. The outcome was realism. It was an effort to put American thinking about foreign affairs in a plane compatible with the country’s conducting a long, unremitting diplomatic enterprise, lit occasionally by successes, darkened much more often by disappointments and frustrations, possibly keeping the planet from another holocaust, but never to be conceived as terminating in a final victory of Light over Darkness.

30


AT: Calculation Bad (Dillon)

1. Weighing competing interests and the inevitability that some people will be wronged does not invalidate political calculations – they are inevitable anyway.

Frankel, prof. of philosophy and public affairs at Columbia University, 1975 (Charles, “Morality and U.S. Foreign Policy”, http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/v18_i006_a006.pdf)

What are we to make of statements like Professor Morgenthau’s to the effect that “the political act is inevitably evil”? In the ordinary use of the word evil the ‘statement is false: political acts aren’t inevitably evil. A successful negotiation staving off a bloody war, a nuclear test-ban treaty, an international agreement to combat malaria are none of ‘them evil in the everyday language of everyday people. The only explanation for this otherwise puzzling statement is that Professor Morgenthau is using the word in an esoteric way. He means,

one must presume, that in negotiating an end to a war or arriving at international agreements some people’s interests will be adversely affected, that forms of bargaining will probably take place which would not be appropriate in a roomful of old friends, and that some moral values will be treated as less important than other. In sum, choosing, weighing, balancing, and blending take place. But to call this “evil” is to reserve the word “good” for only those kinds of behavior where we know exactly what the right thing to do is, and don’t need to think about the matter at all. It saves the word “good” for the behavior of gods.

2. Only Util Worksa. Utilitarian calculus cannot justify the devaluation of life – worst case it renders calculations

equal because it revolves around mazimization of social utility.WALLACE Professor of Philosophy – University of Illinois 1988 Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict

Thus the theoretical expediency of recognizing but one ultimate or overriding practical principle will not necessarily exempt us from difficulties with relevance and conflict problems. Classical utilitarianism, however, is a kind of single-consideration view that apparently precludes conflicts. In a particular situation, each of two contrary alternative courses of action may promote utility but this does not create a conflict for utilitarians. Their principle does not tell them to promote utility wherever the opportunity presents itself; the principle prescribes maximizing utility. Utility is quantifiable wherever it occurs. The only consideration that indicates acting is that an act is reasonably expected to produce more utility than any alternative. If two contrary alternative acts will produce equal amounts of utility, the choice between them is morally indifferent. That a possible act will produce more utility than any alternatives is always a relevant consideration; on this view, there are no other candidates for the status of relevant consideration .

b. Only we solve extinction claims – realism naturally opposes any power that justifies destruction to achieve its interests – survival is a prerequisite to any ethical theory.

STENSLI Commander Norwegian Naval Forces 2003 Pacem n.1 http://www.pacem.no/2003/1/debatt/stensli/

Political realism is certainly not incompatible with democracy, toleration, and the defence of human rights. But PR is

not a theory about these phenomena as such! Rather, PR is a school of thought overwhelmingly preoccupied by how to protect these values. Morgenthau has never claimed to present a Theory of Ethics, simply because politics always is about the tension between ethics (including “ultimate aims”, in the words of

Morgenthau) and feasible actions and outcomes (immediate aims). When political realism was constructed in the Western World in the 20th

Century, it was implicitly in defence against appeasement as well as against what Kissinger called revolutionary powers. By revolutionary powers, Kissinger meant the powers that seek destruction of others in order to secure themselves. To avoid the destruction of its own polity clearly must be given priority in times of crises. Furthermore,

<Continues…>

31

http://www.pacem.no/2003/1/debatt/stensli/



<Continued…>there has never existed a modern democracy without a functioning state. And in modern history, the rule of law and respect for basic human rights has hardly existed outside of democracies. It is for these reasons political scientists have been so occupied with the study of the relations between states, state institutions and democratisation.

c. Utilitarianism forbids war crimes, including genocide.KATEB Professor of Philosophy – Princeton 1992 The Inner Ocean

The doctrine of no-use is based on the possibility of extinction. Schell’s perspective transforms the subject. He takes us away from the arid stretches of strategy and asks us to feel continuously, if we can, and feel keenly if only for an instant now and then, how utterly distinct the nuclear world is. Nuclear discourse must vividly register that distinctiveness. It is of no moral account that extinction may be only a slight possibility. No one can say how great the possibility is, but no one has yet credibly denied that by some sequence or other a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural extinction. If it is not impossible, it must be treated as certain: the loss signified by extinction nullifies all calculations of probability as it nullifies al calculations of costs and benefits.

3. Self-Righteousnessa. Their criticism ignores the moral potential of other ethical theories.

NYE Professor of IR – JFK School of Government – Harvard 1986 Nuclear Ethics, p. x-xi

Sometimes people regard morality as an expression of unexamined and unchallengeable first premises or basic intuitions. A moral position, in that view, is an emotional expression that tries to move other people’s intuitions. The correct moral response to nuclear weapons is thus a cry of moral outrage. But whatever the role of moral outrage, it is not the same as moral reasoning, and hardly a complete description of our ethical traditions. Others regard morality not as outrage but as rigid application of a set of rules. Any effort to calculate consequences or give reasons for waiving rules in certain circumstances is regarded as mere pragmatic reasoning, not moral reasoning. But as I shall explain, that is a stunted view of moral reasoning which ignores a large part of the great Western traditions in moral philosophy .

b. It is ultimately self-righteous nonsense to sacrifice all ethical consideration in an age where the stakes are extinction.

NYE Professor of IR – JFK School of Government – Harvard 1986 Nuclear Ethics, pp. 18-9

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 shot. 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 n a world of nuclear weapons? “Do what is right though the world should perish” was a difficult principle even when Kant propounded it in the eighteenth century, and there is some evidence 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. Absolutist ethics bear a heavier burden of proof in the nuclear age than ever before.

32



4. Policymakinga. Effective policymaking requires broad calculations.

GOODIN Fellow of Philosophy – Australian National University 1990 The Utilitarian Response, pp. 41-2

My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more plausible for them (or more precisely, makes them adopt a form of utilitarianism that we would find more acceptable) than private individuals. Before proceeding with that larger argument, I must therefore say what it is that is so special about public officials and their situations that makes it both more necessary and more desirable for them

adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. The argument from necessity Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices. But that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it all – to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the utility payoffs from adopting each alternative possible general rule. But they cannot be sure what they payoff will do to any given individual or on any particular occasion. Their knowledge of generalities, aggregates and averages is just not sufficiently fine-grained for that.

b. Effective policymaking is key to solve extinction.Beres 03 (Louis Rene, “Anarchy and international law on an endangered planet,” The Journal and Courier, 6/5).

For us, other rude awakenings are unavoidable, some of which could easily overshadow the horrors of Sept. 11.

There can be little doubt that, within a few short years, expanding tribalism will produce several new genocides and proliferating nuclear weapons will generate one or more regional nuclear wars. Paralyzed by fear and restrained by impotence, various governments will try, desperately, to deflect our attention, but it will be a vain effort. Caught up in a vast chaos from which no real escape is possible, we will learn too late that there is no durable safety in arms, no ultimate rescue by authority, no genuine remedy in science or technology. What shall we do? For a start, we must all begin to look carefully behind the news.

Rejecting superficial analyses of day-to-day events in favor of penetrating assessments of world affairs, we must learn quickly to distinguish what is truly important from what is merely entertainment. With such learning, we Americans could prepare for growing worldwide anarchy not as immobilized objects of false contentment, but as authentic citizens of an endangered planet. Nowhere is it written that we people of Earth are forever, that humankind must thwart the long-prevailing trend among all planetary life-forms (more than 99 percent) of ending in extinction. Aware of this, we may yet survive, at least for a while, but only if our collective suppression of purposeful fear is augmented by a complementary wisdom; that is, that our personal mortality is undeniable and that the harms done by one tribal state or terror group against "others" will never confer immortality. This is, admittedly, a difficult

concept to understand, but the longer we humans are shielded from such difficult concepts the shorter will be our time remaining. We must also look closely at higher education in the United S tates, not from the shortsighted stance of improving test scores, but from the urgent perspective of confronting extraordinary threats to human survival. For the moment, some college students are exposed to an occasional course in what is fashionably described as "global awareness," but such exposure usually sidesteps the overriding issues: We now face a deteriorating world system that cannot be mended through sensitivity alone; our leaders are dangerously unprepared to deal with catastrophic deterioration; our schools are altogether incapable of transmitting the indispensable visions of planetary restructuring. To institute productive <Continues…>

33



<Continued…>student confrontations with survival imperatives, colleges and universities must soon take great risks, detaching themselves from a time-dishonored preoccupation with "facts" in favor of grappling with true life-or-death questions. In raising these questions, it will not be enough to send some students to study in Paris or Madrid or Amsterdam ("study abroad" is not what is meant by

serious global awareness). Rather, all students must be made aware - as a primary objective of the curriculum - of where we are heading, as a species, and where our limited survival alternatives may yet be discovered. There are, of course, many

particular ways in which colleges and universities could operationalize real global awareness , but one way, long-neglected, would be best. I refer to the study of international law. For a country that celebrates the rule of law at all levels, and which explicitly makes international law part of the law of the United States - the "supreme law of the land" according to the Constitution and certain Supreme Court decisions - this should be easy enough to understand. Anarchy, after all, is the absence of law, and knowledge of international law is necessarily prior to adequate measures of world order reform. Before international law can be taken seriously, and before "the blood-dimmed tide" can be halted, America's future leaders must at least have some informed acquaintance with pertinent rules and procedures. Otherwise we shall surely witness the birth of a fully ungovernable world order, an unheralded and sinister arrival in which only a shadowy legion of gravediggers would wield the forceps.

34


AT: Economic Evaluation Bad

1. Even if it’s against moral norms, we must weigh human lives against resources for realistic decision making and it’s inevitable.

MacKinnon, prof. of philosophy at University of San Francisco, 1986 (“Science, Technology, & Human Values”, Spring, p. 36)

The application of moral norms to practical affairs is always more difficult than their theoretical clarification. Thus these suggestions regarding the application to difficult risk decisionmaking of the negative-positive duty distinction are made with some degree of tentativeness. The basic idea, however, may be more secure. In decisionmaking regarding risk regulation or safety standards, we ought to focus not on some acceptable economic measure of the value of a life or on the correct dollar value for cost-benefit analyses involving risk to human life. Rather, we ought to judge in terms of the distinction between our strong duties and responsibilities not to harm, and our weaker duties to save. We may, in fact, then, retain something of the Kantian notion of the dignity or pricelessness of human life, yet, at the same time pay only so much to save it. Some concern for reasonableness (including cost) is still appropriate since we are not required to go to any and all lengths to save lives or to reduce risk. And, in budgeting society’s resources, we are not judging the lives saved are worth only as much as is paid to save them. Rather than hide the fact that cost is being considered in risk regulation decisions, then, we may admit it and at the same time show how it is not incompatible with the incomparable value we ideally give to human life.

2. Turn – rights depend on money; economics must be evaluated.Holmes, prof. of Law at NYU, and Sunstein, prof. of polisci at U of Chicago, 1999 (Stephen and Cass, “The Costs of Rights”, p. 79)

The cost of training and monitoring correctional officers is a concrete illustration of the indispensable contribution of the tax-paying community to the protection of individual liberties. True, it is more familiar to the style of rights protected within our criminal justice system as purely negative, as rights against the government, as shields from police and prosecutorial and custodial abuse. But attention to the cost of rights should help us focus attention on the other side of the coin, namely on the forms of state action required for rights protected by the criminal justice system solely protections of criminals, or even of the wrongly accused. Ordinary citizens depend, for their protection against the state and thus for their so-called negative liberties, on the taxpayer-funded training and monitoring of the police.

3. Environmenta. Weighing economic risks is key to the environment.

Holmes, prof. of Law at NYU, and Sunstein, prof. of polisci at U of Chicago, 1999 (Stephen and Cass, “The Costs of Rights”, p. 127)

Risks to health and safety and to the environment are among the foremost concerns of citizens in developed countries. In the United States, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually to improve health and safety and the environment. Numerous laws and regulations specify rules for work, requirements for product qualities, and guidelines for behavior. Individuals and families spend time, effort, and money to increase their own health and safety and reduce damage to the environment. In all these cases, risk is managed.

35


AT: Economic Evaluation Bad

b. Environmental protection is key to prevent extinction.John Cairns, Jr., department of biology, Virginia Polytechnic institute, 1998 (“Goals and Conditions for a Sustainable World” http://www.int-res.com/esepbooks/CairnsEsepBook.pdf) [O’Brien]

Sustainable use of the planet will require that the two components of human society’s life support system – technological and ecological – be in balance (Cairns, 1996). Holmberg et al. (1996) state the situation superbly: "A long-term sustainable society must have stable physical relations with the ecosphere. This implies sustainable materials exchange

between the society and the ecosphere as well as limitations on society’s manipulation of nature." At present, persuasive signs indicate that the technological system is damaging the integrity of the ecological life support system (Cairns, 1997). By monitoring the condition or health of both systems, a benign coevolution of human society and natural systems

would be possible (Cairns, 1994; 1995). However, sustainable use of the planet will require environmental management on unprecedented temporal and spatial scales. The attainment of sustainability faces considerable obstacles. A societal distrust of scientific evidence has arisen that ranges from a belief that science does not differ from other ways of knowing to a total misunderstanding of how science works. Also, one common belief is that quality of life is more closely associated with consumption or affluence than with environmental quality, and, consequently, that a maintenance of affluence is to be preferred over the maintenance of natural systems. This false choice arises from human society’s failure to recognize its dependence on natural systems for essential ecological services, such as maintenance of breathable air, drinkable water, the capture of energy from sunlight, and the provision of arable soils (e.g., Daily, 1997). Possibly, the same human ingenuity that people have relied on to solve local resource limitations could also be used to develop an environmental ethos that will enable humans to conserve the ecological capital (old growth forests, species diversity, topsoil, fossil water, and the like) upon which they now depend. Humankind has survived thus far by meeting short-term emergencies as they occurred. However, humans supposedly can be distinguished from other species

by their awareness of the transience of individual lives and their own mortality. Extending this awareness to the possibility of human extinction might be enlightening. Wilson (1993) asks "Is humanity suicidal?": The human species is, in a word, an environmental hazard. It is possible that intelligence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained to be a fatal combination for the biosphere. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually

extinguishes itself. If human society destroys, by its own actions, the living components of Earth that maintain an environmental state favorable to human survival, human society hastens its own extinction. Protection of these ecological services extends the time that the human species can survive on Earth. By regulating the use of ecosystem services to a rate that does not destroy the ability of natural systems to produce them, more humans will live better lives over time. Towards this end, a number of steps can be undertaken.

4. Economic evaluation is key to good decision making.Keeney, prof. of systems management, 1996 (Ralph, “Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science”, v. 545, p. 134)

In summary, - values are crucial to risk management; - there are systematic procedures that make values explicit, organized, and quantified; and – explicit and quantified values can significantly improve risk management decisions. Values are why people care about risk management. Thus it is natural to involve the public in decisions about their risk by asking them about their values. If we know what the public wants, we have a much better chance of providing it. Risk management decisions are complex, so a little analysis can go a long way in providing insights. Such analyses should include models of possible consequences and models of values to facilitate the evaluation of existing alternatives and the development of betters ones. In addition, if values are explicit, we can communicate why one alternative is chosen and why others are not. Greater trust in the decision processes and the decision makers should result.

36

http://www.int-res.com/esepbooks/CairnsEsepBook.pdf


AT: No War (Mendelbaum)

Mandlebaum concedes war could occur under many circumstances.

Michael Mandlebaum, professor of Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins, SURVIVAL, 1999, Winter, p. unknown

The trends that have contributed to debellicisation are not as firmly entrenched in Russia or China as in the countries that were there adversaries during the Cold War. Even in the West, warlessness could erod: the barriers to war could weak, for example, if democracy were to become less robust. Or, as the world moves away from the era of battles in the first half of the twentieth century, and the period of nuclear-induced anxiety punctuated by occasional crises in the second half, the memories and anticipations of destruction that helped to keep the world’s mightiest military machines in check could fade. Or the obsolescence of modern war could be undercut by what bureaucracies call “unk-unks” unknown unknowns – things aobut which there is not merely uncertainty but a complete lack of awareness. Militant religious beliefs, messianic ideologics, conflicts over resources or other currently unforeseen causes of conflict may lurk over the horizon.

War is likely in many places.

Donald Kagan, Carnegie Endowment, SURVIVAL, Summer, 1999, p. unknown.

Mandlebaum is very cautious in the language that he uses. Major war is not necessarily finished, he concedes. It’s not dead, it’s obsolete. This is a charming term that seems to say more than it does, because that allows Mandelbaum to draw back from the more total claims later on. A ajor war is unlikely but not unthinkable, which is to say he thinks it can happen. It’s obsolete, he writes, in the sense that it is no longer fashionable. To pick up the metaphor is to see some of its limitations as well as its charm. Is war really a

matter of fashion? And even if it is, don’t we have to face the fact that there are some people who chose to be unfashionable, and then there are other people who have never hear of fashion in the first place?

China and Russia are two cases to which the writer points. He identifies the Taiwan Straits and the Russo-Ukrainian border as places where wars may well break out, should they erupt anywhere. They are the “potential Sarajevos of the twenty-first century.” He is right. And, of course, it is this concession, however genuinely and generously and modeslty expressed, that gives away the game. Since there are at least two places where major wars between great powers might break out even today – and two are quite enough – it seems to me that his entire thesis is undermined.

37


AT: The Other (Levinas)

BEING FOR THE OTHER GROUNDS DISCUSSION OF IMPACTS, IT DOESN’T TRUMP THEM. EVEN IF THEY WIN THEIR FRAMEWORK, IF THEY MAKE THINGS WORSE, THEY LOSE.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

Nevertheless, I must expect to betray them more often than I am adequate to the challenge of their need. Holocaust literature is a summons to responsibility for the victims of genocide, but this merely describes what is possible, not what is real. Historicity is a reminder that some things are past changing. The reality of six million deaths is something

I can neither alter nor deny; the suffering on six million faces is something to which I can never adequately respond. But if I can do nothing about the past I may yet affect the future. It is often said that the purpose of studying the Holocaust is to prevent it from ever happening again. As the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says: Much more is involved in [studying the Holocaust] than the tribute to the memory of murdered millions, settling the account with the murderers and healing the still-festering moral wounds of the passive and silent witnesses. Obviously, the study itself, even a most diligent study, is not a sufficient guarantee against the return of mass murdere[r]s and numb bystanders. Yet

without such a study, we would not even know how likely or improbable such a return may be. What this indicates is that the Holocaust does not belong only to history but also to possibility. If we cannot affect its outcome we can still do something about its meaning. Events mean nothing in themselves; they must be interpreted. But what this also indicates is that meaning arises from our responsibility. The counterfactual possibility of doing something appropriate about the Holocaust is what creates our responsibility to it, and if what we want is to discover its meaning—that is, to interpret the Holocaust—then our interpretation must be shaped and guided by our responsibility.

Turn – unconditional support for the Other justifies killing someone, including an Other, to save the Other; the proves their argument is nonsensical and that duties to the Other can be overridden.Aberson, professor of philosophy, 2005 (Raziel, “The Philosophical Forum”, Spring, p. 31-8)

Shelley Kagan’s discussion of these issues in his important book, The Limits of Morality, offers a subtle and challenging critique of the agent-centered ethics I have been defending. Kagan argues that if the cost to the agent, or to those close to the agent, can override the pro tanto principle that one should promote the general good, as the “moderate” (read common sense) view maintains, then such cost can also override any moral constraint on action, such as the rule not to cause serious, even lethal, harm. One could, then, if one’s child or one’s friend needed a heart transplant, kill a stranger to obtain one could then, if one’s child or one’s friend would die without a heart transplant, kill a stranger to obtain his heart. After all, if considerations of cost generate reasons that

oppose making considerable sacrifices, then it is logically possible that these same reasons will outweigh (or balance) the reasons that normally generate the constraint.

The possibility remains, therefore, that it will be permissible for the agent to do harm when the cost to the agent of not doing so would be significant. 7 I cannot agree with Kagan that common sense morality ever allows reasons of cost to the agent or to those close to the agent to override the constraint not to do serious harm. That possibility suggested by Kagan is, I believe, foreclosed by the common sense (and Kantian) distinction between the strict (i.e., not overrideable) duty not to do serious harm and the meritorious (overrideable) duty to aid others.

38



We have more of an obligation to those close to us than to the Other.Aberson, professor of philosophy, 2005 (Raziel, “The Philosophical Forum”, Spring, p. 31-8)

Peter Unger, in Living High and Letting Die, seems to agree with what he calls “Libertarianism” (and I call “common sense morality”) that we have moral obligations to aid those who are emotionally close to us which take precedence over our obligations to unknown strangers: Very briefly, here’s a fallible formulation of a fair bit of

Libertarianism’s substantive side. Insofar as they need her help to have a decent chance for decent lives, a person must do a great deal for those few people, like her dependent children, to whom she has the most serious sort of special obligation . Insofar as it’s compatible with that, which is often very considerable indeed, and sometimes even when it’s not so compatible, she must do a lot for other innocent folks in need [. . .]5 Setting aside Unger’s tantalizing next-to-last clause: “and sometimes when it’s not so compatible,” he does recognize the relevance of emotional closeness to degree of responsibility to aid. Yet throughout his thoughtful study, he argues persuasively for a position very similar to that of Peter Singer, whom he frequently quotes with approval to the effect that, if we do not contribute all we

have except the necessities of life to famine relief, we are guilty of severe moral callousness in letting people die whom we could have, and should have saved: [. . .] we can conclude that, if it’s needed for

there to be as much (sic) as three fewer children dying soon, it’s seriously wrong for you (not) to impose a nonserious loss on yourself, however large. Now as we all

know, by imposing on yourself as large a financial loss as you can, and easily aiming the fund toward efficient vital programs, you will lessen serious suffering to a far

greater extent than that. So it’s seriously wrong not to send to the likes of Unicef and Oxfam, about as promptly as possible, nearly all your worldly wealth. In drawing these utilitarian conclusions, Unger seems to have overlooked his initial agreement with Libertarianism, as quoted above, to the effect that those emotionally close to us have a prior moral claim on our assistance.

Vote to save lives – an endangered 3rd party makes responsibility impossible to determine.Campbell, prof. of international politics at the University of Newcastle, 1999 (David, “Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics”, p. 35-6)

Levinas's thought is appealing for rethinking the question of responsibility, especially with respect to situations like the Balkan crisis, because it maintains that there is no circumstance under which we could declare that it was not our concern. As Levinas notes, people can (and obviously do) conduct their relationship to the Other in terms of exploitation,

oppression, and violence. But no matter how allergic to the other is the self, "the relation to the other, as a relation of responsibility, cannot be totally suppressed, even when it takes the form of politics or warfare." In consequence, no self can ever opt out of a relationship with the other: "[I]t is impossible to free myself by saying, 'It's not my concern.' There is no choice, for it is always and inescapably my concern. This is a unique 'no choice,' one that is not slavery." This unique lack of choice comes about because in Levinas's thought ethics has been transformed from something independent of subjectivity—that is, from a set of rules and regulations adopted by pregiven, autonomous agents—to something insinuated within and integral to that subjectivity. Accordingly, ethics can be understood as something not ancillary to the existence of a subject; instead, ethics can be appreciated for its indispensability to the very being of the subject. This argument leads us to the recognition that "we" are always already ethically situated, so making judgments about conduct depends less on what sort of rules are invoked as regulations and more on how the interdependencies of our relations with others are appreciated. To repeat one of Levinas's key points: "Ethics redefines subjectivity as this heteronomous responsibility, in contrast to autonomous freedom." Suggestive though it is for the domain of international relations where the bulk of the

work on ethics can be located within a conventional perspective on responsibility — Levinas's formulation of responsibility, subjectivity, and ethics nonetheless possesses some problems when it comes to the implications of this thought for politics. What requires particular attention is the means by which the elemental and omnipresent status of responsibility, which is founded in the one-to-one or face-to-face relationship, can function in circumstances marked by a multiplicity of others. Although the reading of Levinas here agrees that "the ethical exigency to be responsible to the other undermines the ontological primacy of the meaning of being," and embraces the idea that this demand "unsettles the natural and political positions we have taken up in the world and predisposes us to a meaning that is other than being, that is otherwise than being:" how those disturbances are negotiated so as to foster the maximum responsibility in a world populated by

others in struggle remains to be argued. To examine what is a problem of considerable import given the context of this essay, I want to consider Levinas's discussion of "the third person," the distinction he makes between the ethical and the moral, and—of particular importance in a consideration of the politics of international action—the role of the state in Levinas's thought.

39



Infinite responsibility fails – if it is impossible to fulfill it, it does not drive us to calculate in favor of the Other, but rather to surrender to self interest – turns case.Fitzsimmons and Woods, profs. of Arts, Health and Sciences at Central Queensland University, 2000 (Dr. John and Dr. Wally, “Chapter 3 – Herman Melville’s ‘Barleby, the Scrivener’ and ‘Benito Cerino’”, http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/humanities/litstud/52283/schedule/chap3/p5.htm)

Anderson believes that the lawyer’s charity seems to go beyond what most would have given. This raises a question, he believes, which underpins the story: is it possible to perform acts of altruism without, finally, having regard to self–interest? What this suggests is that Christ’s commandments reflect an ideal, one that the rest of us find impossible to live up to because, at a certain point, we all turn back to self–preservation (that is, unlike Christ who went "all the way" and gave up his life) (386). The contrast between capitalism (Wall Street being one of its dominant symbols) with its self–interest, and the Christ–like Bartleby could not, Anderson argues, be stronger. He concludes that the "divine–logos," which Bartleby represents, shows itself as an impossible practice within the confines of "institutionalised self–interest" (386). Or to put it another way, if we are our brother’s keeper, Bartleby, in demanding to be kept without offering anything in return, is so exasperating that even the apparently charitable lawyer gives in and moves out when Bartleby refuses to quit his offices (387).

Turn – providing concrete instances of responsibility creates artificial connections that makes it impossible to help the Other.Benammar, prof. of cross-cultural studies at Kobe University, 1996 (Karim, “The Project of Community”, Acta Institutionis Philosophiae et Aestheticae, Vol. 14, http://ccs.cla.kobe-u.ac.jp/Kihan/karim/project.html)

The other in Levinasian ethics is thus certainly not faceless, because it is precisely the face of the other, the individual face of this other, which puts me under an ethical imperative not to kill and not to harm. This is an

imperative to always consider the other as a fellow-human, as someone whose humanity, right to live and right to respect are sacred and inviolable. And yet, although this other is an individual, with an expressive, individual face, with brown or green eyes, with features deep-set or hard to fathom, the other must be a stranger. The other who commands me, who puts me under an ethical obligation to refrain from harm, is not my father or sister-in-law, is neither my boss nor my neighbor, cannot be my business partner or high-school friend. The force of the ethical obligation I am put under comes from the fact that the other is a stranger to whom I owe nothing and who owes me nothing. The other we

encounter in Levinas is thus an other with a face, a unique and individual other, who is nevertheless not primarily related to me or engaged in any constructive endeavor or relation with me. The other in

contemporary French philosophy fait irruption, emerges to dislodge the symmetrical and determined relations between individuals, comes from the outside, unknown, to break up the status quo. The relational context, which was so neatly defined in Watsuji's ethics, is never enclosed, finished, exhaustively described, or even at rest. This is, after all, partly what we mean by "other": someone who is not the same as us, who cannot be reduced to or tamed by the I, who cannot be exhaustively described in terms of

categories that apply to the I. The other is the unknown who destroys the possibility of reciprocity and balance, the chance at a self-enclosed relationship between equals. The other is always something of an alien.

40


AT: Rescher

Rescher concedes some risks aren’t worth it.Nick Rescher, Professor of Practical Reasoning, Pittsburgh, RISK, 1983, p.

Certain hazards are simply unacceptable because they involve a (relatively) unacceptable threat – things may go wrong so badly that, relative to the alternatives, it’s just not worthwhile to “run the risk”; even in the face of a favorable balance of probabilities. The rationale mainis not willing to trade off against on another by juggling probabilities such outcomes as the loss of one hair and the loss of his health or his freedom. The balance or disparity between the risks is just too great to be restored by probabilistic readjustments.

Until they disprove our disad it is assumes a high risk – don’t let them simply assert that because we say “nuke war” it is a low risk.

Cross-apply Schell – even the slightest risk of nuke war mandates you vote neg; a fraction of infinity is still infinity, cross-apply analysis from the overview.

41


AT: Callahan

Callahan concedes that survival is the highest priority.Callahan, Hastings Center, 1983 (Daniel, “The Tyranny of Survival”, p. 106-7)

But there are surely conditions under which it could become a priority, and a very high one. The most important of those conditions would be the existence of evidence that irreversibility was beginning to set in, making it increasingly impossible to return to the original conditions. That situation, combined with visible evidence of serious present deterioration – for instance, an urgent need to develop compensatory technologies – would warrant a focus on survival; for that is just what would be at stake.

The above evidence proves their arg is out of context – Callahan says it is bad to focus on survival unless GIVEN A SPECIFIC SCENARIO for extinction; our disad is that scenario.

42


AT: Gewirth

1. Gewirth concedes people are responsible for letting someone die.Gewirth, prof. of philosophy at Chicago U, 1982 (Alan, “Human Rights: Reason and Morality”, p. 228-9)

The difficulty with this argument is that the duties bearing on the right to life include not only that someone not kill innocent persons but also that one not let them die when one can prevent their dying at no comparable cost. If for example, one can rescue a drowning man by throwing him a rope, one has a moral duty to throw him a rope. Failure to do so is morally culpable. Hence, to this extent the son who lets many residents die when he can prevent this by means within his power is morally responsible for their deaths.

2. Intervening actors is inconsistent with Gewirth’s moral philosophy, which requires the equal treatment of all people and that they are equally valuable – this means if someone makes a choice that kills more people, that person has not fulfilled their moral responsibility.

Cummiskey, associate prof. of philosophy at Bates, 1999 (David, “Gewirth: Critical Essays on Action, Rationality, and Community”, p. 134)

Indeed the Principle of Intervening Action simply asserts what must be shown. As Gewirth emphasizes, all agents have a right not to be killed. The question at issue is whether it is sometimes obligatory to kill to prevent more killings. If one responds that it is not because another agent is doing the killing, then one is simply assuming that the duty in question is an agent-relative restriction. This unargued assumption, however, conflicts with the basic PGC (Principle of Generic Consistency) to respect the rights of all persons affected by one’s choice. Since the persons being killed have a right not to be killed, and since they are going to be killed as a result of my refusal, they are indeed recipients of my action in the sense that is decisive as far as morality is concerned. I thus must act in light of the equal rights of all who will be killed if I refuse and of the person who will be killed if I give in to the terrorists. As we have seen above, all other things equal, the rights of all will be more secure if we accept a principle where the rights of a few give way to the rights of the many. The consequentialist criterion of the degree of needfulness for action requires a cost-benefit analysis of the options. Since the fewer people killed the more objective basic needs are protected, it appears that the right of the many not to be killed may outweigh the right of the one not to be killed.

3. You are responsible for others’ actions when you cause others to take those actions.Uniacke, prof. of philosophy at University of Wollongong, 1999 (Suzanne, “International Journal of Philosophical Studies”, p. 189)

We bear responsibility for the outcome of another’s actions, for instance, when we provoke these actions (Iago); or when we supply the means (Kevorkian), identification (Judas), or incentive (Eve); or where we encourage another to act as he [or she] does (Lady Macbeth). Despite his disclaimer, Pilate cannot acquit himself entirely of the outcome of what others decide simply by ceding the judgment to them. In these examples agents are indirectly, partly responsible for the outcomes of what others do in virtue of something they themselves have done. But indirect, partial responsibility for what another person does can also arise through an agent’s non-intervention and be grounded in intention or fault; for example, when Arthur does not prevent Brian killing Catherine, because Arthur wants Catherine dead, or because Arthur simply cannot be bothered to warn her or call the police. Of course attributions of indirect, partial responsibility can be difŽ cult. And as far as absolutism is concerned, the relevant sense of ‘brings about’, outlined earlier, will sometimes be quite stretched where an agent is attributed with responsibility

for what someone else does. All the same, by our non-intervention we can help bring about some things that are directly and voluntarily caused by others.

43


AT: Gewirth

4. You are responsible for outcomes of negligible actions or non-intervention.Uniacke, prof. of philosophy at University of Wollongong, 1999 (Suzanne, “International Journal of Philosophical Studies”, p. 189)

Absolutists hold agents principally responsible for the intended outcomes of their conduct. Intended outcomes can extend beyond the scope of categorical norms of course; and compliance with categorical norms is not all there is to morality as far as absolutism is concerned. Furthermore, responsibility can be a matter of degree. Agents bear a degree of responsibility for the foreseen, non-intended outcomes of voluntary conduct which is in some sense faulty. Such faulty conduct includes both what an agent does and what he allows. Agents are responsible for the outcomes of their reckless or negligent acts, and also for what they wrongfully do not prevent. Consider Louis, who, believing himself to be a solitary passer-by, ignores a child drowning in a shallow pond because he can’t be bothered to wade in, or because rescuing it would muddy his clothes or make him late for a concert. Louis allows the child to drown, and in ignoring its plight he foresees but does not intend the child’s death (which is no part of his purpose in hurrying on). Nonetheless, Louis bears responsibility for the child’s death; as the outcome of his nonintervention, it is the result of moral failure (indifference, indefensible priorities) on his part.

44


Utopianism Turn

All moral systems that attempt to override practical obstacles to their implementation with moral trump cards culminate in absolute crime.Cheng, Rockefeller Fellow at University of Virginia, 2003 (Cordozo Law Review 24, p. 1108-9)

"Morality, when it is formal, devours," observes Camus. n42 As both Camus and Lacan point out, morality alone does not lead to terror. It is only when morality asserts itself as absolute and inflexible that it becomes sadistic. For both Camus and Lacan, terror arises from the failure to set a limit to any action or practice. Morality is necessary because it sets a limit on what the subject is allowed to do, but morality itself can become terror when it asserts unlimited authority. In fact, Nietzsche himself might not be too far from the position taken by Camus and Lacan. Even though Nietzsche appears to be more ready to dismiss morality in toto, the kind of morality he has in mind is one that seeks absolute control - driven as it is by the spitefulness and vengefulness of ressentiment. In Beyond Good and Evil, for example, he calls the human need for morality "the worst of all tastes," because it is "the taste for the unconditional." In other words, it is the unconditional character of morality that Nietzsche finds objectionable. Absolute virtue leads to absolute crime because "absolute" virtue can exist only as a formal, rational idea, unresponsive to empirical and human reality. Since it cannot operate in sync with reality, to reaffirm its status as the absolute Truth, it must persecute and even eliminate reality until its sovereignty reigns unchallenged. Revolutionaries are often susceptible to the temptation of "absolute virtue," because they see themselves and the old regime in terms of absolute good versus absolute evil. They are impatient to implement their vision of the "new society" and anxious to demonstrate the differences between the old society and the new - between "the bad" and "the good." Convinced that a bad society corrupts its citizens, revolutionaries are eager to reform not only society but also humanity. Reforming necessitates shaping materials according to a certain idea. Revolutionaries thus often have a set of principles and virtues that they impose on the new society, be it liberty, equality, fraternity, or justice. Unfortunately, once these virtues have been formalized into inflexible laws which increasingly deviate from human reality, Saint-Just's conclusion that "no one is virtuous innocently" becomes inevitable: "From the moment that laws fail to make harmony reign, or when the unity which should be created by adherence to principles is destroyed, who is to blame? Factions. Who compose the factions? Those who deny by their very actions the necessity of unity."

45


Deontology Good Frontline

1. Violating rights in the name of survival causes social paralysis and destroys the value to life.Callahan, institute of Society and Ethics, 1973 (Daniel, “The Tyranny of Survival”, p. 91-3)

The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. But abused it has been. In the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of individuals, including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades fueled the drive of militarists for ever-larger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During World War II, native Japanese-Americans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This policy was later upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat to national security can justify acts otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the official legitimations of Nazism. Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a ruthless apartheid , heedless of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has see n one of the greatest of the many absurdities tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is not only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F. Skinner offers in Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival. For Jacques Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we

overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and political system. In genetics, the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical efforts to find means by which those suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus procreate even more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul Ehrlich, whose works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally enforced abortions and a denial of food to surviving populations of nations which have not enacted population-control policies. For all these reasons it is possible to counterpoise

over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival." There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on another for sake of survival, no rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never talk about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland to save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny survival as value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values. Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a destructive singlemindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to life—then how will it be possible to honor and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying everything in human beings which makes them worthy of survival. To put it

more strongly, if the price of survival is human degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories.

46



2. We must act as our own moral agents – we are only responsible for taking our own moral actions and not for those of intervening actors.

Gewirth, prof. of philosophy at the University of Chicago, 1982 (Alan, “Human Rights: essays on justification and applications”, p. 229)

The required supplement is provided by the principle of intervening action. According to this principle, when there is a casual connection between some person A’s performing some action (or inaction) X and some other person C’s incurring a certain harm Z, A’s moral responsibility for Z is removed if, between X and Z, there intervenes some other action Y of some person B who knows the relevant circumstances of his action and who intends to produce Z or who produces Z through recklessness. The reason for this removal is that B’s intervening action Y is more direct of proximate cause of Z and, unlike A’s action (or inaction), Y is the sufficient condition of Z as it actually occurs. An example of this principle may help to show its connection with the absolutist thesis. Martin Luther King Jr. was repeatedly told that because he led demonstrations in support of civil rights, he was morally responsible for the disorders, riots, and deaths that ensued and that were shaking the American Republic to its foundations. By the principle of intervening action, however, it was King’s opponents who were responsible because their intervention operated as the sufficient conditions of the riots and injuries. King might also have replied that the Republic would not be worth saving if the price that had to be paid was the violation of the civil rights of black Americans. As for the rights of the other Americans to peace and order, the reply would be that these rights cannot justifiably be secured at the price of the rights of blacks.

3. We must act morally even until the point of death.Watson, prof. of philosophy at Washington University, 1977 (“World Hunger and Moral Obligation”, p. 118-9)

One may even have to sacrifice one’s life or one’s nation to be moral in situations where practical behavior would preserve it. For example, if a prisoner of war undergoing torture is to be a (perhaps dead) patriot even when reason tells him that collaboration will hurt no one, he remains silent. Similarly, if one is to be moral, one distributes available food in equal shares even if everyone dies. That an action is necessary to save one’s life is no excuse for behaving unpatriotically or immorally if one wishes to be a patriot or moral. No principle of morality absolves one of behaving immorally simply to save one’s life or nation. There is a strict analogy here between adhering to moral principles for the sake of being moral, and adhering to Christian principles for the sake of being Christian. The moral world contains pits and lions, but one looks always to the highest light. The ultimate test always harks back to the highest principle – recant or die. The ultimate test always harks back to the highest principle – recant or die – and it is pathetic to profess morality if one quits when the going gets rough.

47



4. Our impacts are systemic and thus guaranteed while theirs are only speculation – this alone is a reason to vote aff.

Machan, prof. emeritus of philosophy at Auburn University, 2003 (Tibor, “Passion for Liberty”)

All in all, then, I support the principled or rights-based approach. In normal contexts, honesty is the best policy, even if at times it does not achieve the desired good results; so is respect for every individual's rights to life, liberty, and property. All in all, this is what will ensure the best consequences—in the long run and as a rule. Therefore, one need not be very concerned about the most recent estimate of the consequences of banning or not banning guns, breaking up or not breaking up Microsoft, or any other public policy, for that matter. It is enough to know that violating the rights of individuals to bear arms is a bad idea, and that history and analysis support our understanding of principle. To violate rights has always produced greater damage than good, so let's not do it, even when we are terri bly tempted to do so , Let's not do it precisely because to do so would violate the fundamental requirements of human na ture. It is those requirements that should be our guide, not some recent empirical data that have no staying power (ac cording to their very own theoretical terms). Finally, you will ask, isn't this being dogmatic? Haven't we learned not to bank too much on what we've learned so far, when we also know that learning can always be improved, mod ified, even revised? Isn't progress in the sciences and technology proof that

past knowledge always gets overthrown a bit later? As in science and engineering, so in morality and politics: We must go with what we know but be open to change— provided that the change is warranted. Simply because some additional gun controls or regulations might save lives (some lives, perhaps at the expense of other lives) and simply because breaking up Microsoft might improve the satisfaction of con sumers (some consumers, perhaps at the expense of the satis faction of other consumers) are no reasons to violate basic rights. Only if and when there are solid, demonstrable reasons to do so should we throw out the old principles and bring on the new

principles. Any such reasons would have to speak to the same level of fundamentally and relevance as that incor - porated by the theory of individual rights itself. Those defending consequentialism, like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, have argued the opposite thesis: Unless one can prove, beyond a doubt, that violating rights in a particular instance is necessarily wrong in the eyes of a "rational and fair man," the state may go ahead and "accept the natural outcome of dominant opinion" and violate those rights.1 Such is now the leading jurisprudence of the United States, a country that inaugurated its political life by declaring to the world that each of us possesses unalienable rights, ones that may never be violated no matter what!

5. Government is made up of individuals, thus those individuals are still required to act morally under a deontological framework.

Donaldson, prof. of business and ethics, 1995 (Thomas, “Ethics and International Affairs”, p. 149)

The state is not deprived of intentionality, as Hardin alleges, by the fact that “various officials of a particular state must typically reach different conclusions about what is rationally required.” Like corporations and judicial systems, states possess decision-making procedures designed to allow inferences abut the acts and intentions of the state itself fro the acts of individual members. When, for example, majorities of the duly-elected members of both houses of the U.S. Congress approve aid to Poland for the purposes of developing its economic infrastructure, and when the U.S. President concurs, then we may correctly infer that the United States has acted intentionally in giving aid to Poland.

48


No War (Mandelbaum)

Major war is obsolete – multiple factors prevent escalation and conflict.Mandelbaum, American foreign policy professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, 1999 (Michael, “Is Major War Obsolete?”, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/)

My argument says, tacitly, that while this point of view, which was widely believed 100 years ago, was not true then, there are reasons to think that it is true now. What is that argument? It is that major war is obsolete. By major war, I mean war waged by the most powerful members of the international system, using all of their resources over a protracted period of time with revolutionary geopolitical consequences. There have been four such wars in the modern period: the wars of the French Revolution, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Few though they have been, their consequences have been monumental. They are, by far, the most influential events in modern history. Modern history which can, in fact, be seen as a series of aftershocks to these four earthquakes. So if I am right, then what has been the motor of political history for the last two centuries that has been turned off? This war, I argue, this kind of war, is obsolete; less than impossible, but more than unlikely. What do I mean by obsolete? If I may quote from the article on which this presentation is based, a copy of which you received when coming in, “ Major war is obsolete in a way that styles of dress are obsolete. It is something that is out of fashion and, while it could be revived, there is no present demand for it. Major war is obsolete in the way that slavery, dueling, or foot-binding are obsolete. It is a social practice that was once considered normal, useful, even desirable, but that now seems odious. It is obsolete in the way that the central planning of economic activity is obsolete. It is a practice once regarded as a plausible, indeed a superior, way of achieving a socially desirable goal, but that changing conditions have made ineffective at best,

counterproductive at worst.” Why is this so? Most simply, the costs have risen and the benefits of major war have shriveled. The costs of fighting such a war are extremely high because of the advent in the middle of this century of nuclear weapons , but they would have been high even had mankind never split the atom. As for the benefits, these now seem, at least from the point of view of the major powers, modest to non-existent. The traditional motives for warfare are in retreat, if not extinct. War is no longer regarded by anyone, probably not even Saddam Hussein after his unhappy experience, as a paying proposition. And as for the ideas on behalf of which major wars have been waged in the past, these are in steep decline. Here the collapse of communism was an important milestone, for that ideology was inherently bellicose. This is not to say that the world has reached the end of ideology; quite the contrary. But the ideology that is now in the ascendant, our own, liberalism, tends to be pacific. Moreover, I would argue that three post-Cold War developments have made major war even less likely than it was after 1945. One of these is the rise of democracy, for democracies, I believe, tend to be peaceful. Now carried to its most extreme conclusion, this eventuates in an argument made by some prominent political scientists that democracies never go to war with one another. I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t believe that this is a law of history, like a law of nature, because I believe there are no such laws of history. But I do believe there is something in it. I believe there is a peaceful tendency inherent in democracy. Now it’s true that one important cause of war has not changed with the end of the Cold War. That is the structure of the international system, which is anarchic. And realists, to whom Fareed has referred and of whom John Mearsheimer and our guest Ken Waltz are perhaps the two most leading exponents in this country and the world at the moment, argue that that structure determines international activity, for it leads sovereign states to have to prepare to defend themselves, and those preparations sooner or

later issue in war. I argue, however, that a post-Cold War innovation counteracts the effects of anarchy. This is what I have called in my 1996 book, The Dawn of Peace in Europe, common security. By common security I mean a regime of negotiated arms limits that reduce the insecurity that anarchy inevitably produces by transparency-every state can know what weapons every other state has and what it is doing with them-and through the principle of defense dominance, the reconfiguration through negotiations of military forces to make them more suitable for defense and less for attack. Some caveats are, indeed, in order where common security is concerned. It’s not universal. It exists only in Europe. And there it is certainly not irreversible. And I should add that what I have called common security is not a cause, but a consequence, of the major forces that have made war less

likely. States enter into common security arrangements when they have already, for other reasons, decided that they do not wish to go to war. Well, the third feature of the post-Cold War international system that seems to me to lend itself to warlessness is the novel distinction between the periphery and the core, between the powerful states and the less powerful ones. This was previously a cause of conflict and now is far less important. To quote from the article again, “ While for much of recorded history local conflicts

were absorbed into great-power conflicts, in the wake of the Cold War, with the industrial democracies debellicised and Russia and China preoccupied with internal affairs, there is no great-power conflict into which the many local conflicts that have erupted can be absorbed . The great chess game of international politics is finished, or at least suspended. A pawn is now just a pawn, not a sentry standing guard against an attack on a king.” Now having made the case for the obsolescence of modern war, I must note that there are two major question marks hanging over it: Russia and China. These are great powers capable of initiating and waging major wars, and in these two countries, the forces of warlessness that I have identified are far less powerful and pervasive than they are in the industrial West and in Japan. These are countries, in political terms, in transition, and the political forms and political culture they eventually will have is unclear. Moreover, each harbors within its politics a potential cause of war that goes with the grain of the post-Cold War period-with it, not against it-a cause of war that enjoys a certain legitimacy even now; namely, irredentism. War to reclaim lost or stolen territory has not been rendered obsolete in the way that the more traditional causes have. China believes that Taiwan properly belongs to it. Russia could come to believe this about Ukraine, which means that the Taiwan Strait and the Russian-Ukrainian border are the most dangerous spots on the planet, the places where World War III could begin. In conclusion, let me say what I’m not arguing. I’m not saying that we’ve reached the end of all conflict, violence or war; indeed, the peace I’ve identified at the core of the international system has made conflict on the periphery more likely. Nor am I suggesting that we have reached the end of modern, as distinct from major, war; modern war involving mechanized weapons, formal battles, and professional troops. Nor am I offering a single-factor explanation. It’s not simply nuclear weapons or just democracy or only a growing aversion to war. It’s not a single thing; it’s everything: values, ideas, institutions, and historical experience. Nor, I should say, do I believe that peace is automatic. Peace does not keep itself. But what I think we may be able to secure is more than the peace of

the Cold War based on deterrence. The political scientist Carl Deutcsh once defined a security community as something where warlessness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, he was referring to the North Atlantic community, which was bound tightly together because of the Cold War. But to the extent that my argument is right, all of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region will become, slowly, haltingly but increasingly, like that .

49


No War (Mandelbaum)

Nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence prevents war.Mandelbaum, American foreign policy professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, 1999 (Michael, “Is Major War Obsolete?”, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/)

Good points. First, it is the case that I’m arguing for obsolescence and not deterrence. To argue that nuclear weapons deter and will continue to deter may be correct; I think it is correct, but it’s uninteresting. It’s not an argument worth coming out on a cold February evening to hear. Second, it is, I think, easy enough to argue plausibly that the economic motive is a false one; that is, any of the scenarios in which a major power would go to war for economic reasons would end up a losing proposition. The lesson of the Cold War is that the way you get rich is by participating in the international division of labor or, as it’s sometimes called, the world market.

World War I and II prove others won’t go to war because they know the costs.Mandelbaum, American foreign policy professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, 1999 (Michael, “Is Major War Obsolete?”, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/)

Nonetheless, I have greater faith in the pacific possibilities of the evolution of domestic political systems than I suspect John does, and you rightly identified that as an important part of my argument. If I can make one other point; when I first gave this talk in Oxford at the annual conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and somebody got up and said, ’You know, you’re just repeating the mistake of Norman Angell, the man who wrote the book The Grand Illusion in the first part of the century saying, “ War could never happen."’ And shortly thereafter, World War I broke out. And, indeed, it could have been said in the 1920s that war really was finished, given what had happened between 1914 and 1918, and yet we know what happened between 1939 and 1945. So Fareed raises a point which is germane and which has to be dealt with in my argument. I chose to deal with it then, and I will beg your indulgence to deal with it now by telling one of my favorite jokes. The joke is about the two men sitting in front of the television set watching the eleven o’clock news. On the eleven o’clock news there’s a man threatening to jump off the top of a 20-story building. The first watcher says to the second, ‘I’ll bet you 100 bucks he jumps.’ The second guy says, ‘You’re on.’ Sure enough, the man jumps off the building. The second man reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and starts to peel off $100. The first guy says, ‘Wait a minute. I can’t take your money.’ Second guy says, ‘What do you mean?’ First guy says, ‘I have a confession to make. I saw this on the six o’clock news.’ Second guys says, ‘Well, so did I, but I couldn’t believe he’d be dumb enough to do it twice.’ It seems to me that the fact of the twentieth century argues in favor of my point of view. And it also seems to me that those of us who make our living from education are poorly placed to argue that people never learn anything. Surely what has happened in the twentieth century has made an impact even in Russia and China, not just with us.

50


No War (Nye)

Economic interdependence and democratic values prevent war.Nye, dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, 2004 (Joseph, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics”, p. 20)

However, in a global economy even the United States must consider how the use of force might jeopardize its economic objectives. After its victory in World War II the United States helped to re structure Japan's economy, but it is hard to imagine that the United States today could effectively threaten force to open Japanese markets or change the value of the yen. Nor can one easily imagine the United States using force to resolve disputes with Canada or Europe. Unlike earlier periods, islands of peace where the use of force is no longer an option in relations among states have come to characterize relations among most modern liberal democracies, and not just in Europe. The existence of such islands of peace is evidence of the increasing importance of soft power where there are shared values about what constitutes acceptable behavior among similar democratic states. In their relations with each other, all advanced democracies are from Venus. Even nondemocratic countries that feel fewer popular moral constraints on the use of force have to consider its effects on their economic objectives. War risks deterring investors who control flows of capital in a globalized economy.

51


Probability Outweighs (Rescher)

As policymakers we must dismiss low probability scenarios like nuke war.Rescher, prof. of philosophy at Pitt U, 1983 (Nicholas, “Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management”, p. 50)

The "worst possible case fixation" is one of the most damaging modes of unrealism in deliberations about risk in real-life situations. Preoccupation about what might happen "if worst comes to worst" is counterproductive whenever we proceed without recognizing that, often as not, these worst possible outcomes are wildly improbable (and sometimes do not deserve to be viewed as real possibilities at all). The crux in risk deliberations is not the issue of loss "if worst comes to worst" but the potential acceptability of this prospect within the wider framework of the risk situation, where we may well be prepared "to. take our chances," considering the possible advantages that beckon along this route. The worst threat is certainly something to be borne in mind and taken into account, but it is emphatically not a satisfactory index of the overall seriousness or gravity of a situation of hazard.

52


EXT – Callahan 2AC/1AR

Extend Callahan – constantly taking action in order to avoid extinction scenarios not only cause social paralysis by diverting our other attention and creativity but also destroy the value to life by a) allowing for any rights abuses in the name of survival and b) prioritizing life and policymaking behind extinction scenarios. The only ethical way to evaluate the round is whether or not the affirmative policy takes a progressive action towards protecting the rights and morality of the people.

53


EXT – Rights Outweigh

It is impossible for policymakers to know future consequences – allowing more rights violations will justify worse consequences in the future.Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy, 2001 (Winter, 18 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 95, p. 117)

The utilitarian principle justifies intentional, harmful acts against other humans to achieve a hoped-for benefit to a greater number of people. It is the wrong approach to public policy decisions. Its most notable proponents have been responsible for much of the misery and strife of the last century. Experience has taught us time and again that public servants, even when crafting policies that appear wholly beneficent, can cause great harm (the so-called "law of unintended consequences"). Humans lack the wisdom and foresight to completely understand the future ramifications of many actions. A father, for example, may believe that it is an entirely good thing to help his daughter with homework every day because they are spending time together and he is showing sincere interest in her life and schooling. By "helping" with homework, however, his daughter may be denied the mental struggle of searching for solutions on her own. She may not develop the mental skills to solve tough math problems, for example, or to quickly find key concepts in reading selections. If even "good" actions can produce undesirable results, how much worse is the case when evil is tolerated in the name of some conjectural, future outcome?

54


AT: Extinction Outweighs

1. Extend Callahan – he indicates that constantly focusing on preventing extinction in policymaking causes a social paralysis and devaluation of life; turns all their death impacts.

2. Their scenarios aren’t probable – default to our impacts because they are systemic and thus have a 100% probability.

Rescher, prof. of philosophy at Pitt U, 1983 (Nicholas, “Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management”, p. 50)

The "worst possible case fixation" is one of the most damaging modes of unrealism in deliberations about risk in real-life situations. Preoccupation about what might happen "if worst comes to worst" is counterproductive whenever we proceed without recognizing that, often as not, these worst possible outcomes are wildly improbable (and sometimes do not deserve to be viewed as real possibilities at all). The crux in risk deliberations is not the issue of loss "if worst comes to worst" but the potential acceptability of this prospect within the wider framework of the risk situation, where we may well be prepared "to. take our chances," considering the possible advantages that beckon along this route. The worst threat is certainly something to be borne in mind and taken into account, but it is emphatically not a satisfactory index of the overall seriousness or gravity of a situation of hazard.

3. Extend Gewirth and Watson – we are only responsible for our own actions and cannot look to intervening actors to determine our own moral decision making, and we are required to make the most moral decision in every situation, even if it results in your death.

4. Turn – Policymaking that denies rights makes extinction more likely.Shue, prof. of ethics and public life at Princeton University, 1989 (Henry, “Nuclear Deterrence and Moral Restraint”, p. 45-6)

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 civili zation 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.

[insert No War]

55


EXT – Rights Solve Extinction

Protection of rights as the central priority of policymaking is key to sustaining humanity – making survival the central priority promotes authoritarianism, and thus creates a self-fulfilling prophecy…BLADOW!!!Schroeder, prof. of Law at Duke University, 1986 (Christopher H., “Rights Against Risks”, April, Columbia Law Review, 86 Colum. L. Rev. 495, lexis)

Deeply ingrained in practically all theories of the rights tradition is the vision of a person as capable of forming and entitled to pursue some individual life plan. 91 Given this vision, placing survival or bodily integrity absolutely above all other ends would be tantamount to saying that the life plan that one ought to adopt is that of prolonging life at all costs. That idea is unacceptably authoritarian and regimented. It would be extremely anomalous for a theory supposedly centered on the autonomy of the individual to result in a conception of justice that constrained all individuals to a monolithic result. Individual human beings want more from their lives than simple [*520] bodily integrity, and the conception of an individual, of what defines and constitutes a person, as so limited is peculiarly impoverished. Individuals are capable of formulating and pursuing life plans, of forming bonds of love, commitment, and friendship on which they subsequently act, of conceiving images of self- and community-improvement. Some of these may directly advance interests in human survival, as when dedicated doctors and scientists pursue solutions to cancer or develop chemical pesticides with a view to assisting agricultural self-sufficiency in developing countries. Some may dramatically advance the "quality of life," rather than survival itself, as when Guttenberg's press made literature more widely available or when Henry Ford pioneered the mass production of the automobile. However, even individual initiatives of much less demonstrable impact on the lives of others constitute a vital element that makes human life distinctively human. A just society ought to understand and value this element both in the concrete results it sometimes produces and in the freedom and integrity that are acknowledged when individual liberty to conceive and act upon initiative is respected.

56

http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=c7df5784f66d88a0d77bd8c1fb48a4a5&docnum=18&_fmtstr=FULL&_startdoc=1&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkAt&_md5=c952b32be4c2d7706b97cf9cdf3e834f&focBudTerms=SUMMARY%20(utilita!%20w/20%20right!)&focBudSel=all#n91%23n91


AT: Util Solves Rights

Util fails to protect moral rights – it silences rights claims when not grounded in law.Byrnes, JD University of Arizona College of Law, 1999 (Erin, “Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privelege to Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense: Using a Theory of Moral Correlativity to Make the Case for Affirmative Action Programs in Education”, Arizona Law Review, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535, lexis)

Utilitarianism conceives of rights as being cognizable only when they are legally recognized. 236 To the utilitarian, there is no such thing as a moral right because it is not socially recognized . 237 The utilitarian rejection of moral rights can be

fatal to affirmative action. Rights in utilitarian rhetoric are synonymous with the idea of a valid claim to act. 238 Put differently, one can be said to hold a valid claim when, and only when, that claim is grounded in a legally or socially recognized right. This normative theory of rights further posits that the exercise of rights is

not dependent upon a duty incumbent upon others to acknowledge or respect that right. 239 This is clearly problematic when applied to calls for affirmative action. Instead of conceiving of rights as corresponding with a duty, the utilitarian thinks of rights in terms of "immunity rights," which have a corresponding concept of a "disability." 240 This too is a foreboding concept because affirmative action programs often involve affirmative guarantees, versus a simple right to be free from discrimination. An example of an immunity right is the right to free speech. The right to free speech exists independently of an obligation upon others not to interfere with an individual's right to exercise free speech. 241 The corresponding disability operates upon Congress. The disability prohibits Congress from enacting certain laws abridging the individual's right to free speech, but does not extend so far as to require the passage of legislation which would affirmatively protect or guarantee the immunity right. 242 The immunity right, then, is one that merely involves a freedom from outside interference, a sort of negative right, as opposed to being a right that is affirmatively protected through the imposition of an obligation upon others to honor the right. The distinction made between moral and legal rights, encompassing the distinction between a disability and a duty, is

central to the utilitarian argument. Utilitarianism squarely rejects the recognition of moral rights because moral rights must be understood in terms of a corresponding beneficial obligation. 243 A moral conception of rights dictates that a right is held by an individual "if and only if one is supposed to benefit from another person's compliance with a coercive...rule." 244 Utilitarianism must necessarily reject a conception of rights grounded in morality because the utilitarian doctrine is diametrically opposed to the notion that rights correspond with duties. [*563] Furthermore, utilitarianism renounces moral rights precisely because they exist independent of social recognition or enforcement. 245 Moral rights "are independent of particular circumstances and do not depend on any special conditions," 246 like legal affirmation. Thus, moral rights cannot be

accepted by the utilitarian because they lack the normative grounding fundamental to utilitarian theory. Utilitarians, therefore, assume that there is a clear delineation between moral rights and the pursuit for overall human welfare, the central tenet of utilitarian doctrine.

Utilitarianism fundamentally fails to protect individual rights – “greatest good” claims simply conflict.Byrnes, JD University of Arizona College of Law, 1999 (Erin, “Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privelege to Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense: Using a Theory of Moral Correlativity to Make the Case for Affirmative Action Programs in Education”, Arizona Law Review, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535, lexis)

Moral rights are objectionable not only because they lack social recognition but also because they necessarily imply a correlation between rights and duties. Again, utilitarianism's specific rejection of the tie between rights and duties renders recognition of white privilege nearly impossible. Without this recognition, there can be no meaningful solution. 247 If accepted, moral rights would provide the grounds for the appraisal of law and other social institutions, a system of appraisal antithetical to utilitarianism's rubric of assessment. Moral rights carry with them the expectation that institutions will be erected with an eye towards respect and furtherance of such rights. 248 Such a

proposition would certainly require more than just striving towards color-blindness were it applied to affirmative action. Utilitarianism, however, requires that institutions and rights be evaluated solely with respect to the promotion of human welfare, welfare being the satisfaction of overall citizen desires. 249 The assumption, implicit in the foregoing argument, is that moral rights neither fit perfectly nor converge with legal rights. 250 This may not necessarily be the case. David Lyons' "theory of moral rights exclusion" discusses the way in which utilitarians conceive of moral rights working at odds with the utilitarian goal. 251 Lyons' theory describes the way in which a moral right, at some point, gains enough currency to warrant individual exercise of that right. According to Lyons, when a moral right has reached this point, it has achieved the "argumentative threshold" and gains normative force. 252 The potential for this occurrence is precisely what leads to the utilitarian rejection of moral rights. Rejection is predicated on the fact that once the argumentative threshold is reached, a presumption is created against interference upon the

individual exercise [*564] of the right. 253 Under a system which recognized moral rights, but still organized itself according to the utilitarian goal of achieving human welfare (which is happiness), individual rights would purportedly run headlong into the pursuit of welfare. 254 Though the pursuit of welfare would be deemed morally relevant and would justify a course of action on welfare's behalf, in a scenario where that course of action constituted a mere "minimal increment of utility," it would be incapable of overcoming the argumentative threshold of rights. 255 Thus, the argument is that the recognition of moral rights is diametrically opposed to utilitarianism because in a moral rights regime, rights act as a limitation upon the utilitarian goal of fulfilling as many individual desires as possible.

57

http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=6086918c24ac435052e6f504fe73f06f&docnum=5&_fmtstr=FULL&_startdoc=1&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkAt&_md5=43416a79a379e0b157709063cbfc7fc5&focBudTerms=SUMMARY%20(utilitar!%20w/20%20righ!%20)&focBudSel=all#n255%23n255





















AT: Rights Calculation Requires Util

One can examine the consequences of rights violations and weigh rights without reverting to util.Schroeder, prof. of Law at Duke University, 1986 (Christopher, “Rights Against Risks”, Columbia Law Review, 86 Colum. L. Rev. 495, April, lexis)

It is perfectly feasible to construct moral theories that employ consequences in their evaluation of the rightness of actions without thereby endorsing utilitarian reductionism. 79 In specific cases, one individual might be given his "rights" by a second individual only at the second individual's great discomfort, inconvenience, and perhaps even risk of life. As an illustration, suppose Smith had agreed to meet Jones at 7:30 to deliver some jewels Jones had purchased. At 7:00 Smith's son, lying near death in the hospital, requires a blood transfusion. The blood bank is out of the son's blood type, and only a direct transfusion from Smith, who shares his son's blood type, can save the boy's life. Smith begins the transfusion at 7:15 and misses the meeting with Jones. While acknowledging that Jones has some right to performance by Smith, one would also be willing to grant an excuse to Smith under these circumstances. Excuses based on the difficulty or undesirability of performance incorporate an assessment of the consequences along with an evaluation of the nature and the urgency of the right being asserted. Such an ethic need not inevitably collapse into simple utilitarianism. It could honor rights in cases where utility calculations might deny them. It would not do, for instance, for Smith to miss the 7:30 appointment because his son was playing in a little league baseball game that Smith wanted to watch, even if the happiness of Smith and his son would outweigh the inconvenience or disutility to Jones of not getting the jewels until the next day. Furthermore, the excuses could be based on considerations of consequences limited to those immediately implicated in some pertinent sense, rather than on a universal calculation of consequences. It might not count in Smith's deliberations, nor in our assessment of them, that Smith's giving the transfusion might save the hospital from major malpractice liability because it had negligently allowed the blood bank to become depleted.

58

http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=c7df5784f66d88a0d77bd8c1fb48a4a5&docnum=18&_fmtstr=FULL&_startdoc=1&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkAt&_md5=c952b32be4c2d7706b97cf9cdf3e834f&focBudTerms=SUMMARY%20(utilita!%20w/20%20right!)&focBudSel=all#n79%23n79


AT: Deontology Utopian

Deontology is still justified even if violations of its rules are inevitable – not a reason it is bad.Tushnet, prof. of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University, 2003 (Mark, Wisconsin Law Review, Wis. L. Rev. 273, p. 282)

Categorical approaches are designed to offset this tendency by screening out of consideration the features of the circumstances that are likely to induce misjudgment. And, under some conditions, they may succeed in doing so, when the categorical rules address decision-makers who might not appreciate the importance of considerations thought to be peripheral to their more central tasks. Consider, for example, a categorical rule against torture by police officers. Judges might think that in the abstract they can imagine situations in which torture might be a valuable investigative technique. Judges might think that they must communicate rules effectively to police officers. They might also think that any verbal formulation of the (limited) circumstances in which torture might be acceptable is too likely to be misinterpreted in ways that would lead the officers to engage in torture more often than they should. The judges could then conclude that they should announce a categorical rule against torture

despite their awareness that such a rule does not correspond to their own sense of what is acceptable.

59


Utilitarianism Bad

Utilitarianism allows totalitarianism and war.Kateb, prof. of politics at Princeton University, 1992 (George, “The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture”, Cornell University Press, p. 11)

I do not mean to take seriously the idea that utilitarianism is a satisfactory replacement for the theory of rights. The well-being (or mere preferences) of the majority cannot override the rightful claims of individuals. In a time when the theory of rights is global it is noteworthy that some moral philosophers disparage the theory of rights. The political experience of this century should be enough to make them hesitate: it is not clear that, say, some version of utilitarianism could not justify totalitarian evil. It also could be fairly easy for some utilitarians to justify any war and any dictatorship, and very easy to justify any kind of ruthlessness even in societies that pay some attention to rights. There is no end to the immoral permissions that one or another type of utilitarianism grants. Everything is permitted, if the calculation is right.

Utilitarianism justifies tyranny of the majority.Maximiano, associate prof. of business ethics at DLSU, 2003 (Jose Mario, “The View from Taft”, Business World, Nov. 6)

According to the utilitarian principle, the correct action, decision or judgment is the one that will produce the greatest net benefits at the lowest net costs for the greatest number of people. Sad to say, this principle has no eyes to see and no brains to know

who are those who have less in life, and those who are disadvantaged and less gifted. Like a horse with blinders, utilitarianism automatically focuses on the majority, regardless of socio-economic status. In the application of the utilitarian principle, therefore, it is possible that those who have more in life would benefit more, while those with less would benefit less. The utilitarian principle seems inadequate when applied to situations that involve the basic rights of others. Was the government ethically correct in demolishing some shanties to pave the way for the beautification project specifically for a visiting leader? Similarly, was the government ethically correct to drive away some indigenous tribes to give way for the construction of a dam? While some would see beautification, greening, cleaning and the construction of the dam as benefits, others may see the same as unjust and unfair, and hence as costs, because those projects may at times violate the basic rights of others.

Utilitarianism justifies doing evil in the name of preventing evil – justifies any atrocity for the “greater good”.Norman, prof. of moral philosophy at the University of Kentucky, 1995 (Richard, “Ethics, Killing, and War”, p. 207)

Since the waging of war almost invariably involves the deliberate taking of life on a massive scale, it will be immensely difficult to justify. I have argued that utilitarian justifications are not good enough. We cannot justify the taking of life simply by saying that the refusal to take life is likely to lead to worse consequences. An adequate notion of moral responsibility implies that other people's responsibility for evil does not necessarily justify us is doing evil ourselves in order to prevent them. We cannot sacrifice some of our people for the others and claim that we are justified by a utilitarian calculus of lives.

60


Util Bad – Don’t Fear the Reaper

A. Utilitarianism demands the slaughter of our enemies as part of an impossible attempt to stop death itself.

Beres, prof. of ILaw at Purdue, 1999 (Louis Rene, International Journal on World Peace, No. 3, Vol. 16, 9/1)

Nevertheless, the fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality, and the human inclination to rebel against an apparently unbearable truth inevitably produces the very terrors from which individuals seek to escape. Desperate to live perpetually, humankind embraces a whole cornucopia of faiths that offer life everlasting in exchange for undying loyalty In the end, such loyalty is transferred from the faith to the state, which battles with other states in what political scientists would describe as a struggle for power, but which is often, in reality, a war between the presumed Sons of Light ("Us") and the presumed Sons of Darkness ("Them"). The advantage to being on the side of the Sons of Light in such a significant contest is nothing less than the prospect of eternal life.

B. This obsession manifests itself in foreign policy – the perpetual search to destroy our enemies inevitably results in the destruction of all life.

Beres, prof. of ILaw at Purdue, 1999 (Louis Rene, International Journal on World Peace, No. 3, Vol. 16, 9/1)

The State that commits itself to mass butchery does not intend to do evil. Rather, according to Hegel's description in the Philosophy of Right, "the State is the actuality of the ethical Idea." It commits itself to death for the sake of life, prodding killing with conviction and pure heart. A sanctified killer, the State that accepts Realpolitik generates an incessant search for victims. Though mired in blood, the search is tranquil and self-assured, born of the knowledge that the State's deeds are neither infamous nor shameful, but heroic . 65 He Continues. . .There are great ironies involved. Although the corrosive calculus of geopolitics has now made possible the deliberate killing of all life, populations all over the planet turn increasingly to States for security. It is the dreadful ingenuity of States that makes possible death in the billions, but it is oin the [*24] expressions of that ingenuity that people seek safety. Indeed, as the threat of nuclear annihilation looms even after the Cold War, 71 the citizens of conflicting States reaffirm their segmented loyalties, moved by the persistent unreason that is, after all, the most indelible badge of modern humankind.

61

http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=6e9956f3654782e5c751c8b70d32665c&docnum=27&_fmtstr=FULL&_startdoc=21&wchp=dGLbVlb-lSlWS&_md5=978898661c978363d2bd464275656b4a#n71%23n71

http://www.lexis.com/research/retrieve?_m=6e9956f3654782e5c751c8b70d32665c&docnum=27&_fmtstr=FULL&_startdoc=21&wchp=dGLbVlb-lSlWS&_md5=978898661c978363d2bd464275656b4a#n65%23n65


Consequentialism Bad

Consequentialism causes paralysis – all actions risk catastrophe, thus no action is justified.Fried, prof. of law at Harvard, 1994 (Charles, “Absolutism and its Critics”, p. 170)

This line of analysis is enough to show that some quite plausible interpretations of absolute norms lead to impossibly stringent conclusions, lead in fact to total paralysis. But the case is in fact even worse. For it the absoluteness of the nor is interpreted to mean that the consequences – such as the death of an innocent person – is overwhelmingly bad, then not only are we forbidden to do anything, for anything carries with it a risk of death, we are indeed required to do nothing but to seek out ways to minimize the deaths of innocent persons. For if such a death is so bad that no good can outweigh it, we are surely not justified in pursuing some good, even if that good does not present this risk when we might instead be preventing this most undesirable of all consequences. So this interpretation is to actually a prescription for paralysis, it is more like an obsession. This norm, by virtue of this view of its absoluteness, takes over the whole of our moral life. Finally, since every action will endanger the life of some innocent, even action intended to rescue some other innocent, we cannot escape the further corollary of this interpretation that we must choose that course and only that course of action expected to produce the greatest net saving of life – including, if need be, the deliberate, cold-blooded killing of an innocent person. This situation is worse still, for this interpretation is not only obsessive, it also opens the possibility of insoluable contradictions within any system containing more than one absolute norm. The judgement that it is categorically wrong to lie would be interpreted in an analogous way to mean that a false belief is absolutely bad – that is, so bad that nothing can justifiy producing or even not eradicating it. But obviously, telling the truth will very often increase to some small extent the chances that an innocent person will die, and in any event the time spent in eradicating false belief will not be spent in warding off the danger of death from innocent persons. Now, deontological systems avoid the paralysis, obsession, and contradiction of this interpretation. They are at once less and more stringent. They would not allow killing an innocent even to save several innocents from death; but the consequentialist interpretation would require the killing.

It is impossible to evaluate a moral action based on consequences.Smart, prof. of philosophy at the University of Adelaide, 1973 (J.J.C., “Utilitarianism For and Against”, p. 82)

No one can hold that everything, of whatever category, that has value, has it in virtue of its consequences. If that were so, one would just go one for ever, and there would be an obviously hopeless regress. That regress would be hopeless, even if one takes the view, which is not an absurd view, that although mean set themselves ends and work towards them, it is very often not really the supposed end, but the effort towards which they set the value – that they travel, not really in order to arrive (for as soon as they have arrived they set out for somewhere else), but rather they choose somewhere to arrive, in order to travel. Even on that view, not everything would have consequential value; what would have non-consequential value would in fact be traveling, even though people had to think of traveling as having the consequential value, and something else – the destination – the non-consequential value.

62


Consequentialism Good Frontline

1. The War on Terror makes rights violations inevitable – the only way to prevent escalation is to reject utopian ideas of politics and learn to make policy based on consequences of implementation.

Ignatieff, Carr prof. of human rights at Harvard, 2004 (Michael, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard, 2004 Lesser Evils p. 18-19)

To insist that justified exercises of coercion can be defined as a lesser evil is to say that evil can be qualified. If two acts are evil, how can we say that one is the lesser, the other the greater? Qualifying evil in this way would seem to excuse it. Yet it is essential to the idea of a lesser evil that one can justify resort to it without denying that it is evil, justifiable only because other means would be insufficient or unavailable. Using the word evil rather than the word harm is intended to highlight the elements of moral risk that a liberal theory of government believes are intrinsic to the maintenance of order in any society premised upon the dignity of

individuals. Thus even in times of safety, liberal democracies seek to limit the use of force necessary to their maintenance. These limits seek to balance the conflict between the commitments to individual dignity incarnated in rights and the commitments to majority interest incarnated in popular sovereignty. In times of danger, this conflict of values becomes intense. The suppression of civil liberties, surveillance of individuals, targeted assassination, torture, and preemptive war put liberal commitments to dignity under such

obvious strain, and the harms they entail are so serious, that, even if mandated by peremptory majority interest, they should be spoken of only in the language of evil. In a war on terror, I would argue,

the issue is not whether we can avoid evil acts altogether, but whether we can succeed in choosing lesser evils and keep them from becoming greater ones. We should do so, I would argue, by making some starting commitments—to the

conservative principle (maintaining the free institutions we have), to the dignity principle (preserving individuals from gross harms)—and then reasoning out the consequences of various courses of action, anticipating harms and coming to a rational judgment of which course of action is likely to inflict the least damage on the two principles. When we are satisfied that a coercive measure is a genuine last resort, justified by the facts as we can understand them, we have chosen the lesser evil, and we are entitled to stick to it even if the price proves higher than we anticipated. But not indefinitely so. At some point—when we "have to destroy the village in order to save it"—we may

conclude that we have slipped from the lesser to the greater. Then we have no choice but to admit our error and reverse course. In the situation of factual uncertainty in which most decisions about terrorism have to be taken, error is probably unavoidable. It is tempting to suppose that moral life can avoid this slope simply by avoiding evil means altogether. But no such angelic option may exist. Either we fight evil with evil or we succumb. So if we resort to the lesser evil , we should do so, first, in full awareness that evil is involved. Second, we should act under a demonstrable state of necessity. Third, we should chose evil means only as a last resort, having tied everything else. Finally, we must satisfy a fourth

obligation: we must justify our actions publicly to our fellow citizens and submit to their judgment as to their correctness.

2. Ethical tradeoffs make consequentialism the only viable framework – all others are utopian.Spragens, prof. of polisci at Duke, 2000 (Thomas, “Political Theory and Partisan Politics”, p. 81-2)

My thesis that all three layers/forms of political association are important in a well-ordered liberal democracy also implies the untenability of Rawls's argument that agreement regarding norms of social justice is a possible and sufficient way to overcome the deficiencies of the modus vivendi approach. In the first place, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere, the fundamental unfairness of life and the presence of gratuitous elements in the moral universe make it impossible to settle rationally upon a single set of distributive principles as demonstrably fair (See also, Spragens 1993). Simply put, the problem is that the contingencies of the world ineluctably

allocate assets and sufferings quite unfairly. We can cope with and try to compensate for these "natural injustices," but only at the price of introducing other elements of unfairness or compromising other moral values. The other major problem in this context is that real world human beings are not deontologists: their moral intuitions about distributive justice are permeated and influenced by their moral intuitions about the good. The empirical consequence of these two difficulties is the

falsification of Rawls's hermeneutic claims about an overlapping consensus. Rational people of good will with a liberal democratic persuasion will be able to agree that some possible distributive criteria are morally unacceptable. But, as both experience and the literature attest, hopes for a convergence of opinion on definitive principles of distributive justice are chimerical.

63


Consequentialism Good Frontline

3. Morality must be removed from policymaking decisions because of its inherent focus on the individual – consequentialism is key.

Brock, prof. of philosophy at Brown University, 1987 (Dan W., “Ethics”, July, p. 787)

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 actions—whether 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.

4. Even weighing rights demands consequentialism.Waldron, 1993 (Jeremy, “Liberal Rights”, Collected Papers: Cambridge University Press)p. 223

However, this approach will not deal with all moral conflicts and there is no reason to want it to. Many conflicts whether between rights and utility or among rights themselves - are best handled in the sort of balancing way that the quantitative image of weight suggests: we establish the relative importance of the interests at stake , and the contribution each of the conflicting duties may make to the importance of the interest it protects, and we try to maximize our promotion of what we take to be important. What we were looking for was something to capture our sense that this is not always the whole story - our sense that sometimes, or in some conflicts, the issue is one of qualitative precedence rather than quantitative weight. I think the idea of internal connections helps to capture some of that. And it does so in a way that means we do not have to give up the view that rights entail requirements of different sorts that are ordered in various ways in relation to other moral considerations. We can establish qualitative priorities in some places, without thinking we have to establish qualitative priorities everywhere.

64


AT: Not Responsible for Consequences

Peace is a prerequisite to any moral system –their argument is reckless disregard for what are blatant ethical consequences of their plan.Hulsman, Senior fellow at the Davis Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, and Lieven, Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Russia and Eurasia Center, 2005 (National Interest, Summer)

The new threat from Islamist terrorism merely replicates this moral tension on a global scale. But this is a moral tension, not a dilemma or conundrum, because for the average honest person, the answer cannot be in doubt.

Democracy is not really the issue here. Without international peace and prosperity and the defeat of Al-Qaeda and its allies, democracy will not be able to develop anyway in many parts of the world. This is why we need to bring morality in American statecraft down from the absolutist heights to which it has been carried and return it to the everyday world where Americans and others do their best to lead ethical lives while facing all the hard choices and ambiguous problems that are the common stuff of existence in this "lower world." The neoconservative excuse, so often heard today with reference to the Iraq War, that disastrous consequences can be excused if intentions were good, is not valid if actions are accompanied by gross recklessness, carelessness and indifference to the range of possible consequences. Such actions fail the test not only of general ethics, but of the sworn moral commitment of state servants and elected officials to defend the interests of their peoples and not simply to pursue at all costs their own ideas of morality.

65


AT: Moral Obligation

A. Policymaking on the basis of moral obligation empirically leads to isolationism – turns case.Kagan, prof. of history and classics at Yale University, 1983 (Robert, Washington Quarterly, v. 6 no. 1)

The fact is that such claims convince very few. They merely make it easier for enemies of a virgorous and farsighted policy of defending American security to attack it. Enemies of the American presence in Vietnam could point to shortcomings of the various governments of South Vietnam as evidence of the impropriety of our involvement there for our policy as justified , to a large extent, on the high moral grounds of national self-determination, that is, helping a people defend its freedom and autonomy against an aggressive communist regime. But if it could be argued that the people we were helping were not free, and that their own government was oppressive, if it suppressed human rights, if Buddhist monks set themselves afire to protest such misdeeds, then how could we explain our actions on grounds other than self-interest, which the critics translated immediately into imperialism? As the

war dragged on without victory, Americans grew weary of paying the price in men, money, and the fear that, far from acting on the side of virtue, they were supporting its enemies. The emphasis on the moral reasons for fighting had been turned by the critics of the war against its supporters. Flaws can be found in every regime, but crusaders for virtue can be held to impossible standards. The moral case for American intervention could easily be impugned on the basis of an absolute and impossible standard applied to one side only, though subsequent events have made it tragically clear how sound the moral position of the United States really was. The war lost support not because

our government ceased to speak of the evils of communism or the selfish, aggressive designs of the North Vietnamese, or because the American people stopped believing them. Support waned because when moral confusion was added to war-weariness there was no solid base of convincing argument that American interests justified continuing the fight. Few conflicts have been supported by more arguments from morality, and few have deserved more.

B. You know the drill…Khalilzad, RAND Corporation, 1995 (Zalmay, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1995)

What might happen to the world if the United States turned inward? Without the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than cooperating with each other, the West European nations might compete with each other for domination of East-Central Europe and the Middle East. In Western and Central Europe, Germany -- especially since

unification -- would be the natural leading power. Either in cooperation or competition with Russia, Germany might seek influence over the territories located between them. German efforts are likely to be aimed at filling the vacuum, stabilizing the region, and precluding its domination by rival powers. Britain and France fear such a development. Given the strength of democracy in Germany and its preoccupation with absorbing the former East Germany, European concerns about Germany appear exaggerated. But it would be a mistake to assume that

U.S. withdrawal could not, in the long run, result in the renationalization of Germany's security policy. The same is

also true of Japan. Given a U.S. withdrawal from the world, Japan would have to look after its own security and build up its military

capabilities. China, Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia already fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S. protection, Japan is likely to increase its military capability dramatically -- to balance the growing Chinese forces and still-significant Russian forces.

This could result in arms races, including the possible acquisition by Japan of nuclear weapons . Given Japanese technological prowess, to say nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the development of its nuclear power industry, it could obviously become a nuclear weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also

build long-range missiles and carrier task forces. With the shifting balance of power among Japan, China, Russia, and potential new regional powers such

as India, Indonesia, and a united Korea could come significant risks of preventive or proeruptive war. Similarly, European competition for regional dominance could lead to major wars in Europe or East Asia. If the United States stayed out of such a

war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe or East Asia could become dominated by a hostile power. Such a development would threaten U.S.

interests. A power that achieved such dominance would seek to exclude the United States from the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides, with the domination of Europe or East Asia,

such a power might seek global hegemony and the United States would face another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more catastrophic than the last. In the Persian Gulf, U.S. withdrawal is likely to lead to an intensified struggle for regional domination. Iran and Iraq have, in the past, both sought regional hegemony. Without U.S. protection, the weak oil-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) would be unlikely to retain their independence. To preclude this development, the Saudis might seek to acquire, perhaps by purchase, their own nuclear weapons. If either Iraq or Iran controlled the region that dominates the world supply of oil, it could gain a significant capability to damage the U.S. and world economies. Any country that gained hegemony would have vast economic resources at its disposal that

could be used to build military capability as well as gain leverage over the United States and other oil-importing nations. Hegemony over the Persian Gulf by either Iran or Iraq

would bring the rest of the Arab Middle East under its influence and domination because of the shift in the balance of power. Israeli security problems would multiply and the peace process would be fundamentally undermined,

<Continues…>

66


AT: Moral Obligation

<Continued…>increasing the risk of war between the Arabs and the Israelis .<continued…> The extension of instability, conflict, and hostile hegemony in East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf would harm the economy of the United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic readjustment in the United States, perhaps reducing U.S. exports and imports and jeopardizing U.S. investments in these regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal

to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of necessary adjustments might be high. The higher level of turmoil in the world would also increase the likelihood of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and means for their delivery. Already several

rogue states such as North Korea and Iran are seeking nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. That danger would only increase if the United States withdrew from the world. The result would be a much more dangerous world in which many states possessed WMD capabilities; the likelihood of their actual use would increase accordingly . If this happened, the security of every nation in the world, including the United States, would be harmed. Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity

for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers,

including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

67


EXT – Moral ObligationIsolationism

Policy on the basis of protecting human rights empirically results in isolationism and withdrawal.Kagan, prof. of history and classics at Yale University, 1983 (Robert, Washington Quarterly, v. 6 no. 1)

The recent suppression of incipient democracy in Poland has raised once again the question of whether and how far the United States should intervene in attempting to protect the "human rights" of people in other lands. This is

merely the latest chapter in a controversy over American policy toward such unpleasant and imperfect regimes as those of Argentina, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, among many others. One side advocates intervention of some kind against authoritarian regimes of the right, while the other side concentrates its fire on communist states, but both agree that the protection of human rights in countries other than our own is a proper goal of American foreign policy. The following statement comes from an editorial on the left side of the debate, but I believe its ideology is acceptable to both sides: "To deny the place of human rights in our foreign policy or to distort it by subordinating it to the dictates of realpolitik is to deny a moral imperative that, under a variety of names, has animated our foreign policy for 200 years ." The idea that for all of its history the United States has subordinated its national interests (realpolitik) to

the pursuit of human rights for citizens of other countries is, of course, absurd. The fact is that the idea of asking whether an alien regime is virtuous, representative, or good to its people seems to have appeared in American history for the first time in 1913 , when Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize the Mexican government of Victoriano Huerta because, "We can have no sympathy with those who seize the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambitions." As a distinguished history of the United States puts it, "Such a policy, importing moral considerations into the realm of international law, was a departure from the traditional practices of the United States as well as of other

nations n2." Such a "moral imperative ," therefore, has not "animated our foreign policy for 200 years." It is a child of the twentieth century and, in particular, of Wilson's international moralism that captured the imagination of his contemporaries and of others

in succeeding generations. It produced the slogans "A war to make the world safe for democracy," which was in fact World War I, and "a peace without victory," which turned out to be the Treaty of Versailles. It left as its legacy a disillusioned reaction leading to the isolationism of the 1930s that was unwilling to resist the menace and villainy of the dictatorships .

68

133 ss morality

Documents