Framework Evidence - Julia Switala

Julian Switala
Mega LD Backfile Part
Cant Touch This
* * * * * MEGA LD BACKFILE * * * * *
* * * * * Written by Julian Switala * * * * *
* * * * * Instructions * * * * *
1.
!!!USE THE DOCUMENT MAP VIEW FUNCTION!!!
2.
!!!MINIMIZE EVERYTHING IN THE DOCUMENT MAP FIRST!!!
3.
This file has internal link, impact, and framework cards applicable to
nearly all possible LD resolutions.
4.
I suggest reading and cutting articles specific to the topic for links and
uniqueness.
5.
A LOT of the cards overlap and can be reasonably placed in different

categories. However, there are very few duplicate cards (cards that could be in
multiple categories only appear once in the file). Thus, if you're looking for a
particular card in what seems like its most likely categorization, you may not
find it there and will have to search elsewhere in the file. I guarantee that
youll find what youre looking for if you search hard enough. (Some defense
cards might be in the offensive sections etc.).
6.
As such, I would advise against using this file in-round since the cards
arent partitioned enough and many different cards are lumped together under
a very broad heading. I would recommend writing blocks pre-round with this
file. However, if you need carded answers to arguments you havent heard
before or if you know the file extremely well, then go for it.
7.
And given how LD works, youll probably be successful just by reading

the taglines of these cards and then making short extrapolations and analytics
on the fly
8.
Have fun!
Page 1 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
* * * * * TABLE OF CONTENTS * * * * *
* * * * * TABLE OF CONTENTS * * * * *................................................2

*****LIBERTY*****...............................................................................4
**Autonomy Good / Coercion Bad**....................................................4
**Property Rights Good**.................................................................15
**Rights Come First**.......................................................................16
**AT: Positive Rights Good**.............................................................22
**AT: Util Protects Rights**...............................................................24
**AT: Rimal**....................................................................................27
**AT: Coercion Bad**........................................................................28
**AT: I Solve Future Coercion**.........................................................32
**AT: Im not excessively coercive**.................................................35
**AT: Rawls**....................................................................................38
**AT: Egalitarianism / Equality / Distribution Good**.........................40
*****PRIVATIZATION*****..................................................................49
**Privatization Good / Government Bad**.........................................49
**Alternative to Government Provision**..........................................61
**Private Charities CP**....................................................................66
*****UTILITARIANISM GOOD / DEON BAD*****..................................72
**Util Good For Rights**...................................................................72
**Util Good: Generics**....................................................................74
**AT: Rights / Liberty Come First**....................................................96
**AT: Util No Rights**..................................................................100
**AT: Freedom / Liberty Outweighs Life/Util**.................................101
**AT: Calculations Bad**.................................................................103
**AT: Catastrophes Low Probability**...........................................105
**A2: Strive for Perfection (Imagination)**.....................................107
**Deontology Bad**........................................................................108
*****UTIL BAD / DEON GOOD*****..................................................118
**Util Bad**....................................................................................118
**Deon Good**...............................................................................144
Page 2 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****MORALITY GOOD / BAD*****...................................................158

**Morality Good: Obligations, Moral Laws, etc**.............................158
**Morality Bad**.............................................................................160
**Ethical Action & Legality Mutually Exclusive**.............................165
**State Ethics Bad**.......................................................................167
**Universal / Absolutist Ethics Bad**..............................................174
**Aesthetic Ethics Good**..............................................................177
**AT: Kants Categorical Imperative**.............................................181
*****BIOPOWER*****......................................................................185
**Link: State Ethics**......................................................................185
**Link: Ethics**...............................................................................192
*****GOVERNMENT PROVISION OF GOODS*****.............................194
**Rimal**........................................................................................194
**AT: Privatization**........................................................................199
*****THE USFG*****........................................................................202
*****Courts*****.............................................................................202
**Social Reform / Movements**......................................................202
**Courts Good: Generic**...............................................................203
**Hollow Hope / Courts Bad**.........................................................204
**AT: Hollow Hope / Courts Good**.................................................207
*****Congress*****.........................................................................218
**Social Reform / Movements**......................................................218
**Centralization / Government Bad**.............................................219
**Centralization Good / States Bad**..............................................231
**Separation of Powers**................................................................237
*****LIBERTY*****
**Autonomy Good / Coercion Bad**
Human dignity is the highest standard
George Kateb, Professor of Politics, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 19 92, p. 9

In sum, there seems to be no generally credible foundation for a critique of rights. Rights emerge as the
only or best way of protecting human dignity, and human dignity remains the highest standard. This is not
to deny that there will be strenuous differences of interpretation of various rights and quarrels over the
comparative importance of various rights. But by now even some anti-individualists, whether secular or
religious, accept the idea of rights as useful or even as an indispensable ingredient in their own thinking
about politics and society.
Page 3 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Moral obligation to protect liberty

Edward Crane, President of the Cato Institute, VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY, September 15-17, 19 96, p.
597
Those are words that we need to hear more of. It's true, freedom and morality do, ultimately, depend on
each other for their existence. But as government grows year in and year out, under Democratic and
Republican administrations, as regulations multiply, politically correct public education expands, and our
tax burden gets ever greater, I can't help but think the reservoir of morality in America is much deeper
than our reservoir of political liberty. The crisis we confront is a political crisis - one that merits our
immediate attention. We have, it seems to me, a moral imperative to challenge the political status quo and
to roll back the 20th century's legacy of statism. It is our heritage as Americans to live in a civil society not a society that is increasingly politicized. If we want a more moral society, then, as Barry Goldwater
said, liberty must be our main interest. Thank you.
Freedom comes before all other impacts

Sylvester Petro, professor of law at Wake Forest, Spring 1974, Toledo Law Review, p480
However, one may still insist on echoing Ernest Hemingway I believe in only one thing: liberty. And it is
always well to bear in mind David Humes observation: It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at
once. Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because
there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and
the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenstyn, Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes in freedom as
a supreme value and proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material
welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit.
Coercion outweighs, conditions like poverty are inevitable, its futile to try to
solve.
Kelley, founder and senior fellow of the Atlas Society, 98
(David Kelley, founder and senior fellow of the Atlas Society, 1998, A life of one's own, p68-69)
there is not always a hard and fast distinction between the number of
alternatives one has and the degree of ones freedom to choose among them.
Theoretically, any obstacle, restraint, or limitation may be looked at in either of two ways: we
may view it (1) as something that eliminates one or more alternatives a person would
otherwise have available or (2) something that prevents the person from choosing one or
more alternatives. The difference lies in whether we consider the limitation as affecting the range of
alternatives he has or the process of choosing among them. Advocates of positive freedom have
exploited this fact, insisting that lack of a certain opportunity because of poverty , illness, or
disability deprives a person of the freedom to choose that opportunity. Conversely , we
could in principle view overt coercion, physical force, or violence, not as something that prevents
a person from choosing an alternative but as something that removes alternatives he
would otherwise have. There are real differences between (1) and (2). One difference is
whether the obstacle or limitation is imposed by reality or by other people. When some fact
of reality affects the range of alternatives we face, it is wishful thinking to regard it as an
obstacle to what we would otherwise be free to do. Facts are facts. The world operates a
certain way, according to causal laws, and the constraints imposed by nature are the
foundation for human choice, not a barrier to it . A farmer plants a field and tends it over the
To be sure,
growing season, but a hailstorm destroys the crop before he can harvest it. It would be bizarre to say that
the hailstorm abridged his freedom to reap what he has sown. As a natural event, the hailstorm is a
misfortune that eliminates the possibility of a harvest. By contrast, if a government price-support
regulation forbids the farmer to harvest the crop, the restraint arises from human action and does abridge
his freedom to what he otherwise could.
Page 4 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Compulsory violate rights

Ayn Rand, 1964, Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter, author of
numerous books including Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The Virtue of Selfishness pg 129
-=Max
Rispoli=-
A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear: At whose expense?
Jobs, food, clothing, recreation (I), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are
man-made valuesgoods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them? If some men are
entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are
deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor. Any alleged "right" of one man, which
necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. No man
can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an
involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the right to
enslave. A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other
men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort.
Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of
the right to the Pursuit of happinessnot of the right to happiness. It means that a man
has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does
not mean that others must make him happy.
Coercion is immoral denies individuals the capacity develop as moral agents.

Edward Feser, philosophy professor, Loyola, ON NOZICK, 2004, p. 37-8
More hopeful is the strategy, pursued by a large number of libertarian philosophers, of appealing to a broadly
Aristotelian account of morality (Mack 1981; Machan 1989; Rasmussen and Den Uyl 1991; Smith 1995).
On Aristotles view, the fundamental moral question is not What is the right thing to do? but
rather What traits of character should I develop? Only when one has determined what traits
these are -- that is, what habitual patterns of action count as virtues can one go on to answer the
subordinate question of how one ought to act in a particular case (the answer being that one should act
the way someone possessing the virtue relevant to that situation would act). What count as the
virtues, in turn, are just those qualities most conducive to enabling human beings to
fulfill the potentials which distinguish them as the unique sorts of beings they are
those qualities, that is, which best allow human beings to flourish given their distinctive
human nature. Given that human beings are by nature rational animals, we can flourish
only if we practice those virtues governing practical and theoretical reason. It follows that
we have reason to acquire intellectual virtues like truthfulness and practical virtues such as temperance
and courage, and to avoid such corresponding vices as licentiousness and cowardice. Given that human
beings are also by nature social animals, we can only flourish if we practice also those virtues governing
interaction with other human beings, so that we have reason to acquire such social virtues as honesty and
loyalty. Though the moral life will involve decision-making about what to do in a particular
concrete situation, then, it involves more basically the gradual development of a good
character by the taking on of the virtues and the weeding out of vices it essentially
involves, that is, a process of self-perfection. Only a person who voluntarily decides to do
so can carry out this process, however virtue must be freely chosen if it is truly to count as virtue.
Moreover, the specific requirements of virtuous behavior depend to a considerable extent on the unique
circumstances of the situation and the individual person involved, circumstances knowable only to that
person himself in the concrete contexts of moral decision- making. The moral life, then, is only fully
possible under conditions wherein the individual is capable of self-direction (in Rasmussen and
Den Uyls terms), the absence of coercion and interference from outside forces . Allowing others
such self-direction is necessary too if the individual is to allow those others also to develop the virtues; and
in general, respecting others autonomy is essential if one is successfully to cooperate with them as fellow
citizens, and thus fulfill ones own nature as a social being. Given the centrality of self-direction to
self- perfection, then, respect for the rights of self-ownership turns out to be required for
the successful pursuit of the moral life.
Page 5 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Evaluate freedom first it is critical to both prosperity and fairness
Richard L. Stroup (professor of economics at Montana State University) 1987: REFLECTIONS ON

FREEDOM, FAIRNESS, AND THE CONSTITUTION
Freedom (with accountability) is the key to both prosperity and to any reasonable and realistic conception
of fairness. Only with entrepreneurial freedom will the innovation required to increase prosperity occur. And
only through freedom and prosperity can fairness in the sense of benefits accruing to those with low
incomes, as well as fair treatment under the lawbe maintained. Both freedom and prosperity are
incompatible with extensive regulatory or tax/transfer powers in the hands of government. This paper
argues that freedom, fairness, and prosperity are unalterably linked and require strong constitutional
constraints on government. A powerful case can be made for small, secure, but constrained and competing
governments ofthe sort a federal system suggests. As James Buchanans work indicates, in todays world
Hobbesian anarchy is not likely to yield freedom, economic growth and prosperity, or fairness. In this world,
I believe we do need government. Restraints on government, however, are the key to freedom and
fairness. Few would dispute the need for restraints to maintain freedom, but the restraints on government
are necessary for fairness as well. Why? Individuals are not equally endowed with effectiveness in market
earnings, nor in the market for political influence. There will be elites in any system, and those who are not
members of the elite are far better offwhen the influence of elites is diffused, as in a free society with
constrained governmentwith freedom of entry and exit, operating under the rule ofwilling consent. Thus
a government with the power to prevent arbitrary abuse of some people by others, but with sharply limited
power to coerce others directly and in detail, is likely to provide maximum freedom,and hence maximum
prosperity and fairness as well.
Freedom outweighs without freedom, we are all reduced to the level of

animals and slaves only freedom from government oppression solves
Ludwig von Mises (Austrian Economist and Philosopher) 1960: The Economic Foundations of Freedom.
http://mises.org/efandi/ch1.asp
Animals are driven by instinctive urges. They yield to the impulse which prevails at the moment and
peremptorily asks for satisfaction. They are the puppets of their appetites. Man's eminence is to be seen in
the fact that he chooses between alternatives. He regulates his behavior deliberatively. He can master his
impulses and desires; he has the power to suppress wishes the satisfaction of which would force him to
renounce the attainment of more important goals. In short: man acts; he purposively aims at ends chosen.
This is what we have in mind in stating that man is a moral person, responsible for his conduct. Freedom
as a Postulate of Morality
All the teachings and precepts of ethics, whether based upon a religious creed or whether based upon a
secular doctrine like that of the Stoic philosophers, presuppose this moral autonomy of the individual and
therefore appeal to the individual's conscience. They presuppose that the individual is free to choose
among various modes of conduct and require him to behave in compliance with definite rules, the rules of
morality. Do the right things, shun the bad things. It is obvious that the exhortations and admonishments
of morality make sense only when addressing individuals who are free agents. They are vain when directed
to slaves. It is useless to tell a bondsman what is morally good and what is morally bad. He is not free to
determine his comportment; he is forced to obey the orders of his master. It is difficult to blame him if he
prefers yielding to the commands of his master to the most cruel punishment threatening not only him but
also the members of his family. This is why freedom is not only a political postulate, but no less a postulate
of every religious or secular morality. The Struggle for Freedom Yet for thousands of years a considerable part of
mankind was either entirely or at least in many regards deprived of the faculty to choose between what is right and what is wrong. In
the status society of days gone by the freedom to act according to their own choice was, for the lower strata of society, the great
majority of the population, seriously restricted by a rigid system of controls. An outspoken formulation of this principle was the statute
of the Holy Roman Empire that conferred upon the princes and counts of the Reich (Empire) the power and the right to determine the
religious allegiance of their subjects. The Orientals meekly acquiesced in this state of affairs. But the Christian peoples of Europe and
their scions that settled in overseas territories never tired in their struggle for liberty. Step by step they abolished all status and caste
privileges and disabilities until they finally succeeded in establishing the system that the harbingers of totalitarianism try to smear by
calling it the bourgeois system. The Supremacy of the Consumers The economic foundation of this bourgeois system is the
market economy in which the consumer is sovereign. The consumer, i.e., everybody, determines by his buying or abstention from
buying what should be produced, in what quantity and of what quality. The businessmen are forced by the instrumentality of profit
and loss to obey the orders of the consumers, Only those enterprises can flourish that supply in the best possible and cheapest way
those commodities and services which the buyers are most anxious to acquire. Those who fail to satisfy the public suffer losses and
are finally forced to go out of business. In the precapitalistic ages the rich were the owners of large landed estates. They or their
ancestors had acquired their property as gifts?feuds or fiefs?from the sovereign who?with their aid?had conquered the country and
subjugated its inhabitants. These aristocratic landowners were real lords as they did not depend on the patronage of buyers. But the
rich of a capitalistic industrial society are subject to the supremacy of the market. They acquire their wealth by serving the consumers
Page 6 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
better than other people do and they forfeit their wealth when other people satisfy the wishes of the consumers better or cheaper
than they do. In the free market economy the owners of capital are forced to invest it in those lines in which it best serves the public.
Thus ownership of capital goods is continually shifted into the hands of those who have best succeeded in serving the consumers. In
the market economy private property is in this sense a public service imposing upon the owners the responsibility of employing it in
the best interests of the sovereign consumers. This is what economists mean when they call the market economy a democracy in
which every penny gives a right to vote. The Political Aspects of Freedom Representative government is the political corollary of
the market economy. The same spiritual movement that created modern capitalism substituted elected officeholders for the
authoritarian rule of absolute kings and hereditary aristocracies. It was this much-decried bourgeois liberalism that brought freedom
of conscience, of thought, of speech, and of the press and put an end to the intolerant persecution of dissenters. A free country is
one in which every citizen is free to fashion his life according to his own plans. He is free to compete on the
market for the most desirable jobs and on the political scene for the highest offices. He does not depend
more on other people's favor than these others depend on his favor. If he wants to succeed on the market,
he has to satisfy the consumers; if he wants to succeed in public affairs he has to satisfy the voters. This
system has brought to the capitalistic countries of Western Europe, America, and Australia an unprecedented increase in population
figures and the highest standard of living ever known in history. The much talked-about common man has at his disposal amenities of
which the richest men in precapitalistic ages did not even dream. He is in a position to enjoy the spiritual and intellectual
achievements of science, poetry, and art that in earlier days were accessible only to a small elite of well-to-do people. And he is free
to worship as his conscience tells him.
Coercion restricts rights and destroys individual agency.

Blake, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, 01
(Michael Blake, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Summer 2001,
Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Summer,
2001), pp. 257-296, JSTOR)
There is much more to be said in the above context, but I want now to turn to the issue of coercion.
People can be denied their autonomy by being starved, deeply impoverished, or

subjected to oppressive and marginalizing norms, but they can also face a denial of
autonomy that results from outright coercion . I will refrain from offering a complete theory of
coercion in the present context;'4 I will only note that, as I have insisted upon throughout this exercise,
whether an individual faces a denial of autonomy resulting from coercion cannot be read
off simply from the number of options open to her. Coercion is not simply a matter of
what options are available; it has to do with the reasons the set of options is as
constrained as it is. Coercion is an intentional action, designed to replace the chosen
option with the choice of another. Coercion , we might therefore say, expresses a relationship
of domination, violating the autonomy of the individual by replacing that individual's
chosen plans and pursuits with those of another. Let us say, therefore, that coercive
proposals violate the autonomy of those against whom they are employed; they act so
as to replace our own agency with the agency of another.
Coercion snowballsEvery increase in the states power brings us closer to
tyranny
Browne, Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director of
Public Policy for the DownsizeDC.org, 95
(Harry Browne, Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director
of Public Policy for the DownsizeDC.org, 1995, Why Government Doesn't Work,
p.65-66)
Each increase in coercion is easier to justify . If its right to force banks to report your finances to
the government, then its right to force you to justify the cash in your pocket at the airport. If its right to
take property from the rich and give it to the poor, then its right to take your property for the salt marsh
harvest mouse. As each government program fails, it becomes necessary to move
another step closer to complete control over our lives . As one thing leads to another as
coercion leads to more coercion what can we look forward to? Will it become necessary to force
you to justify everything you do to any government agent who thinks you might be a threat to society?
Will it become necessary to force your children to report your personal habits to their teachers or the
Page 7 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
police? Will it become necessary to force your neighbors to monitor your activities? Will it become
necessary to force you to attend a reeducation program to learn how to be more sensitive, or how not to
discriminate, or how to avoid being lured into taking drugs, or how to recognize suspicious behavior? Will
it become necessary to prohibit some of your favorite foods and ban other pleasures, so you dont fall ill or
have an accident putting a burden on Americas health-care system? Some of these things such as
getting children to snitch on their parents or ordering people into reeducation programs are already
happening in America. The others have been proposed and are being considered seriously. History has
shown that each was an important step in the evolution of the worlds worst tyrannies. We move step
by step further along the road to oppression because each step seems like such a small
one. And because were told that each step will give us something alluring in return less
crime, cheaper health care, safety from terrorists, an end to discrimination even if none of the
previous steps delivered on its promise. And because the people who promote these
steps are well-meaning reformers who would use force only to build a better world.
There is no value to life in their framework coercion makes us into mere tools
of the state.
Hayek, Nobel Prize winner for Economics, 60
(F.A. Hayek, Nobel Prize winner for Economics, 1960, The Constitution of Liberty, p.20)
By coercion we mean such control of the environment or circumstances of a person by

another that, in order to avoid greater evil, he is forced to act not according to a coherent plan
of his own but to serve the ends of another . Except in the sense of choosing the lesser evil in a
situation forced on him by another, he is unable either to use his own intelligence or
knowledge or to follow his own aims and beliefs . Coercion is evil precisely because it
thus eliminates an individual as a thinking and valuing person and makes him a bare tool
in the achievement of the ends of another . Free action, in which a person pursues his own aims
by the means indicated by his own knowledge, must be based on data which cannot be shaped at will by
another. It presupposes the existence of a known sphere in which the circumstances cannot be so shaped
by another person as to leave one only that choice prescribed by the other.
Utilitarianism doesnt trump the impact of coercionindividuals cant be

reduced to units of value.
Machan, 95 Professor of philosophy, Auburn University, 1995
ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 129)
(Tibor, PRIVATE RIGHTS AND PUBLIC
The essential point to note at this juncture is how the idea of the worth and rights of the individual simply
cannot find a place in the standard utilitarian cost-benefit analysis favored by many economists. Benefits,
according to this approach, are to be measured by what people prefer (or would prefer, if properly
informed), while costs are reducible to what people would prefer to do without or avoid if they were
properly informed. The kind of value (or worth) individuals have, however, is not just one benefit
competing among other benefits...Consider the case where some people are injured or harmed by others.
"Since the costs of injury are borne by its victims," Kelman contends, "while its benefits are escaped by its
perpetrators, simple cost-benefit calculations may be less important than more abstract conceptions of
justice, fairness, and human dignity. Developing this theme more fully, Kelman writes as follows: We would
not condone a rape even if it could be demonstrated that the rapist derived enormous pleasure from his
actions, while the victim suffered in only small ways. Behind the conception of "rights" is the notion that
some concept of justice, fairness or human dignity demands that individuals ought to be able to perform
certain acts, despite the harm of others, and ought to be protected against certain acts, despite the loss
this causes to the would-be perpetrator. Thus we undertake no cost-benefit analysis of the effects of
freedom of speech or trial by jury before allowing them to continue.
Every invasion of liberty must be rejected failure to do so leads to massive

atrocities.
Page 8 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Harry Browne, former Libertarian presidential candidate, executive director of public policy at American
Liberty Foundation, editor of Liberty Magazine, financial advisor and economist, 19 95, Why Government
Doesnt Work)
The reformers of the Cambodian revolution claimed to be building a better world . They
forced people into reeducation programs to make them better citizens . Then they used force to
regulate every aspect of commercial life . Then they forced office workers and intellectuals to give
up their jobs and harvest rice, to round out their education. When people resisted having their lives
turned upside down, the reformers had to use more and more force.
By the time they were done, they had killed a third of the countrys population , destroyed
the lives of almost everyone still alive, and devastated a nation . It all began with
using force for the best of intentions to create a better world.
The Soviet leaders used coercion to provide economic security and to build a New Man
a human being who would put his fellow man ahead of himself. At least 10 million people died to
help build the New Man and the Workers Paradise.37 But human nature never changed and
the workers lives were always Hell, not Paradise.
In the 1930s many Germans gladly traded civil liberties for the economic revival and
national pride Adolf Hitler promised them. But like every other grand dream to improve
society by force, it ended in a nightmare of devastation and death.
Professor R. J. Rummel has calculated that 119 million people have been killed by their own governments
in this century.38 Were these people criminals? No, they were people who simply didnt fit into the New
Order people who
preferred their own dreams to those of the reformers. Every time you allow government to
use force to make society better, you move another step closer to the
nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany .
Weve already moved so far that our own government can perform with impunity the outrages described in
the preceding chapters. These examples arent cases of government gone wrong; they are examples of
government period. They are what governments do just as chasing cats is what dogs do. They are
the natural consequence of letting government use force to bring about a drug-free nation, to
tax someone else to better your life , to guarantee your economic security, to assure that no
one can mistreat you or hurt your feelings, and to cover up the damage of all the failed
government programs that came before.

Government coercion is immoral because it kills freedom and virtue by eroding
the basis of free market capitalism
Doug Bandow (Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special
Assistant to President Ronald Reagan) March 7, 1997: Freedom and Virtue are
Inseparable. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6186.
For years the Left promised that socialism would eventually out-produce the market. That claim died with
the Soviet Union. What remained of the Left then began to complain that capitalism generated too many
material goods. Now similar attacks on capitalism are coming from the Right. The market, it is said,
threatens family, human relationships, values and virtue. However, it is a mistake to treat freedom, which
is the essence of capitalism, and virtue as mutually antagonistic. In fact liberty-- the right to exercise
choice, free from coercive state regulation-- is a necessary precondition for virtue. And virtue is ultimately
necessary for liberty to flourish. Virtue cannot exist without the freedom to make moral choices. Coerced
acts of conformity with some moral norm, however good, do not represent virtue; rather, compliance with
that moral norm must be voluntary. Virtue rejects a standard of intra-personal morality. As such it is an
area that lies largely beyond the reach of state power. Of course societies can be more or less virtuous.
But blaming moral shifts on legal changes mistakes correlation for causation. America's one-time cultural
consensus eroded during an era of strict laws. Only cracks in this consensus, which provided the moral
foundation of the laws, led to statutory changes. Government has proved that it is not a good teacher of
virtue. The state tends to be effective at simple tasks, like jailing people. It is far less successful in shaping
individual consciences. New laws would not make America a more virtuous nation. Even if there were fewer
Page 9 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
overt acts of immorality, there would be no change in peoples hearts and thus in society's moral core.
Indeed attempting to forcibly make people virtuous would make society it self less virtuous : First
individuals would lose the opportunity to exercise virtue. They would not face the same set of temptations
and be forced to choose between good and evil. This approach might make their lives a bit simpler. But
they would not be more virtuous. In this dilemma we see the paradox of Christianity: A God of love creates
man and provides a means of redemption, but allows him to choose evil. Second, to vest government with
primary responsibility for promoting virtue shortchanges other institutions like the family and church,
sapping their vitality. Private social institutions find it easier to lean on the power of coercion than to lead
by example, attempt to persuade and solve problems. Third making government a moral enforcer
encourages abuse by whatever interest groups gain power. If one thing is certain, it is that man is sinful.
That sin is magnified by coercive power. Those who possess power can of course, do good, but history
suggests that they are far more likely to do harm. Indeed, as Americas traditional Judeo-Christian
consensus crumbles we a more likely to see government promoting alternative moral views. This is
possible only if the state is given the authority to coercively mold souls in the name of the community or
family. Despite the best intentions of advocates of statecraft as soulcraft, government grows ever more
likely to enshrine something other than traditional morality. The fact that government can do little to help
does not mean that there is nothing it should do. Public officials should adopt as their maxim "First, do no
harm." Although America's moral breakdown, most evident in the inner-city, has many causes, the welfare
state has exacerbated the problem at every level, punishing marriage, work and thrift. Government has
spent years attempting to expunge religious values from the public square; the public school monopoly
discourages both good education and values instruction.
Coercion creates a slippery slope to more coercion
Harry Browne, Former Libertarian Party candidate for President, Director of Public Policy for the
DownsizeDC.org, THE GREAT LIBERTARIAN OFFER, 2000, p. 18
Government grows, too, because the subsidy given to one group inspires others to demand the same
benefits. And when government protects one company or industry from competition, others wonder why
they shouldn't demand the same protection. That's why no government program ever stands still. No
matter what the stated purpose or limit when implemented, it inevitably expands to cover more and more
peopleand wider and wider areas. Everyone who comes to the government asking for favors has a
plausible request. Once it's considered proper to use government force to solve one person's problem,
force can be justified to solve anyone's problem. Over time, fewer and fewer requests seem out of bounds.
And the grounds for saying "no" become more and more eroded. The pressure on politicians to use
coercion to grant favors becomes overwhelming. The Motives of Public Servants But, in truth, very little
pressure is needed. Lawmakers, bureaucrats, and judges all rejoice in a government that grows and grows
and grows. Big government gives lawmakers the power to make or break companies and individuals.
People must bow and scrape to obtain favorsor just to keep government from destroying them.
Violations of liberty create a slippery slope to more governmental constraints.
Tibor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Professor Emeritus in the Department of
Philosophy at Auburn University, 2002, Liberty and Hard Cases, p. [xvii xix]
We are not unfamiliar with the hazards of the slippery slope in our own personal lives. If a man hits his
child in some alleged emergency, the very act of doing so may render him more amenable to smacking the
kid under more typical circumstances. Slapping someone who is hysterical may make it easier to slap
someone who is only very upset or recalcitrant or annoying or just too slow fetching the beer from the
refrigerator. Similarly, a minor breach of trust can beget more of the same, a little white lie here and
there can beget lying as a routine, and so forth. Moral habits promote a principled course of action even in
cases where bending or breaking the principle might not seem too harmful to other parties or to our own
integrity. On the other hand, granting ourselves reasonable exceptions tends to weaken our moral
habits; as we seek to rationalize past action, differences of kind tend to devolve into differences of degree.
Each new exception provides the precedent for the next, until we lose our principles altogether and doing
what is right becomes a matter of happenstance and mood rather than of loyalty to enduring values. The
same is true of public action. When citizens of a country delegate to government, by means of democratic
and judicial processes, the power to forge paternalistic public policies such as banning drug abuse,
imposing censorship, restraining undesirable trade, and supporting desirable trade, the bureaucratic and
police actions increasingly rely on the kind of violence and intrusiveness that no free citizenry ought to
experience or foster. And the bureaucrats and the police tell themselves, no doubt, that what theyre doing
is perfectly just and right. Consider, for starters, that when no one complains about a crimebecause it is
not perpetrated against someone but rather involves breaking a paternalistic lawto even detect the
Page 10 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
crime requires methods that are usually invasive. Instead of charges being brought by wronged parties,
phone tapping, snooping, anonymous reporting, and undercover work are among the dubious means that
lead to prosecution. Thus the role of the police shifts from protection and peacekeeping to supervision,
regimentation, and reprimand. No wonder, then, that officers of the law are often caught brutalizing
suspects instead of merely apprehending them. Under a paternalistic regime, their goals have multiplied,
and thus the means they see as necessary to achieving those goals multiply too. The same general
danger of corrupting a free societys system of laws may arise when government is called on to deal with
calamities. There is the perception, of course, that in such circumstances the superior powers of
government are indispensable, given the immediateness of the danger. The immediate benefitsa life
saved by a marineare evident. Yet the dangers of extensive involvement by legal authorities in the
handling of nonjudicial problems are no less evident, if less immediate in impact.
Government coercion causes more violations of liberty.
Hazlitt, founding board member of the Mises Institute and Journalist for The Wall Street Journal, 07
(Henry, Can the State Reduce Poverty? http://www.mises.org/story/2526)
From the beginning of history, sincere reformers as well as demagogues have sought to abolish or at least
to alleviate poverty through state action. In most cases their proposed remedies have only served to make
the problem worse. The most frequent and popular of these proposed remedies has been the simple one of
seizing from the rich to give to the poor. This remedy has taken a thousand different forms, but they all
come down to this. The wealth is to be "shared," to be "redistributed," to be "equalized." In fact, in the
minds of many reformers it is not poverty that is the chief evil but inequality. All schemes for redistributing
or equalizing incomes or wealth must undermine or destroy incentives at both ends of the economic scale.
They must reduce or abolish the incentives of the unskilled or shiftless to improve their condition by their
own efforts; and even the able and industrious will see little point in earning anything beyond what they
are allowed to keep. These redistribution schemes must inevitably reduce the size of the pie to be
redistributed. They can only level down. Their long-run effect must be to reduce production and lead
toward national impoverishment. The problem we face is that the false remedies for poverty are almost
infinite in number. An attempt at a thorough refutation of any single one of them would run to
disproportionate length. But some of these false remedies are so widely regarded as real cures or
mitigations of poverty that if I do not refer to them I may be accused of having undertaken a book on the
remedies for poverty while ignoring some of the most obvious.
Government coercion destroys the value to life and cannot be morally justified
Tibor Machan, PRIVATE RIGHTS & PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 68-9.

All governmental action that does not serve to repel or retaliate against coercion is antithetical to any
respect for human dignity. While it is true that some people should give to others to assist them in
reaching their goals, forcing individuals to do so plainly robs them of their dignity. There is nothing morally
worthwhile in forced giving. Generally, for a society to respect human dignity, the special moral relations
between people should be left undisturbed. Government should confine itself to making sure that this
voluntarism is not abridged, no matter how tempting it might be to use its coercive powers to attain some
worthy goal.
Coercion destroys value to life
Joseph Raz, philosopher, THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, 1986, p. 307
One way to test the thesis of the primacy of action reasons is to think of a person who is entirely passive
and is continuously led, cleaned, and pumped full with hash, so that he is perpetually content, and wants
nothing but to stay in the same condition. Its a familiar imaginary horror. How do we rank the success of
such a life? It is not the worst life one can have. It is simply not a life at all. It lacks activity, it lacks goals.
To the extent that one is tempted to judge it more harshly than that and to regard it as a negative life this
is because of the wasted potentiality. It is a life which could have been and was not. We can isolate this
feature by imagining that the human being concerned is mentally and physically effected in a way which
rules out the possibility of a life with any kind of meaningful pursuit in it. Now it is just not really a life at
all. This does not preclude one from saying that it is better than human life. It is simply sufficiently unlike
human life in the respects that matter that we regard it as only a degenerate case of human life. But
clearly not being alive can be better than that life.
Coercion ensures extinction.
Louis Rene Beres, Professor of International Law, Purdue University, Spring, 1994, ARIZONA JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW, p. 23-4
Page 11 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This

This, then, is an altogether different kind of understanding. Rather than rescue humankind by freeing individuals from fear of death, this perspective recommends educating
By surrendering ourselves to States and to traditional views of selfpremature and predictable extinction. It is a relationship that can, and must, be more widely
understood. 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 in the expressions of that ingenuity that people seek
safety. Indeed, as the threat of nuclear annihilation looms even after the Cold War, 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.
people to the truth of an incontestable relationship between death and geopolitics.
determination,
we encourage
not immortality but
Coercion is the root cause of military conflict

Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, PhD, former pharmaceutical research scientist, former Assistant Professor of Surgery,
HEALING OUR WORLD: THE OTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE, 1993, p.
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/ruwart_all.html.
Humankind is poised on the brink of an evolutionary leap. In the last few decades, we have become
increasingly aware of the source of our inner peace and enrichment. Depending on our personal
background, we express this great discovery differently. The practical, down-to-earth individuals among us
"take responsibility for our lives" as described in Wayne W. Dyer's Your Erroneous Zones. Those of us with a
metaphysical outlook "create our own reality" as Shirley MacLaine did in Out on a Limb. The spiritual
among us know that "the kingdom of God is within" and follow The Road Less Traveled (M. Scott Peck).
Sometimes we simply "find ourselves" through the power of love as Richard Bach did in The Bridge Across
Forever. Ultimately, our inner harmony and abundance depend on how we react to our outer world. The
creation of peace and plenty in our outer world, however, frequently seems hopelessly beyond our control.
In the past century, we've supported widespread social reform. Nevertheless, people are still starving in a
world capable of feeding all. In our own country, homelessness and poverty are on the rise. Violence is no
longer limited to overseas wars: our streets, even our schools, are no longer safe. The environment that
nurtures us is ravaged and raped. When we acknowledge how our reactions contribute to our inner state,
we gain control. Our helplessness dissolves when we stop blaming others for feelings we create. In our
outer world, the same rules apply. Today, as a society, as a nation, as a collective consciousness, "we"
once again feel helpless, blaming selfish others for the world's woes. Our nation's laws, reflecting a
composite of our individual beliefs, attempt to control selfish others at gunpoint, if necessary. Striving for a
better world by focusing on others instead of ourselves totally misses the mark. When others resist the
choices we have made for them, conflicts escalate and voraciously consume resources. A warring world is
a poor one. Attempting to control others, even for their own good, has other undesirable effects. People
who are able to create intimacy in their personal relationships know that you can't hurry love. Trying to
control or manipulate those close to us creates resentment and anger. Attempting to control others in our
city, state, nation, and world is just as destructive to the universal love we want the world to manifest.
Forcing people to be more "unselfish" creates animosity instead of good will. Trying to control selfish others
is a cure worse than the disease. We reap as we sow. In trying to control others, we find ourselves
controlled. We point fingers at the dictators, the Communists, the politicians, and the international cartels.
We are blithely unaware that our desire to control selfish others creates and sustains them. Like a stone
thrown in a quiet pond, our desire to control our neighbors ripples outward, affecting the political course of
our community, state, nation, and world. Yet we know not what we do. We attempt to bend our neighbors
to our will, sincere in our belief that we are benevolently protecting the world from their folly and shortsightedness. We seek control to create peace and prosperity, not realizing that this is the very means by
which war and poverty are propagated. In fighting for our dream without awareness, we become the
instruments of its destruction. If we could only see the pattern! In seeking to control others, we behave as
we once did as children, exchanging our dime for five pennies, all the while believing that we were
enriching ourselves. When a concerned adult tried to enlighten us, we first refused to believe the truth.
Once awareness dawned, we could no longer be fooled, nor was laborious deliberation necessary for every
transaction. Once we understood how to count money, we automatically knew if we benefited from such a
trade. Similarly, when the fact and folly of controlling others first come to our attention, we're surprised
and full of denial. I certainly was! When we care about the state of our world, however, we don't stop
there. I trust you are concerned enough to persevere and to consider seriously the shift in consciousness
this book proposes. Once we have the courage to accept responsibility for our part of the problem, we
automatically become part of the solution, independent of what others do. We honor their non-aggressive
choices (even if they are self-ish) and stop trying to control them. In doing so, we dismantle their most
effective means of controlling us. Others only ignite the flames of war and poverty. We feed the flames or
starve them. Not understanding their nature, we've fanned the sparks instead of smothering them. Not
understanding our contribution to the raging inferno, we despair that a world full of selfish others could
ever experience universal har-mony and abundance. Nothing could be further from the truth! Widespread
Page 12 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
peace and plenty can be created within our lifetime. When we understand how to stop fueling the flames
of war and poverty, we can manifest our dream.
Coercion causes tyranny.

Tibor Machan, philosophy professor, Auburn, PRIVATE RIGHTS AND PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 86-7
As Bondy notes, in totalitarian states, where the government controls the printing presses and publishing
organizations, anyone wishing to state a personal opinion must gain official sanction. (Even under Mikhail
Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika reformsbegun in 1987, prior to the breakup of the Soviet state
the openness and restructuring involved were permitted or instituted by government, rather than being
understood as a basic human right that limits the scope and power of the government. Consider also that
General Augusto Pinochet's Chile had had a relatively "free" marketthat is, a government policy of
abstention from heavy-handed economic regulation. Yet its critics will quite rightly refuse to regard it as
having been a free country. Moreover in countries where broadcasting is government administered, there is
no right to telecast one's views or ideas on the airways, only a permission to do so if it suits the state
authorities. In contrast, if the right to property is respected, individuals do not have to seek political
permission to act, even if they still must earn the opportunity to do so via the free marketplace and in face
of natural obstacles. The right to property is the right to work for, acquire, and hold goods and valuables; it
includes the rights of production, trade, and bequest, as well as the right to undertake innumerable actions
vis-a-vis the world of ownable items not even conceived of yet. The right to pursue happiness or individual
excellence in life, then, requires full support of the right to property. Private property rights are neither
favored nor legally protected in our era and have not been for a long time. Both cultural and legal
developments in the last one hundred years have undermined the protection of property rights The state
often acts in a paternalistic fashion toward the citizen's ownership and management of property. It is
increasingly willing to usurp mutually agreed-upon contracts. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, the history
of the United States demonstrates that the significant protection of private property rights, despite much
compromise and confusion, has a propensity to increase the productivity as well as the self-responsibility
of the members of a human community. It contributes to their self-perception as moral agents who cannot
expect others to live for them and it fosters their concern for and development toward doing reasonably
well in their lives. In short, the right to private property is a required feature of a human community that
enhances human flourishing.
Global democratic consolidation is necessary to prevent many scenarios for war and extinction
Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution senior fellow, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, December
1995, A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Promoting Democracy in the
1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years
and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could
easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime
syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate.
The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these
new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence
of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that
govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress
against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not
ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction
to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more
environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the
destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value
legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret.
Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and
the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international
security and prosperity can be built.
Page 13 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Each use of coercive force paves the road for massive atrocities
Liberty Foundation, editor of Liberty Magazine, financial advisor and economist, WHY GOVERNMENT
DOESNT WORK, 1995, p. 66-7.
The reformers of the Cambodian revolution claimed to be building a better world. They forced people into
reeducation programs to make them better citizens. Then they used force to regulate every aspect of
commercial life. Then they forced office workers and intellectuals to give up their jobs and harvest rice, to
round out their education. When people resisted having their lives turned upside down, the reformers had
to use more and more force. By the time they were done, they had killed a third of the countrys
population, destroyed the lives of almost everyone still alive, and devastated a nation. It all began with
using force for the best of intentionsto create a better world. The Soviet leaders used coercion to provide
economic security and to build a New Mana human being who would put his fellow man ahead of
himself. At least 10 million people died to help build the New Man and the Workers Paradise. But human
nature never changedand the workers lives were always Hell, not Paradise. In the 1930s many Germans
gladly traded civil liberties for the economic revival and national pride Adolf Hitler promised them. But like
every other grand dream to improve society by force, it ended in a nightmare of devastation and death.
Professor R.J. Rummel has calculated that 119 million people have been killed by their own governments in
this century. Were these people criminals? No, they were people who simply didnt fit into the New Order
people who preferred their own dreams to those of the reformers. Every time you allow government to use
force to make society better, you move another step closer to the nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet
Union, and Nazi Germany. Weve already moved so far that our own government can perform with
impunity the outrages described in the preceding chapters. These examples arent cases of government
gone wrong; they are examples of governmentperiod. They are what governments dojust as chasing
cats is what dogs do.
Government coercion creates evil
Mann 03. Frederick Mann, entrepreneur, author of The Economic Rape of America, and founder of the
Free World Order. Why you must recognize and understand Coercion, p1. 2003.
http://www.buildfreedom.com/power/powerx/1.html
"Lao Tzu believed that when people do not have a sense of power they become resentful and
uncooperative. Individuals who do not feel personal power feel fear. They fear the unknown because they
do not identify with the world outside of themselves; thus their psychic integration is severely damaged
and they are a danger to their society. Tyrants do not feel power, they feel frustration and impotency. They
wield force, but it is a form of aggression, not authority. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that
individuals who dominate others are, in fact, enslaved by insecurity and are slowly and mysteriously hurt
by their own actions. Lao Tzu attributed most of the world's ills to the fact that people do not feel powerful
and independent." Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous German philosopher, wrote that "will to power" is the
essence of human nature. In a book compiled from his notes after his death, 'The Will To Power,' is written:
"My idea is that every specific body strives to be master over all space and to extend its force (its will to
power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the
part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are
sufficiently related to it: Thus they conspire together for power." .. To feel that we are worthwhile
individuals, to know that we exist, we have to express our power - feel that we are in control. This
imperative to express our power and experience control is central to human behavior. Every human does
something to express his or her power in the world. This power can be expressed creatively or
destructively. Humans first attempt to express their power creatively. If such attempts fail repeatedly, they
experience themselves as powerless. They may feel helpless and hopeless, and become depressed. What
they experience is that they cannot make a positive difference in their own lives or in the world. A
cognitive breakdown occurs between their actions and the results they produce. Mentally and intellectually
they cease to understand the connections between their behavior and the consequences of their behavior.
Then they express their power destructively.
Government coercion must be morally rejected
Dr. Edward Younkins, business professor, Wheeling Jesuit, CIVIL SOCIETY: THE REALM OF FREEDOM,
June 10, 2000, p. http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000610-11.htm
Recently (and ironically), government projects and programs have been started to restore civil society
through state subsidization or coercive mandates. Such coercion cannot create true voluntary associations.
Statists who support such projects believe only in the power of political society they don't realize that the
subsidized or mandated activity can be performed voluntarily through the private interaction of individuals
Page 14 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
and associations. They also don't understand that to propose that an activity not be performed coercively,
is not to oppose the activity, but simply its coercion. If civil society is to be revived, we must substitute
voluntary cooperation for coercion and replace mandates with the rule of law. According to the Cato
Handbook for Congress, Congress should: before trying to institute a government program to solve a
problem, investigate whether there is some other government program that is causing the problem ... and,
if such a program is identified, begin to reform or eliminate it; ask by what legal authority in the
Constitution Congress undertakes an action ...; recognize that when government undertakes a program, it
displaces the voluntary efforts of others and makes voluntary association in civil society appear redundant,
with significant negative effects; and begin systematically to abolish or phase out those government
programs that do what could be accomplished by voluntary associations in civil society ... recognizing that
accomplishment through free association is morally superior to coercive mandates, and almost always
generates more efficient outcomes. Every time taxes are raised, another regulation is passed, or another
government program is adopted, we are acknowledging the inability of individuals to govern themselves. It
follows that there is a moral imperative for us to reclaim our right to live in a civil society, rather than to
have bureaucrats and politicians solve our problems and run our lives.
Coercion must be rejected in every instance
Frederick Mann, Why YOU MUST RECOGNIZE AND UNDERSTAND COERCION, 2000, p.
http://quebecoislibre.org/000610-11.htm
In Six Myths About Libertarianism, Murray N. Rothbard writes: "If a person is forced by violence or the
threat thereof to perform a certain action, then it can no longer be a moral choice on his part. The morality
of an action can stem only from its being freely adopted; an action can scarcely be called moral if someone
is compelled to perform it at gunpoint. Compelling moral actions or outlawing immoral actions, therefore,
cannot be said to foster the spread of morality or virtue. On the contrary, coercion atrophies morality for it
takes away from the individual the freedom to be either moral or immoral, and therefore forcibly deprives
people of the chance to be moral. Paradoxically, then, a compulsory morality robs us of the very
opportunity to be moral.
Coercion violates fundament human rights
Ridgway Foley, ESSAY ON CARING, April 1985, p. www.libertyhaven.com/politicsandcurrente
vents/politicalpartiesoractivism/essayoncaring.html
The Dividing Line A remarkable duality pervades the concept of caring and its current implementation.
Force represents the dividing line. Application or refrain from coercion separates the wrongful intrusion into
the sanctity of the life of another from the permissible compassionate endeavor. The law ought not impede
attempts to aid others or to solve problems where those enterprises occur without compulsion. This should
be true where the majority decries the problem as ridiculous or the solution as ill-advised; after all, the
crowd often proves ineluctably wrong and, in any event, no human being possesses either the ability or the
moral privilege to substitute his judgment for that of another choosing sentient being. Conversely, no one
should employ the legal monopoly of force to compel adherence to, participation in, or compliance with an
artifice designed to better another, no matter how well intentioned or meritorious the plan. No individual
should be permitted to thrust a decision or shunt responsibility for the consequences of his choice upon
another, unwilling human being. Disregard of this salient principle necessarily denies the dignity of that
other individual, since moral choice and accountability constitute an essential element in the human
condition. Those who purport to care, then, must submit to a test of means and motive. The law (rules and
orders created and enforced by mankind) should not address the means employed by those who promote
compassion as a political or economic discipline except to assure that no individual or entity compels a
dissenter to assent to, support or participate in a proposal disagreeable to the latter for any reason.All too
often, those who preach caring, compassion and concern rest their case upon the root of envy: Loathe the
rich and trust the poor; take from the evil producer and give to the high-principled but helpless victim of
circumstance and oppression. Such caring persons really do not care at all about others: The creators must
be plundered, the users must be pandered, by force and violence, by false premises and promises, in order
to salve the promoter's inordinate ego and to effect his flawed view of mankind and the world. In these,
the vast majority of instances, one can always count upon the concerned to care - -for themselves !
Page 15 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Property Rights Good**

Property rights are key to all rights.
John Hospers, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, THE LIBERTARIAN ALTERNATIVE,
Tibor Machan, ed., 1974, p. 8.
Depriving people of property is depriving them of the means by which they live-the freedom of the
individual citizen to do what he wishes with his own life and to plan for the future. Indeed, only if property
rights are respected is there any point to planning for the future and working to achieve one's goals.
Property rights are what makes long-range planning possible - the kind of planning which is a distinctively
human endeavor, as opposed to the day-by-day activity of the lion who hunts, who depends on the supply
of game tomorrow but has no real insurance against starvation in a day or a week. Without the right to
property, the right to life itself amounts to little: how can you sustain your life if you cannot plan ahead?
and how can you plan ahead if the fruits of your labor can at any moment be confiscated by government?
Property rights critical to moral agency
Tibor Machan, philosophy professor, Auburn, PRIVATE RIGHTS AND PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 9-10
If one is on a desert island all by oneself, the issue of property rights is of no significance, because there is
no one else who could threaten one's authority over what one is going to do and how one will set out to
manage the natural world that surrounds one. But if there is somebody elseif, for example Robinson
Crusoe is met by Fridayboth now have the choice to do good, bad, or mediocre deeds, and either may
have an impact on the other. They are moral agents who may get in each other's way with their morally
wrong choices and actions. In his choice of actions, for instance, Friday might help himself in a morally
significant fashion from which Crusoe ought not to benefit without Friday's permission. There should be
some way to tell what Robinson Crusoe does and what Friday does and to let both of them have a say
whether and when they want to cooperate. This, in brief, spells out one of the moral functions of private
property rights: Such rights identify what Robert Nozick called "moral space" around personswithin
which, if adequately protected, they can be sovereign agents We can appreciate, then, that from the point
of view of morality everyone needs to know his or her proper scope of personal authority and
responsibility. One needs to know that some valued item, skill, or liquid asset is in one's own jurisdiction to
use before one can be prudent, creative, courageous, charitable, or generous. If one does not know that
some particular area of human concern is under one's own or other people's proper authority, then one
cannot know if it would be courageous, foolhardy, or silly to protect it, whether it would be generous or
reckless to share it, and so on. It follows that private property rights are, in the first place, a social
precondition to the possibility of an extensive, personally guided, and morally significant life. If one is to be
generous to the starving human beings in Somalia but has nothing of one's own from which to be
generous, generosity will not be possible So there is, in effect, a necessary connection between a practical
moral code or set of guiding moral principles and the institution of private property rights.26
Property rights are key to prevent Nazism.
Dr. Nathanial Branden, psychotherapist and author, INDIVIDUALISM AND FREE SOCIETY, January 1995,
p. http://www.fff.org/freedom/0195d.asp
The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is
called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism or totalitarianism or collectivism or
communism or socialism or nazism or fascism or the welfare state. Force, governmental coercion, is the
instrument by which the ethics of altruism the belief that the individual exists to serve others is
translated into political reality. Although this issue has not been traditionally discussed in the terms in which I am discussing it
here, the moral-political concept that forbids the initiation of force, and stands as the guardian and protector of the individual's life,
freedom, and property, is the concept of rights. If life on earth is the standard, an individual has a right to live and
pursue values as survival requires; a right to think and act on his or her judgment the right of liberty; a
right to work for the achievement of his or her values and to keep the results the right of property; a
right to live for his or her sake, to choose and work for personal goals the right to the pursuit of
happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. We must be free to use that which we
have produced, or we do not possess the right of liberty. We must be free to make the products of our work
serve our chosen goals, or we do not possess the right to the pursuit of happiness. And since we are not
ghosts who exist in some nonmaterial manner we must be free to keep and consume the products of our
work or we do not possess the right of life. In a society where human beings are not free to own privately
Page 16 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the material means of production, their position is that of slaves whose lives are at the absolute mercy of
their rulers. It is relevant here to remember the statement of Trotsky: "Who does not obey shall not eat."
Page 17 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Rights Come First**

Placing survival over individual autonomy replicates authoritarian regimes of
control, subjugating individual rights to the values held by those in power
Schroeder, Prof. Law, Duke, 86
(Christopher H. Schroeder, Prof. Law, Duke,1986, Rights Against Risks, 86
Colum. L. Rev. 495)
expanding the idea of preservation to include bodily integrity on the basis of
quality of life considerations has already pointed the way to a more realistic statement of those
Actually,
individual characteristics worth protecting. The same considerations of quality of life counsel recognizing
some freedom of action and initiative within the definition of the morally relevant aspects of the individual.
Doing so is consistent with a long political and philosophical heritage. 90 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.
Violation of freedom negates the value of human existence and represents the
greatest threat to human survival
Rand, Philosopher, 89
(Ayn Rand, Objectivist Philosopher, 07-1989, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New
Concept of Egoism, p. 145)
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort , or enslaves him, or attempts to
limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment, a society
that sets up a conflict between its ethics and the requirements of mans nature is not, strictly speaking,
a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. Such a society destroys
all values of human coexistence, has no possible justification, and represents , not a source
of benefits, but the deadliest threat to mans survival. Life on desert island is safer than and
incomparably preferable than existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.
Page 18 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Violating rights in the name of survival causes social paralysis and destroys
the value to life.
Callahan, institute of Society and Ethics, 73
(Daniel Callahan, institute of Society and Ethics, 1973, The Tyranny of Survival,
pp. 91-93)
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 seen 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
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
in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical and political system.
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
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
counterpoise over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival."
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 lifethen how will it be possible to honor and act upon the need for survival without, in the process, destroying
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.
everything in human beings which makes them worthy of survival. To put it more strongly,
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, 01
(Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy, Winter 2001, 18 J. Contemp.
Health L. & Poly 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
Page 19 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
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?
Rights outweigh all critical to human dignitye future
George Kateb, Professor of Politics, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p. 405
Why make so much of individual personal and political rights? The answer, as I have said, is that respect
for rights is the best way of honoring human dignity. Why make so much of human dignity? I do not find
much to say. I am not even sure that much should be said. Suppose we carry on at length about why
governments should treat people in certain ways (by actions and abstentions), and in these ways
unconditionally and as a matter of course, and should do so because people deserve and are entitled to
such treatment, rather than because governments may find it prudent to treat people in these ways in the
spirit of extending revocable privileges. I am afraid that we may jeopardize human dignity by laboring to
defend it. What sort of attack would merit an answer? Is a long and elaborate theory needed to establish
the point that people should not be treated by the state as if they were masses, or obstacles or
instruments to higher purposes, or subjects for experiments, or pieces in a game, or wayward children in
need of protection against themselves, or patients in need of perpetual care, or beasts in need of the
stick? With what right does anyone maintain that people may be regarded or used in these nonhuman or
subhuman ways? With what truth? Unabused and undegraded, people have always shown that they
deserve better. They deserve guaranteed rights. When their rights are respected, all that their dignity,
their human status, requires is achieved. People are enabled to lead lives that are free, modest, and
decentprovided, of course, socioeconomic circumstances are not hopeless. To tie dignity to rights is
therefore to say that governments have the absolute duty to treat people (by actions and abstentions) in
certain ways, and in certain ways only. The state's characteristic domination and insolence are to be
curbed for the sake of rights. Public and formal respect for rights registers and strengthens awareness of
three constitutive facts of being human: every person is a creature capable of feeling pain, and is a free
agent capable of having a free being, of living a life that is one's own and not somebody else's idea of how
a life should be lived, and is a moral agent capable of acknowledging that what one claims for oneself as a
right one can claim only as an equal to everyone else (and relatedly that what one wants done to oneself
one should do to others). Respect for rights recognizes these capacities and thus honors human dignity.
Policymakers must protect individual rights

The background assumption is that most people in a society of rights are disposed to be law-abiding and
that government's mere existence sustains their disposition. But because some persons inevitably
transgress against their fellow citizens, government can never lose the status of protector; in particular,
protector of life and property, the usual objects of transgression. If, then, rights are rights against the
state, the theory of rights does not ignore the obvious fact that the state exists to prevent, deter, or punish
crime or mayhem. (I prefer to see crime not as a denial of the victim's rights but, instead, as legally
culpable immorality; nevertheless, it is sometimes sensible to speak of individuals violating one
another's rights.) Government exists to preserve individuals. The point is that it must do this work, and
its other work, in a way that does not violate rights, including the rights of transgressors and those
accused of transgression. If the Bill of Rights is the core, its silences and deliberate omissions required that
it be supplemented over time. Freedom of speech, press, religion, and association; due-process rights for
suspects, defendants, and the legally guilty; and respect for a person's freedom from arbitrary invasions of
security and privacyall go far in protecting the dignity (or integrity) of individuals. But their dignity needs
moreabove all, three further rights: first, the right to vote and take part in politics; second, the right to be
spared from utter degradation or to be saved from material misery; and third, the right to equal protection
of the laws (in the language of the Fourteenth Amendment). The two last-named rights do not call for mere
governmental abstention, as do the rights of speech, press, religion, association, security, and privacy. Nor
Page 20 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
do they call for only procedural justice, as do some other main rights in the Bill of Rights. Rather, the right
to be free of degradation and misery Answers To a minimal samaritanism as morally obligatory on society
and looks to government to carry it out. It is a right to be given something, to be enabled to begin to live a
life. Samaritanism is obligatory on society, and obligatory samaritanism would be the foundation of a right
to life which was expanded beyond its present constitutional interpretation in the United States. I believe
that this right, more than any other, stands in need of expansion through positive governmental action,
despite all the serious risks involved in charging governments with the task of fostering life. And the equal
protection of the laws may necessitate governmental action against, say, official or social racial
discrimination. Naturally, in saying that the state, which must always be kept under suspicion, must also
be entrusted not only with the fundamental task of preserving individuals against transgressors but also
with the positive function of promoting some of the rights that are indispensable to human dignity, one
admits that there will be an inevitable ambivalence toward the state. It is an enemy, the worst enemy, but
it is not the only enemy and it is not only an enemy. My emphasis, however, is on the antagonism that
government shows to rights by its initiatives rather than by its neglect. Throughout this book I rarely refer
to rights that need government's positive contribution. The latter rights, no matter how fundamental,
cannot be the norm in a society devoted to individual rights. Different individuals may use or need the
several rights variably, but when government refuses to respect rights, it not only makes people suffer, it
injures everyone's human dignity.
The calculation of utilitarianism is the foundation of totalitarianism

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 ruthless-ness 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. No, an advocate of rights cannot take utilitarianism seriously as a competing general
theory of political morality, nor any other competing general theory. Rather, particular principles or
considerations must be given a place. A theory of rights may simply leave many decisions undetermined
or have to admit that rights may have to be overridden (but never for the sake of Social well-being or mere
policy preference). Also, kinds of rights may sometimes conflict, and it is not always possible to end that
conflict either by an elaboration of the theory of rights or by an appeal to some other
Every alternative to rights leads to tyranny

At the same time, there are other theories that seem to affirm human dignity yet give rights only a lesser
or probationary or instrumental role. Examples are utilitarianism, recent communitarianism, recent
republicanism, and radical egalitarianism. The first and last 1 will return to shortly; my response to the
others appears here and there in this volume. (All I wish to say now is that unless rights come first they are
not rights. They will tend to be sacrificed to some purpose deemed higher than the equal dignity of every
individual. There will be little if any concept of the integrity or inviolability of each individual. The group or
the majority or the good or the sacred or the vague future will be preferred. The beneficiaries will be
victimized along with the victims because no one is being treated as a person who is irreplaceable and
beyond value. To make rights anything but primary, even though in the name of human dignity, is to injure
human dignity.
Collective safety is no justification for rights violationsleads to slavery,

genocide, and wars.
Rand 40, Objectivist Philosopher,
(Ayn Rand, Objectivist Philosopher, 1940, To All Innocent Columnists, The Journals
of Ayn Rand, p. 351)
They preach "Democracy" and then make a little addition "Economic Democracy" or a
Page 21 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
"Broader Democracy" or a "True Democracy," and
demand that we turn all property over to the

Government; "all property" means also "all rights" ; let everybody hold all rights together and
nobody have any right of any kind individually. Is that Democracy or is it Totalitarianism? You know
of a prominent woman commentator who wants us all to die for Democracyand then defines "true"
Democracy as State Socialism [probably a reference to Dorothy Thompson]. You have heard Secretary
[Harold] Ickes define a "true" freedom of the press as the freedom to express the views of the majority. You
have read in a highly respectable national monthly the claim that the Bill of Rights, as taught in our
schools, is "selfish"; that a "true" Bill of Rights means not demanding any rights for yourself, but your
giving these rights to "others." God help us, fellow-Americans, are we blind? Do you see what this means?
Do you see the implications? And this is the picture wherever you look. They "oppose"
Totalitarianism and they "defend" Democracyby preaching their own version of

Totalitarianism, some form of "collective good," "collective rights," "collective will," etc.
And the one thing which is never said, never preached, never upheld in our public life, the one thing all
these "defenders of Democracy" hate, denounce and tear down subtly, gradually,
systematicallyis the principle of Individual Rights, Individual Freedom, Individual Value.
That is the principle against which the present great world conspiracy is directed. That is the heart of the
whole world question. That is the only opposite of Totalitarianism and our only defense
against it. Drop thatand what difference will it make what name you give to the
resulting society? It will be Totalitarianismand all Totalitarianisms are alike, all come to
the same methods, the same slavery, the same bloodshed, the same horrors, no matter
what noble slogan they start under, as witness Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.
Sacrificing rights to preserve life produces totalitarianism.
Christopher H. Schroeder, Professor of Law, Duke University; Visiting Professor of Law, UCLA 1985-86,
1986, Columbia Law Review, Rights Against Risks, 86 Colum. L. Rev. 495
Actually, expanding the idea of preservation to include bodily integrity on the basis of quality of life
considerations has already pointed the way to a more realistic statement of those individual characteristics
worth protecting. The same considerations of quality of life counsel recognizing some freedom of action
and initiative within the definition of the morally relevant aspects of the individual. Doing so is consistent
with a long political and philosophical heritage. 90 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.
Err on the side of rights its the biggest consequence in the long term
Machan, Professor of Philosophy, 03
Tibor Machan, prof. emeritus of philosophy at Auburn University, 2003
Passion for Liberty
Page 22 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
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 consequencesin 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 terribly tempted to do so, Let's not do it precisely because to do so would
violate the fundamental requirements of human nature. It is those requirements that should be our guide, not some recent
All in all, then, I support the principled or rights-based approach. In normal contexts,
empirical data that have no staying power (according 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, modified, even revised? Isn't progress in the sciences and technology proof that past
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 consumers (some consumers, perhaps at the expense of the satisfaction
of other consumers) are no reasons to violate basic rights. Only if and when there are solid, demonstrable reasons to do
knowledge always gets overthrown a bit later? As in science and engineering, so in morality and politics:
. Any such reasons would have to speak to the same level of

fundamentally and relevance as that incorporated by the theory of individual rights itself. Those defending
so should we throw out the old principles and bring on the new principles
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
Rights absolute cant infringe on one persons rights to increase well-being of others.
Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U Chicago. 1994.
Alan. Are There Any Absolute Rights? Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics. Joram Graf Haber.
Pgs 137-138
Ought Abrams to torture his mother to death in order to prevent the threatened nuclear catastrophe?
Might he not merely pretend to torture his mother, so that she could then be safely hidden while the hunt
for the gang members continued? Entirely apart from the fact that the gang could easily pierce this
deception, the main objection to the very raising of such question s is the moral one that they seem to
hold open the possibility of acquiescing and participating in an unspeakably evil project. To inflict such
extreme harm on one' s mother would be an ultimate act of betrayal; in performing or even contemplating
the performance of such an action the son would lose all self-respect and would regard his life as no longer
worth living.' A mother' s right not to be tortured to death by her own son is beyond any compromise. It is
absolute . This absoluteness may be analyzed in several different interrelated dimensions. all stemming
from the supreme principle of morality. The principle requires respect for the rights of all persons to the
necessary conditions of human action, and this includes respect for the persons themselves as having the
rational capacity to reflect on their purposes and to control their behaviour in the light of such reflection.
The principle hence prohibits using any person merely as a means to the well-being of other persons. For a
son to torture his mother to death even 10 protect the lives of others would be an extreme violation of this
principle and hence of these rights, as would any attempt by others to force such an action . For this
reason , the concept appropriate to it is not merely 'wrong' but such others as 'despicable', 'dishonorable",
'base', 'monstrous'. In the scale of moral modalities , such concepts function as the contrary extremes of
concepts like the supererogatory , What is supererogatory is not merely good or right but goes beyond
these in various ways; it includes saintly and heroic actions whose moral merit surpasses what is strictly
required of agents, In parallel fashion, what is base, dishonourabte. or despicable is not merely bad or
wrong but goes beyond these in moral demerit since it subverts even the minimal worth or dignity both of
its agent and of its recipient and hence, the basic presupposition s of morality itself, Just as the
supererogatory is superlatively good, so the despicable is superlatively evil and diabolic, and its moral
wrongness is so rotten that a morally decent person will not even consider doing it. This is but another way
of saying that the rights it would violate must remain absolute.
Page 23 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Rights and basic liberties are a prerequisite of rational decisionmaking.

Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction.
Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 16.
Project MUSE.
In order to advance the reconstruction of the Hierarchy Argument, we must now answer the following
question: How does this highest-order interest in rationality and its preconditions justify the lexical priority
of the basic liberties over other primary goods, as called for by the Priority of Liberty? In short, it justifies
such priority because the basic liberties are necessary conditions for the exercise of rationality,
which is why parties in the Original Position give first priority to preserving their liberty in these matters
(pp. 13132). If the parties were to sacrifice the basic liberties for the sake of other primary goods (the
means that enable them to advance their other desires and ends [p. 476]), they would be sacrificing
their highest-order interest in rationality and its preconditions, and thereby failing to express their nature
as autonomous beings (p. 493). A brief examination of the basic liberties enumerated by Rawls will
indicate why they are necessary conditions for the exercise of rationality (p. 53). The freedoms of speech
and assembly, liberty of conscience, and freedom of thought are essential to the creation and revision of
plans of life: without secure rights to explore ideas and beliefs with others (whether in person or through
various media) and consider these at our leisure, we would be unable to make informed decisions about
our conception of the good. Freedom of the person (including psychological and bodily integrity), as well as
the right to personal property and immunity from arbitrary arrest and seizure, are necessary to create a
stable and safe personal space for purposes of reflection and communication, without which rationality
would be compromised if not crippled. Even small restrictions on these basic liberties would
threaten our highest order interest, however slightly, and such a threat is disallowed given the
absolute priority of this interest over other concerns. Note also that lexical priority can be justified here for
all of the basic liberties, not merely a subset of them (as was the case with the strains-of-commitment
interpretation of the Equal Liberty of Conscience Argument). 1
Right to health outweighs violation of right to life.

McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and
Rights. Pgs 127-128.
The right to health, like the right to bodily integrity, is related to but not whol1y based on the right to life.
Ill health and mutilation of the body need not threaten life. Deliberately to harm the health of persons is to
violate their personhood, impairing capacities, causing needless suffering, overriding wills. So too with
violation of bodily integrity, as with compulsory sterilization, barbarous forms of punishment such as
chopping off hands, blinding, removing the tongue. In a real sense, although not in the sense suggested in
Locke's labor argument for private property nor in the sense claimed by many feminists in their defense of
abortion from a woman's right to control (and mutilate?) her body, our body is ours to care for and
maintain as the vehicle of our personhood. Although it is true that we can lose an organ, a leg, an eye, and
still be the same person, our body appertains to us as persons. The negative aspect of the case for the
rights to health and bodily integrity is evidently strong. How can another have the right to injure, infect,
disease a person? So to act is to violate a right. A very powerful moral justification would be necessary for
such an act not to constitute a grave end illegitimate violation of a right.
Page 24 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Positive Rights Good**

Government protection of positive rights justifies war.
Frank van Dun, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy of Law at the University of Maastricht,
JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES, Fall 2001, p. http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_4/15_4_1.pdf.
Even in the richest states, budgetary limitations often lead to sharp confrontations between pressure
groups and vested interests in various social, economic, and cultural domains. Using the term human
rights to describe ones interests does not change this fact of real-world limits. Rather, it creates the risk
of inflating political rhetoric and passion, now that the flag of human rights flies over almost the whole
arena of government policy. Each policy option can be interpreted at one and the same time as both a
measure to further some human right and as an indication of the neglect or even violation of any number
of other human rights. Therefore, there is at all times unlimited room for weighing various rights and for
setting and revising priorities. The political and administrative bodies to which this weighing of rights has
been entrusted or that have succeeded in monopolising it have ample opportunities for expanding their
power and influence. Nothing remains of the old idea that a right is worthy of respect in all circumstances
except, perhaps, the most extreme emergency. The human rights of the UD are not and cannot be
absolute, even in the most normal of circumstancesunless anything short of Utopia should count as an
emergency. By their very nature, they are susceptible to continuous weighing, negotiation, and
qualification. They are a politicians delight, for every human right translates into a right to more
government intervention on its behalf. This is no less true for the ghosts of natural rights that linger in the
first half of the UD than for the economic, social, and cultural rights in the rest of it. Of course, we should
not confuse the ghost and the real thing. For example , Article 2 of the French Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen clearly states what a persons natural rights are: liberty, property, freedom from arbitrary
arrest, and resistance to oppression. In the UD, on the other hand, a person is not informed that his life,
liberty, security of person, and property are his fundamental rights. He is told only that he has the right to
life, liberty, and security of person (Art. 3) and property (Art. 17). He should not expect more. For it is
obviously inconsistent to claim that everyone is entitled to the full realisation of the economic, social, and
cultural rights and at the same time to claim that any persons fundamental rights are his life, liberty,
and property. The administration of the former requires the concentration of massive coercive powers of
taxation and regulation in the hands of the state, and so must presuppose that a persons life, liberty, and
property are not his rights. However, this inconsistency evaporates once we realise that the UDs rights to
life, liberty, property do not specify to whose life, liberty, or property a person has a right. It rules out the
possibility that he has an exclusive right to his own life, liberty, or property, but it does not rule out that
some or all others have an equal, or perhaps more pressing, claim on those things in order to enable them,
say, to enjoy the arts or a paid holiday. Thus, a persons life, liberty, and property are thrown upon the
enormous heap of desirable scarce resources to which all people are said to have a right. As such, they,
too, end up in the scales with which political authorities, administrators, and experts are supposed to
weigh the ingredients for their favoured policy-mix. Here we catch our first glimpse of the shadow of
Hobbes behind the contemporary notion of human rights: the person who believes he has a right to
everything is likely to find out that there is no thing that is his right. A Hobbesian Predicament The
following thought experiment will bring out the Hobbesian character of the UDs conception of human
rights. Imagine two people, the only survivors of a shipwreck, who find refuge on a small deserted island.
They have with them nothing but their human rights, in particular their right to work and all that it
entails according to Articles 23, 24, and 25 of the UD. One can imagine what will happen if they sit there
insisting on their right of being employed by the other at a just and favourable wage, or to receive an
unemployment compensation high enough to allow them an existence worthy of their dignity. One can also
imagine what will happen if, instead of just sitting there, they attempt to enforce their human rights
against one another: their own version of Hobbess war of all against all. Finally, one can easily imagine
what would happen if one of them won that war: Hobbess solution for the incompatibility of their rights
would emerge. The winner could then arrange for himself a nice unemployment compensation (e.g., a tax
on an-others labour) to match his new-found dignity as a ruler, and keep the other man quiet by leaving
him as much as is consistent with the organisation and the resources of their state. Indeed, starvation,
universal war, and the Leviathan State are the only possible outcomes under a regime of human rights
and only the latter outcome is compatible with survival. Imagining a two-person situation makes this
conclusion clear, but its validity does not depend on the numbers. Large numbers only serve to obscure
the logic of the situation. the burden of taxation and regulation just below the threshold of revolt.
Page 25 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Limiting government protection to property rights is key to prevent atrocities
Edward Feser, philosophy professor, Loyola, ON NOZICK, 2004, p. 89-90.

That last line of the last chapter no doubt scandalizes many readers, as does the conception of politics it
evinces. Surely there is more to morality than property rights, and more to social life than exchanging
property! they might be tempted to respond; And surely there is more to community than the collective
safeguarding of that property! What a cold and heartless indeed, positively counter- utopian
conception of human life is embodied by such a view! They would, of course, be absolutely right to think
this. Where they go wrong is in assuming that Nozick would think, or is required by his position to think,
any differently in assuming that Nozicks political philosophy is intended to be a complete social
philosophy. They go wrong also in assimilating morality to justice, social life to politics, and
community to government. For justice is not the whole of morality; not all of social life is politics; and
genuine human community definitely is not the same thing as government action. Justice the securing of
which is the chief end of political action is, however important, but one virtue among others. Sometimes
what is called justice is not justice at all, but a mask for something decidedly unvirtuous, such as envy.
One suspects that the demand for equality is a case in point; certainly one suspects this when one
considers that equality as an ideal is rarely argued for by it proponents, and is almost never argued for
very well (Nozick 1974. chapter 8). There are, in any case, virtues that are as important as justice, and
some that are more important. Temperance, prudence. fortitude, faith, hope, and love are cases in point,
and only a fool could believe that the practice of these virtues will be guaranteed if only we hit upon the
right government program. Government itself, however high-flown the rhetoric often spouted in its
defense, is, it must always be remembered, nothing more than brute force, the getting of people to do
things or to refrain from doing things by the threat of violence. Sometimes, as when the defense of
individual rights is involved, such force is necessary; it remains force nonetheless. And when it involves the
imposition of redistributive taxation or paternalistic regulation, it involves nothing more than some people
forcing other people innocent people who have violated no one elses rights to do things against their
will, to submit to the will of those doing the forcing. Whether or not one thinks such arm-twisting is morally
justified, it is dishonest, indeed perverse, to talk smugly as if it is the quintessence of community. Nor
can politics which in a non-libertarian society amounts to little more than the struggle to be the ones
who get to force the others, even if for their own good plausibly be regarded as a paradigmatically
social activity, at least not if social is meant to connote an ideal of high-minded cooperation. A
conception of human life that sees all questions of morality, and indeed everything of value, as necessarily
entailing a political program backed by the police power of the state and the threat of litigation, is one that
can only be described, charitably, as deficient; less charitably, as warped. We need, in Nozicks view, to
learn to see through the political realm (1974, x). We need to get beyond the tendency a very modern
tendency that would have surprised earlier generations reflexively to think of all problems as having a
political solution, of all progress as dependent on government action. We need in particular to stop thinking
in utopian termsor rather, to stop thinking of utopia in political terms. The utopias of the past have
usually been implemented in a political fashion, and they have universally failed, often catastrophically
think the French Revolution, Auschwitz, the Gulag Archipelago. They have also involved the imposition of
one groups vision of utopia on everyone (indeed, this is part of the reason why they have failed). If
utopian thinking is to be realistic and to have a future, it must avoid these errors.
Page 26 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Util Protects Rights**

Current price-tag thinking is insufficient- we have to make the tough decisions
that incorporate individual rights instead of trying to spare laypeople from
difficult decisionmaking
Hlne Hermansson 07, Division of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Rights at Risk: Ethical Issues in Risk Management Stockholm 2007 p
5-7
As choices like these seem to become more common, i.e., choices between risk alternatives presented in
terms of probability estimates, it is not surprising if people in general feel more and more insecure despite
the fact that we lead longer and healthier lives now than we did a couple of centuries ago. The solution,
however, is not to spare lay people from making risk decisions or letting experts make the decisions for
them. In this thesis it is argued that the risk-exposed should be included in the decision procedure.
Moreover, this procedure should be open to other aspects than those that a narrow technical framing
allows for. Respecting a variety of aspects may not make risk decisions easier to make, but as these
decisions are in fact seldom easily made, being honest about that may relieve some of the feelings of
anxiety and distrust among the general public. Background and aim of thesis Risk management is
frequently described as a practice in crisis. Critics point to investigations analysing several countries risk
expenditures which have shown large variations in the cost per statistical life saved in different social
sectors. The differences are said to be the result of arbitrary decisions. Furthermore, it is argued that if
societal resources were used in a more effective and rational way, these differences could be levelled out
and more lives be saved for the same amount of money. Therefore, demands for a consistent risk
management have repeatedly been called for in the risk literature (See e.g. Morone & Woodhouse, 1986;
Morrall, 1986; Viscousi, 1996; Breyer, 1999; Sjberg 1999; Sunstein, 2002).
In technical discussions
about risk it has been maintained that risks should be managed in accordance with scientific data in order
to avoid the irrational fears of the public, whose focus is on sensational risks, while the real, but more
ordinary risks, go unnoticed. Risk management should be a rational, neutral, and scientific area beyond
the influence of emotions, ideologies and values. One such approach is the Standard Model that is
discussed in this thesis (see especially articles I and II). According to this model a risk is defined as the
probability of a negative event multiplied by the damage resulting from it, for instance expected fatalities.
The number representing the risk is weighed against the possible benefit that could be gained from
accepting it. If total benefit exceeds total cost (risk), then the risk can be accepted. In this thesis I argue
that scientific and technological reasoning is not enough for analysing or managing risks. Even though the
Standard Model contributes to a systematic way to make risk decisions, it is too narrow a perspective on
risk management. Such a narrow perspective may allow for risk exposure that violates the rights of the
individual. While I agree that consistency in risk decisions is valuable and worth striving for, I question the
standard approach to how this should be done and maintain that a new and wider perspective on how to
understand consistency in risk management needs to be developed. Above all, it is argued that the current
price-tag thinking (i.e., that consistency in risk management is exclusively about costs for different kinds
of risk reductions) is insufficient.
Utilitarianism doesnt trump the impact of coercionindividuals cant be

reduced to units of value.
Machan, 95 Professor of philosophy, Auburn University, 1995
ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 129)
(Tibor, PRIVATE RIGHTS AND PUBLIC
The essential point to note at this juncture is how the idea of the worth and rights of the individual simply
cannot find a place in the standard utilitarian cost-benefit analysis favored by many economists. Benefits,
according to this approach, are to be measured by what people prefer (or would prefer, if properly
informed), while costs are reducible to what people would prefer to do without or avoid if they were
properly informed. The kind of value (or worth) individuals have, however, is not just one benefit
competing among other benefits...Consider the case where some people are injured or harmed by others.
"Since the costs of injury are borne by its victims," Kelman contends, "while its benefits are escaped by its
perpetrators, simple cost-benefit calculations may be less important than more abstract conceptions of
justice, fairness, and human dignity. Developing this theme more fully, Kelman writes as follows: We would
Page 27 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
not condone a rape even if it could be demonstrated that the rapist derived enormous pleasure from his
actions, while the victim suffered in only small ways. Behind the conception of "rights" is the notion that
some concept of justice, fairness or human dignity demands that individuals ought to be able to perform
certain acts, despite the harm of others, and ought to be protected against certain acts , despite the loss
this causes to the would-be perpetrator. Thus we undertake no cost-benefit analysis of the effects of
freedom of speech or trial by jury before allowing them to continue.
The sacrifice of innocence degrades humanity-- it is an absolute wrong.

Anscombe, 93 Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge University, Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics,
edited by Joram Graf Haber, p. 51-52.
Common morality is outraged by the consequentialist position that, as long as human beings can remain
alive, the lesser of two evils is always to be chosen. Its defenders maintain, on the contrary, that there are
minimum conditions for a life worthy of a human being, and that nobody may purchase anything- not even
the lives of a whole community- by sacrificing those conditions. A community that surrenders its members
at the whims of tyrants ceases to be anything properly called by that name; and individuals willing to
accept benefits at the price of crimes committed upon other individuals degrade their humanity. Common
morality allows a certain room for compliance with tyrannical external force, when resistance has become
impossible; but there is a line that must be drawn beyond which compliance is excluded, and the example
of rabbinic teaching is a guide drawing it.
Util fails to protect moral rights it silences rights claims when not grounded
in law.
Erin Byrnes, JD U Arizona, 1999, Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privelege to
Expose the Fallacy of White Innocense, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535
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
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
act. 238 Put differently,
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
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
distinction made between moral and legal rights, encompassing the distinction between a disability and a duty, is central to the utilitarian argument.
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.
Erin Byrnes, JD U Arizona, 1999, Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Unmasking White Privelege to Expose the
Fallacy of White Innocense, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 535
Page 28 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This

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
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
proposition would certainly require more than just striving towards color-blindness were it applied to affirmative action.
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
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.
that once the argumentative threshold is reached, a presumption is created against interference upon the individual exercise [*564] of the right. 253
Utilitarianism reduces individuals to their mere utility value, making them

expendable
Christopher H. Schroeder, Prof. Law, Duke,1986, Rights Against Risks, 86 Colum. L. Rev. 495
The anxiety to preserve some fundamental place for the individual that cannot be overrun by larger social
considerations underlies what H.L.A. Hart has aptly termed the "distinctively modern criticism of
utilitarianism," 58 the criticism that, despite its famous slogan, "everyone [is] to count for one," 59
utilitarianism ultimately denies each individual a primary place in its system of values. Various versions of
utilitarianism evaluate actions by the consequences of those actions to maximize happiness, the net of
pleasure over pain, or the satisfaction of desires. 60 Whatever the specific formulation, the goal of
maximizing some measure of utility obscures and diminishes the status of each individual. It reduces the
individual to a conduit, a reference point that registers the appropriate "utiles," but does not count for
anything independent of his monitoring function. 61 It also produces moral requirements that can trample
an individual, if necessary, to maximize utility, since once the net effects of a proposal on the maximand
have been taken into account, the individual is expendable. Counting pleasure and pain equally across
individuals is a laudable proposal, but counting only pleasure and pain permits the grossest inequities
among individuals and the [*509] trampling of the few in furtherance of the utility of the many. In sum,
utilitarianism makes the status of any individual radically contingent. The individual's status will be
preserved only so long as that status contributes to increasing total utility. Otherwise, the individual can be
discarded.
Calculation of human life leads to no value to life and the zero point of the
holocaust
Michael Dillon, Prof. Politics U-Lancaster, 04-1999, Political Theory, vol. 27, no. 2, p. 165
Economies of evaluation necessarily require calculability. Thus no valuation without mensuration and no
mensuration without indexation. Once rendered calculable, however, units of account are necessarily
submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to
the point of counting as nothing. Hence, no mensuration without demensuration either. There is nothing
abstract about this: the declension of economies of value leads to the zero point of holocaust. However
liberating and emancipating systems of value-rights-may claim to be, for example, they run the risk of
counting out the invaluable. Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Herewith, then,
the necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must never forget that, "we are dealing always
with whatever exceeds measure." But how does that necessity present itself? Another Justice answers: as
Page 29 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the surplus of the duty to answer to the claim of Justice over rights. That duty, as with the advent of
another Justice, is integral to the lack constitutive of the human way of being.
Page 30 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Rimal**
Mutual coercion wont solve - they lack the knowledge and incentive to protect
the environment and will perpetuate tyrannical coercion
Leeson 79 Adjunct Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Former Professor of Political
Science at Willamette University, Former Judicial Fellow for the U.S. Supreme Court and Justice for the
Oregon State Supreme Court [Susan, Philosophical Implications of the Ecological Crisis: The Authoritarian
Challenge to Liberalism Polity Vol. 11, No. 3, pg. 303-318, jstor]
Hardin's solution would be reasonable if it could be assumed that the majority is aware of threats to the
commons and knows the measures needed to prevent its destruction. But this is the very knowledge which
Hardin asserts individuals lack. Individual "rationality," or self-interest, Hardin says, is what leads to the
destruction of the commons. How self- interested individuals are to be transformed into a public-spirited,
wise majority is a problem Hardin does not address. The knowledge required to use the commons wisely
will not result automatically from the majority's power to impose its will on the minority. Hardin also
ignores the possibility that the majority might act unjustly; that is, coerce the minority for its own
immediate pleasure rather than for the preservation of the commons and the well-being of future
generations. That mutual coercion might degenerate into majority tyranny is a possibility that Hardin does
not acknowledge, nor does his prescription provide a solution.46
An authoritarian government would fail to conserve resources

Heilbroner's argument leads to a similar predicament. As pessimistic as he is in Inquiry Into the Human
Prospect, he does see hope that the psychological need for authority-the "trait of obedience"-will be
powerful enough to force men to acquiesce to authoritarian controls before it is too late.47 Heilbroner
doubts that men will consent to the authority of reason or engage in discussion about the need for government. He predicates his only hope for survival on a government which presupposes the unwillingness if not
the incapacity of men to exercise reason. For Heilbroner the Hobbesian fear of violent death at the hands
of one's fellow man is the fear of extinction from environmental destruction. In both cases salvation is
sought in the coercive power of the Leviathan. Ironically, it was the unleashing of the passion for material
abundance, legitimized by Hobbesian natural right, amplified by Locke, combined with the rejection of the
classical commitment to reason and proper limits that caused the ecological crisis. One is left wondering
what endowed the authoritarian power with the wisdom to rule which everyone else lacks. Indeed, none of
the prescriptions for Leviathan includes measures to insure its wisdom or political skill. Surely, it takes
more than brute force to make wise use of scarce resources, balance population with resources, and
decide on appropriate levels and uses of technology. It will require skill to persuade modern men that the
industrial capacities of the society ought not be developed without regard to the supply of natural
resources, and to persuade them to exercise restraint when no immediately apparent reasons exist.
Their authors contradict themselves

Ophuls' new position still traps him between competing political traditions. He wishes to affirm the basic
materialism of Enlightenment thought, which attempts to explain the human situation in terms of
biological survival and man's relationship to physical nature. At the same time he hopes for the revival of
classical politics while yet refusing to affirm the classical faith in an objective good that can guide man in
the selection of appropriate ends for his life.51 Like Rousseau and many contemporary thinkers, Ophuls
wants the best of the classical and modern worlds, irrespective of the wide epistemological gulf
separating classical Greek thought from the Enlightenment.
Page 31 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Coercion Bad**

Illegitimate resource acquisition justifies redistribution
Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p 109.
Nozick's theory cannot

protect existing holdings from redistribution. But we still need to know how
Because most initial acquisition was in fact illegitimate,
acquisition could have arisen legiamately. If we cannot answer that question, then we should not only
postpone the implementation of Nozick's principle of transfer until historical titles are ascertained or
rectified, we should reject it entirely. If there is no way that people can appropriate unowned
resources for themselves without denying other people's claim to equal consideration, then
Nozick's right of transfer never starts.
Libertarians concede that extinction outweighs
Murray Rothbard, libertarian, Dean of Austrian School, Head of Mises Institute, FOR A NEW LIBERTY:
THE LIBERTARIAN MANIFESTO, 1973, p. http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p263.
accessed 4/20/06.
Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy matters and prefer to spend their energies either
on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such "domestic" concerns as the free market or
privatizing postal service or garbage disposal. Yet an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial
importance to libertarians. There are two important reasons. One has become a cliche, but is all too true
nevertheless: the overriding importance of preventing a nuclear holocaust. To all the longstanding reasons, moral and economic, against an interventionist foreign policy has now been
added the imminent, ever-present threat of world destruction. If the world should be
destroyed, all the other problems and all the other ismssocialism, capitalism, liberalism, or
libertarianismwould be of no importance whatsoever.
Redistribution is not an inherent affront to human dignity. As long as you believe helping
others is good, redistribution doesnt threaten dignity
Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1990,
p. 122-3.
Finally, Nozick might argue that welfare redistribution denies people's dignity, and this dignity is
crucial to treating people as equals (e.g. Nozick 1974: 334). Indeed Nozick often writes as if the idea that
other people have claims on the fruits of my talents is an assault on my dignity. But this is implausible.
One problem is that, Nozick often ties dignity to self-determination, so that it will be liberal
regimes, not libertarian ones, which best promote each person's dignity. In any event, dignity is
predicated on, or a byproduct of, other moral beliefs. We only feel something to be an attack
on our dignity if we are already convinced that it is wrong. Redistribution will feel like an
assault on dignity only if we believe it is morally wrong. If we believe instead that
redistribution is a required part of treating people as equals, then it will serve to promote,
rather than attack, people's sense of equal dignity.
The only way their alternative can capture this is if their alternative is allowed to imagine a
world in which individuals all become charitable givers. This is abusive private actor fiat.
If the neg can imagine this they can just imagine world peace and solve all of our case
impacts
ANARCHO-CAPITALISM WOULD GIVE RISE TO REGIMES OF DOMINATION AND OPPRESSION, THIS POSES THE
SINGLE GREATEST THREAT TO HUMAN EXISTENCE
Noam Chomsky, philosopher, CHOMSKY ON ANARCHO-CAPITALISM,2004, p. P.
http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/chomsky-on-ac.txt.
Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of
tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility
that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any
Page 32 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
society that made this colossal error. The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and his starving
subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences
of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.
Nozick's concept of dignity requires access to resources
Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY,
1990, p. 150.
But, we have seen, the notion of dignity and agency that Nozick relies on, based on the idea of acting on
one's conception of oneself, requires rights over resources as well as one's person. Having independent
access to resources is important for our purposes, and hence our purposive freedom, but that argues for
liberal equality not libertarianism.
Since initial acquisition was unjust, there are no legitimate entitlements

Jonathan Wolff, philosopher, ROBERT NOZICK, 1991, p. 141.
Second, initial appropriation remains undefended by Nozick, and this may well be because it is indefensible
on libertarian grounds Allowing people virtually unlimited appropriation of the world will importantly
restrict what others can do, thus undermining their liberty and self-ownership. Thus Nozick's concept of
ownership itself generates conflicts, and so The project of allowing no restrictions upon ownership itself
falls into incoherence.
Taxation redistributes freedom rather than limiting it
1990, p, 147.
As soon as we ask that question, Flew's equation of capitalism with freedom is undermined. For it is the
owners of the resource who are made free to dispose of it, while non-owners are deprived of that freedom.
Suppose that a large estate you would have inherited (in the absence of an inheritance tax) now becomes
a public park, or a low-income housing project (as a result of the tax). The inheritance tax does not
eliminate the freedom to use the property, rather it redistributes that freedom. If you inherit the estate,
then you are free to dispose of it as you see fit, but if I use your backyard for my picnic or garden without
your permission, then I am breaking the law, and the government will intervene and coercively deprive me
of the freedom to continue. On the other hand, my freedom to use and enjoy the property is increased
when the welfare state taxes your inheritance to provide me with affordable housing, or a public park. So
the free market legally restrains my freedom, while the welfare state increases it.
Taxes don't violate rights

John Christman, Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS,
Spring 1986, p.165.
Also, as Kearl has pointed out, persons who gain entitlements through embedded labor may enter into a
market, the function of which serves to reduce inefficiencies, reduce externalities, and lower negotiation
costs which all increase the net social product produced from those entitlements without demanding extra
labor from individual traders Thus, taxation which redistributes that extra product would amount to a
limitation of the ownership rights of the traders over the commodities in question but not constitute an
encroachment on the rights anyone has to her or his labor (since the product redistributed is from the
increased efficiencies of the market mechanism, not increased labor.
Violations of liberty dont justify rejecting welfare.
Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 19 81,
p. 193.
Naturally any opposition to the power of governments will meet with a certain sympathy from observers of
the contemporary scene, and Nozick emphasizes the connection between his view and the fight against
legal regulation of sexual behavior, drug use, and individual life styles. It is easy to develop an aversion to
state power by looking at how actual states wield it. Their activities often include murder, torture, political
imprisonment, censorship, conscription for aggressive war, and overthrowing the governments of other
countries-not to mention tapping the phones, reading the mail, or regulating the sexual behavior of their
own citizens. The objection to these abuses, however, is not that state power exists, but that it is used to
do evil rather than good. Opposition to these evils cannot be translated into an ot jection to welfare, public
education, or the graduated income tax.
Page 33 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Welfare enhances self determination.

1990, p 122.
Libertarians claim that liberal welfare programmes, by limiting property-rights, unduly limit people's selfdetermination. Hence the removal of welfare redistribution programmes (Nozick), or their limitation to an
absolute minimum (Fried), would be an improvement in terms of self-determination. But that is a weak
objection. Redistributive programmes do restrict the self-determination of the well off to a limited degree.
But they also give real control over their lives to people who previously lacked it. Liberal redistribution does
not sacrifice self-determination for some other goal. Rather, it aims at a fairer distribution of the means
required for self-determination. Libertarianism, by contrast, allows undeserved inequalities in that
distribution-its concern with self-determination does not extend to a concern for ensuring the fair
distribution of the conditions required for self-determination. In fact, it harms those who most need help in
securing those conditions. If each person is to be treated as an end in herself, as Nozick says repeatedly,
then I see no reason for preferring ;a libertarian regime to a liberal redistributive one.
Redistribution is justified on utilitarian grounds
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 19 81, p.
50.
Utilitarianism has no problem in justifying a substantial amount of compulsory redistribution from the rich
to the poor. We all recognize that $1,000 means far less to people earning $100,00 than it does to people
trying to support a family on $6,000. Therefore in normal circumstances we increase the total happiness
when we take from those with a lot and give to those with little. Therefore that is what we ought to do. For
the utilitarian it is as simple as that. The result will not absolute equality of wealth. There may be some who
need relatively little to be happier, and others whose expensive tastes require more to achieve the same
level of happiness. If resources are adequate the utilitarian will give each enough to make him happy, and
that will mean giving some more than others.
Utilitarianism justifies the welfare state
Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 19 81, p.
50-1.
None of the arguments Nozick uses against Rawls is decisive when invoked against a utilitarian position.
Utilitarianism gives a clear and plausible defense not merely of progressive taxation, welfare payments,
and other methods of redistribution, but also of the general right of the state to perform useful functions
beyond the protection of its citizens from force and fraud. Utilitarianism also provides an argument in
defense of the claim behind Williams's argument for equality-that society should, so far as its resources
allow, provide for the most important needs of its members.
Extinction outweighs
Murray Rothbard, libertarian, Dean of Austrian School, Head of Mises Institute, FOR A NEW LIBERTY:
THE LIBERTARIAN MANIFESTO, 1973, p. http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p263.
accessed 4/20/06.
Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy matters and prefer to spend their energies either
on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such "domestic" concerns as the free market or
privatizing postal service or garbage disposal. Yet an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial
importance to libertarians. There are two important reasons. One has become a cliche, but is all too true
nevertheless: the overriding importance of preventing a nuclear holocaust. To all the long-standing
reasons, moral and economic, against an interventionist foreign policy has now been added the imminent,
ever-present threat of world destruction. If the world should be destroyed, all the other problems and all
the other ismssocialism, capitalism, liberalism, or libertarianismwould be of no importance whatsoever.
Excess liberty creates a moral vacuum
Robert Nisbet, Professor of Sociology, Columbia, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE, George Carey, ed., 1984, p. 20.
For the conservative, individual freedom lies in the interstices of social and moral authority. Only because
of the restraining and guiding effects of such authority does it become possible for human beings to
sustain so liberal a political government as that which the Founding Fathers designed in this country and
which flourished in England from the late seventeenth century on. Remove the social bonds, as the more
zealous and uncompromising of libertarian individualists have proposed ever since William Godwin, and
you emerge with, not a free but a chaotic people, not creative but impotent individuals. Human nature,
Balzac correctly wrote, cannot endure a moral vacuum.
Page 34 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Libertarianism would undermine the moral basis of the liberal state

Walter Berns, Professor of Government, Georgetown, FREEDOM AND VIRTUE, George Carey, ed., 19 84,
p. 32-3.
I think what I have said above is sufficient to illustrate my point: we were founded on liberal principles, but
we used the public authority in nonliberal ways. We did so partly out of habit, I suppose, and partly
because there were men--Horace Mann, the central figure in American public schooling, is a good examplewho reflected on our situation and who knew that a liberal state could not be perpetuated with simply selfinterested citizens. Men had to be taught to be public-spirited, to care for others, to be at least somewhat
altruistic. In the course of time, and partly as the result of Supreme Court decisions affecting public
education, public support of private education, and, of course, the censorship of obscenity, we have
ceased to use the public authority in these ways. We can now be said to be living off the fat we built up in
the past. I shudder to think of what would happen if we moved all the way from liberalism to libertarianism.
Blanket statements about coercion are false, must evaluate coercion on a case by case basis
Stein 98 [Herbert, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and was on the board of
contributors of The Wall Street Journal. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under
President Nixon and President Ford. In the 1970s, he was a professor of economics at the University of
Virginia, What I think: Essays on Economics, Politics, and Life. 1998 P. 7]
Today's concern is mainly about coercion by the state. We have many government regulations today,
mainly related to health and the environment, that we did not have fifty years ago. We have fewer
regulations about international trade, agriculture, transportation, and banking than we did then. I don't
know whether there is more regulation now than there was. More important, it is essential to have some
feeling about the coerciveness of government coercion. It is one thing to be prevented from producing an
automobile that emits more than a specified amount of carbon dioxide by a regulation enacted pursuant to
a democratic legislative process, applied objectively and subject to judicial review. It is quite a different
thing to be thrown into the Lubyanka prison and shot for malting a critical remark about the dictator. I
agree that much of current government regulation is unnecessary and inefficient. I admire the people who
diligently analyze all regulation and point out the follies that they find. They are engaged in the constant
tidying up needed for a good society, but they are not carrying on a revolution
Turn: Autonomy bad

Gaylin and Jennings, 1996, William, psychoanalytic medicine professor at
Columbia, president of Hastings Center and Bruce, director of Center for
Humans and Nature, The Perversion of Autonomy: the proper uses of coercion
and constraints in a liberal society. Pages 5-6. New York, NY, The Free Press,
1996)
The dark side of the culture of autonomy is becoming increasingly apparent: something akin to decadence
is setting in. Individualism, privacy, and rights claims are sometimes so overblown that they become
caricatures of themselves. The individualistic philosophy that has been the backbone of political liberalism
and that protects the person from the power of the state has become hyperextended into a kind of social
liberalism that sees power, and nothing but power, everywhere, and that casts the same acids of suspicion
; mistrust on the family and civil associations that political liberals have traditionally reserved for the
government. Extending the claims of autonomy as America has been doing recently is dangerous for two
reasons. First, it invites a politically; socially reactionary backlash that could threaten civil liberties across
the board, and not just the exaggerated ones. Equally dangerous, more subtle and insidious, is the
possibility that it will come to undermine the very social and psychic infrastructure upon which social
order, and hence the conditions for autonomy itself, rests. The social infrastructure to which we refer
consists primarily of the family and the various civic institutions through which individuals live as
parents, friends, and neighbors; as church, synagogue, or mosque members; as volunteers,
professionals, and citizens. The psychic infrastructure endangered by the culture of autonomy is those
processes of childrearing, socialization, and moral development that create the motivational basis for
responsible conduct in the social emotions of shame, guilt, pride, and conscience. Maintaining these
foundations of social order requires respect for authority as well as respect for freedom; it requires
institutional power and restraint as well as self-expression and independence.
Page 35 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: I Solve Future Coercion**

Coercion snowballs Each increase becomes easier to justify. The only reason
why we do not realize it is because the government uses the ploy of Altruism
to take it step by step. As each program fails, it becomes necessary to move
another step closer to more coercion. We are on a road to oppression.
Linear every increase in coercive power decreases human dignity.
Rothbard, 70
[Murray, academic vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and
distinguished professor at UNLV, Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the
Division of Labor, http://www.mises.org/fipandol/fipsec1.asp]
Individual human beings are not born or fashioned with fully formed knowledge, values, goals, or
personalities; they must each form their own values and goals, develop their personalities, and learn about
themselves and the world around them. Every man must have freedom , must have the scope to
form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take
place. He must, in short, be free in order that he may be fully human. In a sense, even the most frozen and
totalitarian civilizations and societies have allowed at least a modicum of scope for individual choice and
development. Even the most monolithic of despotisms have had to allow at least a bit of "space" for
freedom of choice, if only within the interstices of societal rules. The freer the society, of course, the
less has been the interference with individual actions, and the greater the scope for the
development of each individual. The freer the society, then, the greater will be the variety and
the diversity among men, for the more fully developed will be every man's uniquely individual
personality. On the other hand, the more despotic the society, the more restrictions on the
freedom of the individual, the more uniformity there will be among men and the less the diversity,
and the less developed will be the unique personality of each and every man . In a profound
sense, then, a despotic society prevents its members from being fully human.
Steps toward state power are steps toward tyranny
Browne 95, Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director of
Public Policy for the DownsizeDC.org, 95
(Harry Browne, Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director
of Public Policy for the DownsizeDC.org, 1995, Why Government Doesn't Work,
p.65-66)
Each increase in coercion is easier to justify . If its right to force banks to report your finances to
the government, then its right to force you to justify the cash in your pocket at the airport. If its right to
take property from the rich and give it to the poor, then its right to take your property for the salt marsh
harvest mouse. As each government program fails, it becomes necessary to move
another step closer to complete control over our lives . As one thing leads to another as
coercion leads to more coercion what can we look forward to? Will it become necessary to force
you to justify everything you do to any government agent who thinks you might be a threat to society?
Will it become necessary to force your children to report your personal habits to their teachers or the
police? Will it become necessary to force your neighbors to monitor your activities? Will it become
necessary to force you to attend a reeducation program to learn how to be more sensitive, or how not to
discriminate, or how to avoid being lured into taking drugs, or how to recognize suspicious behavior? Will
it become necessary to prohibit some of your favorite foods and ban other pleasures, so you dont fall ill or
have an accident putting a burden on Americas health-care system? Some of these things such as
getting children to snitch on their parents or ordering people into reeducation programs are already
Page 36 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
happening in America. The others have been proposed and are being considered seriously. History has
shown that each was an important step in the evolution of the worlds worst tyrannies. We move step
by step further along the road to oppression because each step seems like such a small
one. And because were told that each step will give us something alluring in return less
crime, cheaper health care, safety from terrorists, an end to discrimination even if none of the
previous steps delivered on its promise. And because the people who promote these
steps are well-meaning reformers who would use force only to build a better world.
Coercion isnt justified to prevent coercion this mindset leads to war
Murray
Rothbard, Academic Vice President of the Ludwig Mises Institute and the Center for Libertarian Studies, THE ETHICS OF
LIBERTY, 1982, p. http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fifteen.asp DOA 5/20/06.

EACH STATE HAS AN assumed monopoly of force over a given territorial area, the areas varying in size in accordance with different
historical conditions. Foreign policy, or foreign relations, may be defined as the relationship between any particular State, A, and
other States, B, C, D, and the inhabitants living under those States. In the ideal moral world, no States would exist, and hence, of
course, no foreign policy could exist. Given the existence of States, however, are there, any moral principles that
libertarianism can direct as criteria for foreign policy? The answer is broadly the same as in the libertarian
moral criteria directed toward the domestic policy of States, namely to reduce the degree of coercion
exercised by States over individual persons as much as possible. Before considering inter-State actions, let us return
for a moment to the pure libertarian stateless world where individuals and their hired private protection agencies strictly confine their
use of violence to the defense of person and property against violence . Suppose that, in this world, Jones finds that he or
his property is being aggressed against by Smith. It is legitimate, as we have seen, for Jones to repel this invasion by the
use of defensive violence. But, now we must ask: is it within the right of Jones to commit aggressive violence against
innocent third parties in the course of his legitimate defense against Smith? Clearly the answer must be
No. For the rule prohibiting violence against the persons or property of innocent men is absolute; it holds
regardless of the subjective motives for the aggression. It is wrong, and criminal, to violate the property or
person of another, even if one is a Robin Hood, or is starving, or is defending oneself against a third mans
attack. We may understand and sympathize with the motives in many of these cases and extreme situations. We (or, rather, the
victim or his heirs) may later mitigate the guilt if the criminal comes to trial for punishment, but we cannot evade the
judgment that this aggression is still a criminal act, and one which the victim has every right to repel, by violence if
necessary. In short, A aggresses against B because C is threatening, or aggressing against, A. We may understand Cs higher
culpability in this whole procedure, but we still label this aggression by A as a criminal act which B has every right to repel by
violence. To be more concrete, if Jones finds that his property is being stolen by Smith, Jones has the right to
repel him and try to catch him, but Jones has no right to repel him by bombing a building and murdering
innocent people or to catch him by spraying machine gun fire into an innocent crowd. If he does this, he is
as much (or more) a criminal aggressor as Smith is. The same criteria hold if Smith and Jones each have men on his side,
i.e., if war breaks out between Smith and his henchmen and Jones and his bodyguards. If Smith and a group of henchmen aggress
against Jones, and Jones and his bodyguards pursue the Smith gang to their lair, we may cheer Jones on in his endeavor; and we, and
others in society interested in repelling aggression, may contribute financially or personally to Joness cause. But Jones and his men
have no right, any more than does Smith, to aggress against anyone else in the course of their just war: to steal others property in
order to finance their pursuit, to conscript others into their posse by use of violence, or to kill others in the course of their struggle to
capture the Smith forces. If Jones and his men should do any of these things, they become criminals as fully as Smith, and they too
become subject to whatever sanctions are meted out against criminality. In fact if Smiths crime was theft, and Jones should use
conscription to catch him, or should kill innocent people in the pursuit, then Jones becomes more of a criminal than Smith, for such
crimes against another person as enslavement and murder are surely far worse than theft. Suppose that Jones, in the course of his
"just war" against the ravages of Smith, should kill some innocent people; and suppose that he should declaim, in defense of this
murder, that he was simply acting on the slogan, give me liberty or give me death. The absurdity of this defense should be
evident at once, for the issue is not whether Jones was willing to risk death personally in his defensive struggle
against Smith; the issue is whether he was willing to kill other innocent people in pursuit of his legitimate
end. For Jones was in truth acting on the completely indefensible slogan: Give me liberty or give them
deathsurely a far less noble battle cry. War, then, even a just defensive war, is only proper when the
exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals themselves. We may judge for
ourselves how many wars or conflicts in history have met this criterion. It has often been maintained, and
especially by conservatives, that the development of the horrendous modern weapons of mass murder
(nuclear weapons, rockets, germ warfare, etc.) is only a difference of degree rather than kind from the
simpler weapons of an earlier era. Of course, one answer to this is that when the degree is the number of
human lives, the difference is a very big one. But a particularly libertarian reply is that while the bow and arrow, and even
the rifle, can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference
in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against
aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even conventional aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate
mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a
vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a crime
against humanity for which there can be no justification. This is why the old cliche no longer holds that it is not the arms but the will
Page 37 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
to use them that is significant in judging matters of war and peace. For it is precisely the characteristic of modern weapons that they
cannot be used selectively, cannot be used in a libertarian manner. Therefore, their very existence must be condemned, and nuclear
disarmament becomes a good to be pursued for its own sake. Indeed, of all the aspects of liberty, such disarmament becomes the
highest political good that can be pursued in the modern world. For just as murder is a more heinous crime against
another man than larceny so mass murderindeed murder so widespread as to threaten human
civilization and human survival itselfis the worst crime that any man could possibly commit. And that
crime is now all too possible.
Human dignity outweighs Utilitarianism fails to protect rights
Loren Lomasky, philosophy professor, University of Minnesota, PERSONS, RIGHTS, AND

THE MORAL COMMUNITY, 1987, p. 18.
It might prove to be the case that by violating the rights of one person, five equally
grave rights violations will be averted. If so, then a utilitarianism of rights will endorse
the one rights-violation act while a side constraint account will reject it. But how can this
rejection be presented as anything other than a single-minded fanaticism that devours
its indebted beneficiary in the case of preserving it? You maintain that the protection of
rights is of great, even transcendent value. Very well then more upholding of rights is
better then less. If one violation is necessary to prevent many others your own principles
ought to lead you to prefer the former. Yet you obstinately resist. How is this criticism
to be countered? The problem that has been identified is that rights may prove to be
inconvient. They set up barriers which neither private individuals nor governmental
bodies may breach at their pleasure. To be sure, that may often be advantageous in a
morally unproblematic way. Human beings are notoriously susceptible to temptations to
pursue their narrow self-interest at the expense of the well-being others. Were sympathy
and beneficences the strongest and most universally shared emotions, it might be
feasible to do without barriers of any kind moral rules, rights, legally enforceable
obligationsand rely instead on the promptings of individuals hearts to secure a
decently livable life for all. Unfortunately, the animal we are is much more recognizable
in the Hobbesian caricatures than in this idyllic alternative. So incursions must be
prevented if we are to attain a tolerably decent measure of sociability. By recognizing
each individual as a bearer of rights all are afforded some protection against the
predations that would otherwise ensue. Even when arguments for overriding rights are
couched in the most high-minded terms, faced with referenced to the general welfare or
the need for mental sacrifice in a just cause one may suspect that the rhetoric is meant
to yield the most for power or personal attainment History is a textbook for cynics.
Having read from it, we may be prompted to insist on undeviating respect for rights, no
matter how beckoning are inducements to the contrary, because we have no confidence
in peoples ability to discriminate accurately and dispassionately between incursions that
will maximize public good and those that will debase it. If we are to err either on the
side of too much flexibility or excess dignity, betterfar better the later.
Non-absolute rights fails to protect freedom.
Tibor Machan, Philosophy Professor, Auburn,INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS, 1989, pp. 119-21.
By not treating basic human rights as basic, all Gewirth and others do is invite some other set of
principles we will have to turn to when we need to make principled decisions about what
people are free or not free to do. Or, more likely, they leave the matter to the discretion of those who sit as
judges in the courts. Indeed, the current legal climate, in which any strong political interest group can
secure the protection of some alleged right to well-being to be provided with medical care, child-care
facilities, a museum, the preservation of an historical building, a subsidy, or the imposition of a tariff upon
a foreign import business suggests what can be expected of a welfare state, a system that embraces
both the limited right to liberty and the limited right to welfare. The resulting situation is a kind of
Hobbesian war of special interests against all other special interests, each demanding the protection of its
alleged liberty or welfare rights. Gewirth, like Gregory Viastos before him, seems to forget that rights are
Page 38 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
basic principles of political life and that making them inherently unstable deprives them of their essential
character. To make rights nonabsolute within the legal context is to open a Pandoras box of bureaucratic
arbitrariness producing the very situation that the moral-political principles we know as human rights were
explicitly designed to render impermissible. Instead of treating human rights as contextually
deontological, as principles rather than piecemeal rules of thumb, Gewirth and Dworkin are inviting the
elitism that utilitarianism requires that is, certain leaders whose value-judgments must be imposed on
the rest whenever they find it intuitively certain or in some other fashion warranted to override basic
human, individual rights. There is a snowballing effect arising from this kind of utilitarian thinking. Such
thinking ought to be avoided and alternatives to solving the problems for which the violations of rights
seemed to be justified should be sought.
Page 39 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Im not excessively coercive**

Every justification for coercion, no matter how legitimate, conditions us to
accept further limitations on our liberty.
Machan 02, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Prof. Emeritus Dep. Philosophy at
Auburn U,
(TIbor R. Machan, Research Fellow @ Hoover Institution, Prof. Emeritus Dep.
Philosophy at Auburn U, 2002, Liberty and Hard Cases, pp. xvii-xix)
We are not unfamiliar with the hazards of the slippery slope in our own personal lives . If a man hits his
child in some alleged emergency, the very act of doing so may render him more amenable to
smacking the kid under more typical circumstances . Slapping someone who is hysterical may
make it easier to slap someone who is only very upset or recalcitrant or annoying or just too slow fetching
the beer from the refrigerator. Similarly, a minor breach of trust can beget more of the same, a little
white lie here and there can beget lying as a routine, and so forth. Moral habits promote a principled
course of action even in cases where bending or breaking the principle might not seem
too harmful to other parties or to our own integrity . On the other hand, granting ourselves
reasonable exceptions tends to weaken our moral habits; as we seek to rationalize past action,
differences of kind tend to devolve into differences of degree. Each new exception provides the
precedent for the next, until we lose our principles altogether and doing what is right becomes a
matter of happenstance and mood rather than of loyalty to enduring values. The same is
true of public action. When citizens of a country delegate to government , by means of
democratic and judicial processes, the power to forge paternalistic public policies such as banning
drug abuse, imposing censorship, restraining undesirable trade, and supporting desirable trade, the
bureaucratic and police actions increasingly rely on the kind of violence and intrusiveness that no free
citizenry ought to experience or foster. And the bureaucrats and the police tell themselves, no doubt,
that what theyre doing is perfectly just and right. Consider, for starters, that when no one complains
about a crimebecause it is not perpetrated against someone but rather involves breaking a paternalistic
lawto even detect the crime requires methods that are usually invasive. Instead of charges being
brought by wronged parties, phone tapping, snooping, anonymous reporting, and undercover work are
among the dubious means that lead to prosecution. Thus the role of the police shifts from protection and
peacekeeping to supervision, regimentation, and reprimand. No wonder, then, that officers of the law are
often caught brutalizing suspects instead of merely apprehending them. Under a paternalistic regime,
their goals have multiplied, and thus the means they see as necessary to achieving those goals multiply
too. The same general danger of corrupting a free societys system of laws may arise
when government is called on to deal with calamities. There is the perception , of course,
that in such circumstances the superior powers of government are indispensable, given the
immediateness of the danger.
Coercive efforts fail and snowball into massive atrocities every invasion of
liberty must be forcefully rejected.
Liberty Foundation, editor of Liberty Magazine, financial advisor and economist, 1995, Why Government
Doesnt Work, p. 66-7
Their better world never materializes because it depends upon coercion to

succeed. And coercion never improves society. So government is always promising to
do something thats impossible such as coercing people to stop taking drugs or abandon their
prejudices. When the coercion doesnt work, the politicians must impose harsher and
harsher measures in order to show theyre serious about the problem and, inevitably,
we come to the abuses we saw in the preceding chapter such as property seizures and noknock invasions of your home. These arent legal mistakes in need of reform. They are the
inevitable result of asking government to use coercion to create a better world . Each
Page 40 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
increase in coercion is easier to justify . If its right to force banks to report your finances to the
government, then its right to force you to justify the cash in your pocket at the airport. If its right to take
property from the rich to give to the poor, then its right to take your property for the salt marsh harvest
mouse. As each government program fails, it becomes necessary to move another step
closer to complete control over our lives . As one thing leads to another as coercion leads to
more coercion what can Will it become necessary to force you to justifywe look forward to?
everything you do to any government agent who thinks you might be a threat to Will it become necessary
to force your children to report yoursociety? Will it become necessary topersonal habits to their
teachers or the police? Will it become necessary toforce your neighbors to monitor your activities? force
you to attend a reeducation program to learn how to be more sensitive, or how not to discriminate, or how
to avoid being lured into taking drugs, or how Will it become necessary to prohibit someto recognize
suspicious behavior? of your favorite foods and ban other pleasures, so you dont fall ill or have an
accident putting a burden on Americas health-care system? Some of these things such as getting
children to snitch on their parents or ordering people into reeducation programs already are happening
in America. The others have been proposed and are being considered seriously. History has shown
that each was an important step in the evolution of the worlds worst tyrannies.
Uncompromising stance on libertarian principles is key.
Edward Romar, Lecturer in Management U. Mass. Boston College of Management, Journal of Business
Ethics, Noble Markets: The Noble/Slave Ethic in Hayeks Free Market Capitalism, 85:57-66, 20 09,
Springer
Like Nietzsche, Hayek, though acutely aware of the importance of ethics in a world based upon maximum
freedom, did not develop a complete ethical theory to support the functioning of free market capitalism.
Like Nietzsche, Hayek does not claim to know the meaning of morality or, in
Nietzsches case, good and evil.3 Beyond support for the principles needed to anchor
the functioning of free markets and the institutions needed to support
them, Hayek left it to individual actors to develop their own moral
principles, so long as these did not contradict those needed to support free markets. It was not
his intention to prescribe a detailed ethical system to support free market
capitalism because to do so would violate his principle of freedom and
curtail the creativity of markets. Yet, the world described by Hayek is one
where individuals have substantial power to control their destiny and seek
their own level, a world where talent and risk dominate , a world governed by self
interest, a world where individuals have few responsibilities to others, and a world driven by competition
where reward goes to the successful. He described a world open to Nietzschean ethics. In The Road to
Hayek presents a powerful and eloquent

attack on twentieth century totalitarianism . In The Road to Serfdom he argues that
the socialist experiment must inevitably lead to totalitarianism and the
complete elimination of individual liberty and freedom. In the name of
principles of social justice, society installs a system of centralized social
and economic planning, substitutes collective decisions for individual ones,
and requires each person to adopt an identical and complete set of social
values. Furthermore, to achieve its objectives, the socialist state must
determine in great detail the allocation of resources and insure that each
individual performs precisely his/her assigned role. Planned economies
must substitute collectivist thought, values and behavior and eliminate any
room for individualism. Hayek labels this weltanschauung the fatal
conceit. It is fatal because it cannot achieve its objectives and it is conceit
because it overestimates the role of human rationality and mans ability to
Serfdom (1994) and The Fatal Conceit (1988)
Page 41 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
control social and economic processes . He sees constructivist
continental European philosophic

thought, primarily Cartesian rationalism, as the source of this error (Hayek, 1948, pp. 910; 1973, pp. 912). This philosophic
argues that man can understand the world completely and , therefore,
social and economic processes can be understood completely and molded
to fit human will. Hayek considers this a foolish, self-serving and arrogant
position.4 Certainly, humans have a powerful intellect and reasoning skills. Human reason, though powerful, has its
tradition
limitations and cannot completely understand with any certainty how human institutions and social processes evolved and how
they operate. He views the evolution and development of human institutions, be they money, markets, or ethics as spontaneous,
self-generating orders. Systems, if you will, evolving gradually, accidentally, on the basis of incremental change; not as a result of
human design. He labels this between instinct and reason. Humans can understand to some extent how human society evolved
from clan based societies into modern, complex ones based upon individualism and abstract rules, but we cannot know the
We can tweak the social

and moral systems but cannot engineer them. Man can modify social
processes and their underlying ethical foundations; but, in the final
analysis, we must accept them as is.5 Since social process and institutions
obey their own set of evolutionary principles which man cannot know
completely, it is best for these to evolve on their own, without much human
interference. In The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and Law, Legislation and Liberty (3 vols., 1973,
processes or mechanisms of this evolution in sufficient detail to bend them to our will .
1976, 1979) Hayek develops his ideas about the proper principles of economic and political organizations
The fundamental principle of social

organization must be based upon the principle of liberty, which may be
defined as that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is
reduced as much as possible in society6 (Hayek, 1960, p. 11). Hayeks conception of the free, just
and their underlying ethical foundations.
and moral society is not one where there is a complete absence of coercion but where coercion is limited to those situations where it
is required to prevent a reduction in the liberty of others. Society may use coercion to protect private property and to secure
individual rights and conditions which allow each person the maximum amount of personal freedom to make choices of their own.
This is accomplished through a limited set of abstract rules that apply equally to all which protect private or several property,
enforce contracts, and prevent fraud and deception (Hayek, 1960, pp. 140, 141, 143, 155). While Hayek is concerned with just and
he views attempts to achieve

distributive justice as the root cause of the immorality brought about by
planned economies. In order to achieve the desired goals, human behavior
must be planned in minute detail, thereby eliminating freedom of choice.
Achieving collectivist goals mean that there can be no individual ones.
Organizing to control every outcome means there cannot be individual choice.
moral principles of economic, political and social organization,
Social control means there will be little individual control and it is all doomed because humans cannot understand completely the
The only solution must be the free market and

the minimal organizational principles required for it to operate efficiently.
Since these are few and well known, it will be easier to succeed and create
a just and moral society. Allow the market free reign and the just and moral
society will follow according to its own principles .
mechanisms needed to reach their objectives.
Allowing any realm of government control quickly snowballs to totalitarian collectivism.

Jack Douglas, Prof. Emeritus Soc. UC San Diego, The Myth of the Welfare State, 19 91, p. 40, Google
Print
The logic of totalitarian collectivism is simple , brutal, and entirely consistent. Once a
people has decided--whether actively or, more commonly, by default, by not actively stopping
them--to allow politicians to decide by legislation, and without severe constraints of custom,
moral principle and constitutional law, what is right and wrong in such basic realms of
life as economic property rights, then there is no longer any logical
Page 42 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
constraint upon their exercise of power in all other realms of life . As classical
liberals saw, even in the vastly more simple and self-contained society of the eighteenth century,
without inviolate property rights no other rights can long be sustained. The
government that controls our property rights must ultimately control our
right to the pursuit of happiness, our right to free speech and to the publication of that
speech, our right to take a spouse or have children, our right to work and choose an occupation, our
right to life itself--for all things of life are ultimately dependent upon
material goods and, thus, upon the controls of those goods we call property rights. The
government that has the right to legislate gas prices in Texas, or income
redistribution nationwide, has every logical right to dictate research standards in
physics, hiring standards in sociology, wage rates for black teenagers in New York, parental care
standards for all parents, the right to bear children, the right to redefine life, and-the right to everything. When the American people, tempted by the ancient enabling myth of the
welfare state, used the power of their votes to give the politicians and, by inaction, the courts the power to
legislate away and rule away our ancient economic rights--our freedoms from unconstrained government
control of our property for the common welfare--they unknowingly gave them power to legislate away and
rule away all our ancient rights. Almost a hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt, one of the first heroes of
the rationalistic state planning of American progressivism proclaimed, "Every man holds his property
subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare
may require it." The insidious implications of that "to whatever degree" for the counterrevolution against
but for almost a century now the

American state has been pursuing that relentless logic of totalitarian
collectivism at an accelerating rate .
the System of Natural Liberty became clear only slowly,
Page 43 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Rawls**
Rawls conception of rights flawed fails to explain why small incursions on
liberty would threaten citizenship.
Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 5. Project
MUSE.
Up to this point, Rawls has said nothing about the priority of the basic liberties; rather, he has focused
exclusively on their equal provision. Only at the end of his main presentation of the Self-Respect Argument
does he briefly discuss the Priority of Liberty: When it is the position of equal citizenship that answers to
the need for status, the precedence of the equal liberties becomes all the more necessary. Having chosen
a conception of justice that seeks to eliminate the significance of relative economic and social advantages
as supports for mens self-confidence, it is essential that the priority of liberty be firmly maintained (p.
478).These two sentences provide a good illustration of what I earlier called the Inference Fallacy: Rawls
tries to derive the lexical priority of the basic liberties from the central importance of an interest they
supportin this case, an interest in securing self-respect for all citizens. Without question, the Self-Respect
Argument makes a strong case for assigning the basic liberties a high priority: otherwise, economic and
social inequalities might reemerge as the primary determinants of status and therefore of self-respect. It
does not explain, however, why lexical priority is needed. Why, for example, would very small restrictions
on the basic liberties threaten the social basis of self-respect, so long as they were equally applied to all
citizens? Such restrictions would involve no subordination and, being very small, would be unlikely to
jeopardize the central importance of equal citizenship as a determinant of status.
Rawls fails to provide warrants for the absolute preservation of basic liberties
over other ends.
Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pgs 20-21.
Project MUSE.
Although Rawls briefly discusses and defends the Priority of Liberty early in Political Liberalism (PL, pp. 41,
74, 76), his most sustained arguments for it are to be found late in the book, in the lecture entitled The
Basic Liberties and Their Priority. All of these arguments are framed in terms of Justice as Fairness rather
than liberal political conceptions of justice more generally, a point to which we will return below. The three
arguments for the Priority of Liberty that we identified in Theory can also be found in Political Liberalism,
and both their strengths and weaknesses carry over into the new context.18 At least two new arguments
can be found, however, arguments that I will refer to as the Stability Argument and the Well-Ordered
Society Argument, respectively. As I will now show, both of these arguments are further illustrations of the
Inference Fallacy. The Stability Argument has a structure similar to that of the Self- Respect Argument. In it,
Rawls notes the great advantage to everyones conception of the good of a . . . stable scheme of
cooperation, and he goes on to assert that Justice as Fairness is the most stable conception of justice . . .
and this is the case importantly because of the basic liberties and the priority assigned to them. Taking the
second point first, Rawls never makes clear why the Priority of Liberty is necessary for stability, as opposed
to strongly contributory to it. Very small restrictions on the basic liberties would seem unlikely to
threaten it, and some types of restrictions (e.g., imposing fines for the advocacy of violent revolution or
race hatred) might actually enhance it. Even if we assume, however, that the Priority of Liberty is
necessary for stability, this fact is not enough to justify it: as highly valued as stability is, sacrificing the
basic liberties that make it possible may be worthwhile if such a sacrifice is necessary to advance other
highly valued ends. Pointing out the high priority of stability, in other words, is insufficient to justify the
lexical priority of the basic liberties that support itonly the lexical priority of stability would do so, yet
Rawls provides no argument for why stability should be so highly valued.
Page 44 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Rawls conception of personal freedom cannot resolve utilitarian democratic

ideals.
Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pgs 22-23.
Project MUSE.
Rawls speculates that the narrower the differences between the liberal conceptions when correctly based
on fundamental ideas in a democratic public culture . . . the narrower the range of liberal conceptions
defining the focus of the consensus.25 By correctly based, Rawls appears to mean at least two things:
first, that the conceptions should be built on the more central of these fundamental ideas; second, that
these ideas should be interpreted in the right way (PL, pp. 16768). For example, Rawls asserts that his
conception of the person as free and equal is central to the democratic ideal (PL, p. 167). This idea is
in competition with other democratic ideas, however (e.g., the idea of the common good as it is
understood by classical republicans), as well as with other interpretations of the same idea (e.g., the
utilitarian understanding of equality as the equal consideration of each persons welfare). A necessary
condition, then, for Justice as Fairness to be the focus of an overlapping consensus would be for adherents
of all reasonable comprehensive doctrines to endorse this idea, along with the interpretation Rawls gives
it, as more central to the democratic ideal than other fundamental ideas. If they were to accept not only
this idea but also its companion idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, then the procedures of
political constructivism (including the Original Position) would presumably lead them to select Justice as
Fairness as their political conception of justice.
Page 45 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Egalitarianism / Equality / Distribution Good**

1. Distributive justice leads to global poverty
Carl Knight P.h.d International Studies 2008, 34, 713733, British International Studies Association A
pluralistic approach to global poverty
But Rawls masterpiece also presents some obvious obstacles to global poverty alleviation. A Theory of
Justice explicitly states that the theory is only to be applied within a society . Furthermore, in those few places
where the book offers some tangential discussion of transdomestic justice, it is characterised as a question of the justice of the law
of nations and of relations between states.16 Hence, in a discussion occasioned by his analysis of conscription and conscientious
refusal, Rawls suggests that one may extend the interpretation of the original position and think of the parties as representatives
of different nations who must choose together the fundamental principles to adjudicate conflicting claims among states.17 He comments that this procedure is fair among nations, and that there would be no surprises in the outcome, since the principles chosen
would . . . be familiar ones ensuring treaty compliance, describing the conditions for just wars, and granting rights of self-defence
and self-determination the latter being a right of a people to settle its own affairs without the intervention of
foreign powers.18 This is, then, a thoroughly nationalist conception of justice: social justice applies only
within a state or nation. Rawlss radical principles of distributive justice, such as the difference principle, would only hold
transdomestically where, improbably, states had signed treaties to this effect. Given that such wide ranging
internationally redistributive treaties have never been signed, A Theory of Justice provided a rationale for
the Western general publics impression that their duties to the global poor are, at most, those of
charity. Rawls full expression of his views in this area came nearly three decades later in The Law of Peoples.19 Here Rawls
again uses the notion of a transdomestic original position, arguing that it is an appropriate instrument for selecting
laws to govern relations between both liberal societies and decent non-liberal societies, especially those which are decent
hierarchical societies, being non-aggressive, recognising their citizens human rights, assigning widely acknowledged additional
rights and duties, and being backed by genuine and not unreasonable beliefs among judges and other officials that the law
embodies a common good idea of justice.20 This Society of Peoples would agree to be guided by eight principles constituting the
basic charter of the Law of Peoples.21
2. Focusing exclusively on the poor stigmatizes the issueno solvency

Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana State, January 1999
Misfortune, welfare reform, and right-wing egalitarianism
Yet nobody in the welfare debate, as far as I know, invoked the Charles Murray of The Bell Curve rather than the Murray of Losing
Ground. Moreover, while many right-wing arguments are neutral about questions of class distinctions, others actually seem to be
grounded in a kind of relational egalitarianism. For example, conservatives sometimes argue that welfare stigmatizes recipients. As
we have already heard Gingrich (1995, 71) say, "The welfare state reduces the poor from citizens to clients." This
argument raises a serious issue for relational egalitarians : How can the poor be given material aid without
others thinking less of them? The stigma of being on the receiving end of welfare may create the very
divisions in society that the relational egalitarian seeks to avoid. If government programs designed to help
the poor stand in the way of citizens relating to each other non-hierarchically , maybe we should abolish such
programs in the interest of a society in which citizens stand as equals.
3. Egalitarianism does not equate society

Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial,
Counterproductive and Baseless Blackwell
Egalitarianism forces persons who exceed the average, in the respect deemed by the theorist to be
relevant, to surrender, insofar as possible, the amount by which they exceed that average to persons
below it. On the face of it, therefore, egalitarianism is incompatible with common good, in empowering
some people over others: roughly, the unproductive over the productive. The formers interests are held to
merit the imposition of force over others, whereas the interests of the productive do not. Yet producers, as
such, merely produce; they dont use force against others. Thus egalitarianism denies the central rule of
rational human association. What could be thought to justify this apparent bias in favour of the
unproductive, the needy, the sick, against the productive the healthy, the ingenious, the energetic? What
are the latter supposed to have done to the former to have merited the egalitarians impositions? The
answer cant be, Oh, nothing theyre just unlucky! or We dont like people like that! A rational social
Page 46 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
theory must appeal to commonvalues. By definition, those have not been respected when a measure is
forced upon certain people against their own values.
4. Principles of justice cement the political sphereerode the possibility for

real change
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 Between Justice and Legality:
Derrida on Decision, Political Research Quarterly,
http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341
In Rawlss (1993: 157) universe, consensus is cemented into the political founding and overrides all other
issues. 26 Anything that triggers political conflict is excluded from the public sphere: A liberal view
removes from the political agenda the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must
undermine the bases of social cooperation. Difficult issues may be interesting but, for Rawls, they are not
the stuff of politics. They threaten consensus and must be excluded or contained in the private sphere.
Politics is about tinkering, not controversy. The only truly political moment in Rawlss work, then, is laying
the ground for justice as fairness in the original position. Once the principles of justice as fairness are
established, however, the political sphere is essentially closed. Efforts to re-open the foundation are a
threat to political stability. The range of acceptable political issues is framed by principles that are not up
for debate. Hence, citizens are prevented from pursuing those modes of civic involvement that would open
the political sphere to real contestation. Given the imperative of consensus, the regime must protect its
political founding from interrogation. Narrowing the range of acceptable political issues exacts a high cost
from citizens. Space for dissent is eliminated. The range of political possibilities is restricted to one (and
only one) that will be fixed once and for all (Rawls 1993: 161). Once the principles of justice are
instituted, only the support of the status quo is possible (Alejandro 1998: 144). For Rawls, all citizens affirm
the same public conception of justice (1993: 39). Public discussion about alternative political possibilities is
not necessary.31 Since a critical disposition toward the founding moment of justice as fairness would risk
destroying consensus, it is better to treat it as a monument before which one genuflects. Rawls, however,
does not purge all conflict from his model of politics in the name of consensus. Some level of reasonable
disagreement is permitted in his liberal utopia. It arises from the burdens of judgment. The causes of
these burdens are formidable:
5. Inequality inevitablecapitalism
Stuart White 2k, ReviewArticle: Social Rights and the Social Contract Political
Theory and the New Welfare Politics Cambridge University Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30, 507
53
How Much Equality of Opportunity Does Fair Reciprocity Require? I have presented only a very intuitive
account of the conditions of fair reciprocity; I have not formally presented a full conception of distributive
justice and demonstrated how each condition follows from this conception, something one might attempt
in a lengthier analysis. However, I do wish to examine one general philosophical issue that arises when we
come to think about the conditions of fair reciprocity. Assume that distributive justice is centrally about
some form of equal opportunity. The notion of equality of opportunity can, of course, be understood in a
number of different ways. But assume, for the moment, that we understand it in the radical form defended
in contemporary egalitarian theories of distributive justice.40 Equal opportunity in this sense requires, inter
alia, that we seek to prevent or correct for inequalities in income attributable to differences in natural
ability and for inequalities in capability due to handicaps that people suffer through no fault of their own.
The question I wish to consider can then be put like this: How far must society satisfy the demands of
equal opportunity before we can plausibly say that all of its members have obligations under the
reciprocity principle? One view, which I shall call the full compliance view, is that the demands of equal
opportunity must be satisfied in full for it to be true that all citizens have obligations to make productive
contributions to the community under the reciprocity principle. The intuition is that people can have no
obligation to contribute in a significant way to a community that is not (in all other relevant respects) fully
just at least if they are amongst those who are disadvantaged by their societys residual injustices.
Reciprocity kicks in, as it were, only when the terms of social co-operation are fair, where fairness
requires (inter alia) full satisfaction of the demands of equal opportunity. If equal opportunity is understood
in our assumed sense, however, then this full compliance view effectively removes the ideal of fair
reciprocity from the domain of real-world politics. For there is no chance that any advanced capitalist (or,
for that matter, post-capitalist) society will in the near future satisfy equal opportunity, in our assumed
Page 47 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
sense, in full. And so, following the full compliance view, we should, if we are egalitarians in the assumed
sense, simply abandon the idea that there can be anything like a universal civic obligation to make a
productive contribution to the community.
Hierarchies are inevitable even after the redistribution of wealth

Egalitarians can only defend their view by reference to values that many or most people do not have.
People below the mid-point of the proposed redistributional scale will, of course, have some reason to
rejoice at their unearned egalitarian windfalls temporarily. Meanwhile, people from whom they are
wrested have the opposite motivation, so common good is out the window from the start. Nor can
equality relevantly be held to be an objective or an absolute value a value in itself, that doesnt
need to be held byanybody (except the theorist himself, of course). That is intuitional talk, which
has already been dismissed. Do real people (as opposed to theorists) care about equality as such?
No. They want better and more reliable food on the table, nicer tables to put it on, TVs, theatres,
motorcars, books, medical services, churches, courses in Chinese history, and so on, indefinitely.
Equality is irrelevant to these values: how much of any or all of them anyone has is logically independent
of how much anyone else has. People are rarely free of envy, to be sure. Most people would like to be
better than others in some way and some will pay others to let them look down on them. But few
will make themselves worse off in order to make some other people equally badly off. Values that can be
improved by human activity are not independent in any other way, though, for production is
cooperative, requiring arrangements agreed to by a great many people workers, financiers,
engineers, customers. Nobody can attain to wealth, insofar as the free market obtains, without
others likewise benefiting. These are truisms, though I am aware that they will be seen by many
readers as ideological even at the present time, when the absurdities of alternative views of
economics have been so completely exposed.13
Equality is impossibleenvy
Jon Mandle 2k Reviwed: Liberalism, Justice, and Markets: A Critique of Liberal
Equality by Colin M. Macleod The Philosophical Review, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Oct., 2000),
pp. 601-604 Duke University Press. Jstor
Here, I can only illustrate one of Macleod's many distinct criticisms of Dworkin's use of idealized markets.
Dworkin argues that the initial division of resources (prior to adjustments made in light of differences in
individual ambition) should satisfy an "envy test": "No division of resources is an equal division if, once the
division is complete, any [person] would prefer someone else's bundle of resources to his own bundle"
(Dworkin 1981b, 285). And the mechanism he proposes to satisfy this test is a hypothetical auction in
which individuals bid on resources using some counter (itself without value and equally distributed). This
market-based solution values resources entirely in terms of the preferences that individuals express in the
auction. Macleod recognizes that a great strength of Dworkin's auction is that it is sensitive to the
opportunity costs to others of giving some resource to a particular individual. As Macleod helpfully points
out, "The resources a person can acquire are a function not only of the importance she attaches to them
but also of the importance attached by others to them .... Phrased in the language of opportunity costs,
the auction ensures that aggregate opportunity costs are equal" (26).
Distribution of benefits to equalize the impoverished is indefensible

encourages envy and moral disorientation.
Page 2007
Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian
Approach. Journal of Global Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.
Suppose, again, that the sufficiency level for all was 50. Whereas intrinsic egalitarianism seems,
other things being equal, to favour outcome (3) and prioritarianism would favour allocation (1),
sufficientarianism would favour outcome (2) since this would be the only outcome in which at
least some people had enough. For the sufficientarian, the distribution of benefits and burdens to
Page 48 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
achieve equality or priority in such circumstances is indefensible. It would be analogous to the

tragedy involved in a famine situation of giving food to those who cannot possibly survive at the
cost of those that could survive if they received extra rations. In this sense, the ideal of
sufficiency is related to the medical concept of triage according to which, when faced with more
people requiring care than can be treated, resources are rationed so that the most needy receive
attention first. However, because the category of most needy is defined in terms of the
overarching aim that as many people as possible should survive a given emergency, triage
protocols often lead to the very worst off being denied treatment for the sake of benefitting those
who can be helped to survive. Frankfurts view is that all distributive claims arise in some way
from an analysis of where people stand relative to the threshold of sufficiency, or as he puts it
the threshold that separates lives that are good from lives that are not good (Frankfurt 1997, p.
6). Egalitarianism, by contrast, posits a relationship between the urgency of a persons claims
and their comparative well-being without reference to the level at which they would have
enough. Since allocating people enough to lead decent lives exhausts our duties of distribution,
sufficientarians argue that egalitarianism recognizes duties that do not exist. In fact, in linking
ethical duties to the comparative fortunes of people, egalitarianism encourages envy and
thereby contributes to the moral disorientation and shallowness of our time (Frankfurt 1987, pp.
2223; Anderson 1999, pp. 287ff.).
Page 49 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Egalitarian and Prioritarian thinking flawed no standard baseline for equality

guarantees never-ending redistribution.
Page 2007
Although Frankfurt focuses his critique of rival distributive views on intrinsic egalitarianism, it can be
readily extended to cover prioritarianism. While the priority view is grounded in the badness of absolute
rather than comparative disadvantage, it is also inclined to divert resources to the worst off even if this
would mean sacrificing substantial benefits to other, slightly better off, persons who could be helped to
lead a decent life. Frankfurt argues that: It is true that people in the lowest strata of society generally live in
horrible conditions, but this association of low social position and dreadful quality of life is entirely contingent.
There is no necessary connection between being at the bottom of society and being poor in the sense in which
poverty is a serious and morally objectionable barrier to life. (Frankfurt 1997, p. 2) The problem with
prioritarianism, then, is not that it fetishizes comparative wellbeing but rather that it fetishizes absolute
well-being with the result that it mandates constant interference in peoples lives to benefit the worst off.
By doing so, prioritarianism is inclined to generate just as much envy and pity as its egalitarian rival and to
mandate a range of redistributions that do not help their recipients to lead decent lives. C onsider the
following example. There are two groups in society, where one enjoys a considerably lower level of wellbeing than the other, where both groups enjoy a far better than decent life, and where the inequalities are
undeserved. We can call these groups the very happy and the extremely happy. Egalitarians claim that,
if we could do something about it, the very happy group should be compensated for their relative wellbeing deficit. This is because this theory regards undeserved inequality as bad even if everyone is at least
very happy; that is, it makes no ethical difference that the inequality is between groups, or persons, who
are very well off. Prioritarians, by contrast, regard the very happy in isolation of their relative happiness as
they are only interested in absolute levels of well-being. Nonetheless, the very happy, as the worst off,
deserve our attention even if their lives are so good they want for nothing. According to
sufficientarians, however, the egalitarian and prioritarian claims are absurd. How can there be
a duty to help the worst off, they ask, when they already lead lives of such a high standard?
Acceptance of egalitarianism dominates the political sphere and makes us

powerless to the abuses of elites
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 Between Justice and Legality:
Derrida on Decision, Political Research Quarterly,
http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341
If Rawlss appeal to the burdens of judgment seems disingenuous insofar as the founding moment of
justice as fairness is somehow protected from them, his underlying notion of citizenship also leaves much
to be desired. Even though he claims citizens learn and profit from conflict and argument (Rawls 1993:
lvii), he methodically closes spaces for the types of dissent, conflict and argument that nurture democratic
citizenship. If citizens with competing comprehensive doctrines happen to meet on the street in Rawlss
liberal utopia, they nervously grimace at each other and then retreat to the private sphere, simply
shrugging shoulders in silence during encounters. Both the immediate impact and the intergenerational
effect of Rawlss neutralization of public dialogue will produce a society of inarticulate shoppers on Prozac:
By taking Prozac, they may be able to alleviate their angst, which might be a disruptive force to the
liberal order (Alejandro 1998: 13). Citizens will not only be unable to contest abuses of power but they will
be incapable of negotiating encounters with others in substantive ways. Rawlss allergy to even mild
modes of political conflict results in a de-politicization of politics under the banner of neutrality.35 He
evacuates all political content from public discussion: We try to bypass religion and philosophys profoundest controversies so as to have some hope of uncover- ing a basis of a stable overlapping consensus
(Rawls 1993: 152).36Much to his credit, Rawls acknowledges the great deal of indeterminacy of decision in
the burdens of judgment but this indeterminacy is somehow absent from his image of political society. The
indeterminacy of decision in Rawls is mitigated by his de-politicization of political foundations. The
indeterminacy of politics is precisely what Rawls seeks to expel from the political horizon. Political
liberalism purges politics from politics and encloses the political field under the terror of uniformity.37The
value Rawls ascribes to pluralism is disingenuous. It is incompatible with the imperative of unanimity on
basic principles.
Page 50 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Moral calls for egalitarianism are self defeating

Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana State,
January 1999 Misfortune, welfare reform, and right-wing egalitarianism
How will democratic decision makers choose which welfare policy to endorse? They will speculate. The
average voter, for example, will have no option other than guessing which policy has the best long-
term consequences, and the average elected representative is probably in no better position. In
speculating about long-term consequences they may be inordinately swayed by any number of
prejudices or pre- conceived ideas. When the truth does not present itself clearly, it is easy to seize on
the evidence that supports one's ideological presuppositions. The consequence of applying equality of
fortune to the welfare debate is not usefully neutral in the sense that it avoids blind ideological
presuppositions or commitments. It is tragically neutral in the sense that it provides democratic voters
and their representatives with no reason to challenge their blind ideological commitments. For equality
of fortune would focus the debate on the empirical questio n that did, in fact, command the lion's share
of attention: Which policy is best for the poor? Answers to this question will be determined by
prejudice and mood more than reasoned deliberation or real debate . If this consequence is inevitable, then
the implications for the ideal of equality are dismal : it would appear impotent as a political ideal, for it
requires democratic bodies to make decisions based on speculation about economic effects over
the course of decades or even generations.
Err on the side of combining political consequences with humanitarianism

Thomas Weiss 99, Presidential Professor of Political Science @ CUNY Graduate
Center, "principles, politics, and humanitarian action"
Political actors have a newfound interest in principles, while humanitarians of all stripes are increasingly
aware of the importance of politics. Yet, there remain two distinct approachespolitics and
humanitarianism as self-contained and antithetical realities or alternatively as overlapping spheres.
Nostalgia for aspects of the Cold War or other bygone eras is perhaps understandable, but there never
was a golden age when humanitarianism was insulated from politics. Much aid was an extension of the
foreign policies of major donors, especially the superpowers. Nonetheless, it was easieq conceptually and
practically, to compartmentalize humanitarianism and politics before the present decade. Then, a better
guide to action was provided by an unflinching respect for traditional principles, although they never
were absolute ends but only intermediate means. In todays world, humanitarians must ask themselves
how to weigh the political consequences of their action or inaction; and politicians must ask themselves
how to gauge the humanitarian costs of their action or inaction. The calculations are tortuous, and the
mathematics far from exact. However, there is no longer any need to ask whether politics and
humanitarian action intersect. The real question is how this intersection can be managed to ensure more
humanized politics and more effective humanitarian action. To this end, humanitarians should be neither
blindly principled nor blindly pragmatic.
Moral views of egalitarianism are self serving

2. Our subject concerns normative political theory, which I take to be part of morality. The subject is
not depiction of a way of life, a formula for individual happiness, or a view of the meaning of life,
but rather, rules for the (large) community , or better (as assumed henceforth), everybody. In the
words of Aquinas, a moral theory imposes a uniformity. It proposes a set a single set, however
complicated of rules, declaring that all should adhere to it. But this uniformity need not be egalitarian
in the sense defined above. The one basic set of directives to which everyone ought to adhere , and by
reference to which the conduct of anyone may be called to account, could be wildly inegalitarian (as with
slave moralities.) Universality sameness of rules for all is a defining feature of morals; egalitarianism
is not.
Egalitarianism isnt democraticinevitable dilemma

Page 51 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Fabienne Peter Ph.D. in Economics 13 November 2006 The Political Egalitarians

Dilemma Springer Link
The dilemma is the following. If, on the one hand, the substantive constraints on the deliberative process
are kept to a minimum, only a weak criterion of political equality can be imposed on the deliberative
process. This criterion may fail to ensure the effective equality of participants in the deliberative process,
which undermines the legitimacy of the outcomes of such a process. If, on the other hand, political
equality is interpreted comprehensively, many substantive judgments will be packed into the conditions
imposed on the deliberative process. They will be treated as exempt from deliberative evaluation. The
stronger the criterion of political equality, the more emphasis is placed not just on general political
resources, but on peoples abilities to make effective use of these resources, the narrower the scope for
democratic scrutiny. This, again, jeopardizes democratic legitimacy. Thus, a strong criterion of political
equality, which focuses on peoples possibilities to participate in the deliberative process as effectively
equals, will fail to ensure democratic legitimacy because it will exempt too many value judgments from
deliberative democratic scrutiny. A weak criterion of political equality will fail to ensure democratic
legitimacy because many will not have been able to participate in the deliberative process as effectively
equals. In other words, the political egalitarians dilemma reveals a clash between the attempt to ensure
equal possibilities to participate in the democratic process and the requirement of subjecting substantive
judgments to deliberative evaluation.
Forced attempts at equality perpetuate inequality

The conclusion stands, then, that egalitarians propose measures incompatible with Common Good,
conceived in liberal terms. Appeals to equity that are not simply question-begging fail; appeals to
moral intuitions are useless; appeal to the arbitrariness of nature is irrelevant; appeals to marginal utility
are of questionable basic relevance, and exactly wrong insofar as they are relevant. Society , I conclude,
should make no interference in the free actions of individuals in using their resources as they see best , by
their own lights, within the constraints of a no-harm-to-others rule. There is no socially acceptable case
for forced equality.
Egalitarianism hurts the poor

Further reflection on this leads to an important further point against egalitarianism : that it is essentially
certain to be counterproductive as well to defeat the very values whose equalization is required by the
theory. Forced transfers from rich to poor, from capitalists to proletarians, will worsen the lot of the
poor even as it decreases the wealth of the rich. Not only is egalitarianism biased, but the particular
people against whom it is biased are the productive the source of what the people it is biased in
favour of hope to receive in consequence. It is not too much to say, even, that egalitarianism is a
conspiracy against those it claims to be trying to help. There is a reason for this, whose
incomprehension by philosophers even to this day should be a matter of astonishment. A free
economy is one in which no one forcibly intervenes against the property rights of any other all
are free to use their resources as they judge best, including engaging in commercial exchanges.
In such a system, the only ways to achieve wealth are by means which improve the situations of
others. Successful businesspeople become so by organizing or financially supporting the
production of things that other people want, and want more than the existing alternatives since
those people, having no obligation to buy, would not otherwise buy them. The only other
possibilities are fairly uninteresting: gift, and the discovery or original acquisition of valuable
things. But gift, as such, is pure transfer and does not create wealth, except in the form of good
will. We may praise occasional acts of charity, but if everyone were only charitable and unproductive , all,
including the poor and sick, would quickly die. And as to acquisition, if we would attain to wealth, those
items must be harnessed to human use nature does not afford a free lunch any more than our fellows.
Even someone who acquired a natural beauty spot, say, and keeps it natural, will be able to
Page 52 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
make a decent living thereby only if he is able to charge others for the right to enjoy that spot.
And so on.
No such thing as a utilitarian defense of egalitarianism

An immensely popular argument, thought to provide a clear utilitarian defense for egalitarianism,
appeals to a principle of diminishing marginal utility. The idea is that the marginal return from
possession of some measurable good decreases as a function of the amount one already has
money being the most familiar and obvious case in point. From this it is inferred that general
utility will be promoted by transferring such goods from those above the midpoint to those
below, where the marginal utility of unit increments is much greater. Two major flaws destroy this
argument. The first is fundamental:general (aggregate) utility simply isnt a common value, and
therefore cannot be appealed to. Individuals are not necessarily concerned to promote the
aggregate sum of good. They are mostly concerned to promote the goods of certain particular
persons themselves, friends, countrymen, whatever and not the sum of utility, even if that
sum could be objectively determined. It is therefore inadmissible to appeal to it. Only if the
particular individual addressed can be shown that what matters to himwill be forwarded if the aggregate of
utility grows sometimes plausible, to be sure is he rationally interested in its growth. That special
case apart, utilitarian arguments are dismissed. Second, and more important for present purposes,
the argument suffers from myopia: it focuses only on the consumptionutil- ity of money. But all good
things come from somewhere: namely, human effort and know-how. Allocation of those requires
investment. But the poor, obviously, do not invest the better-off do that. A well-invested dollar
yields goods and services in the future greatly exceeding the stock of consumption goods one
could buy with the same money. The marginal utility of dollars in the upper incomes is therefore
greater, not less, than the marginal utility of dollars for the poor.
Utilitarian calculus not egalitarian doesnt act on the principle of intrinsic

equality.
Page 2007
Perhaps the simplest theory of the pattern of justice is that benefits and burdens should be distributed
across some population so that inequality is minimized. We might call this view intrinsic egalitarianism as
it holds that inequality is bad or unjust (I use these terms interchangeably) in itself and not because of its
consequences. As Temkin has put it, the essence of intrinsic equality is that it is bad for some to be worse
off than others through no fault of their own (Temkin 2003, p. 62). It is worth contrasting intrinsic equality
with some closely associated views. Utilitarians hold that acts and social policies should be evaluated only
in terms of their consequences and that these consequences ought to promote the maximum amount of
welfare possible. Depending on the circumstances the utilitarian may prefer an equal distribution of wellbeing because this coincides with the desire to maximize welfare. The reason for this is that it is generally
easier to help the worse off than othersone only has to give them a little for their welfare level to
improve a lot. In this sense, utilitarians are accidental, rather than intrinsic, egalitarians.
In-egalitarianism solves benefits trickle down

In short, successful investment enhances the lot of others in society. When people are employed, this
enhances their real incomes, more than any other opportunities they may have had. And when they
spend their money, it is because they judge that expenditure to contribute maximally to their well-being.
Page 53 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Thus, if we wrest the gains from investment or well-paid work from the investors and workers in question,
we take from the productive and transfer to the unproductive. This takes money that would have
produced more and ensures that it will be used in less productive ways . A large society that
undertakes this kind of activity extensively decrees poverty for itself, in comparison with what it could
have done instead in a freed-up market. And it is the poor, above all, who benefit, relatively
speaking, from commercial activity activity that, if unimpeded, continually drives down prices,
continually finds new employment for available labour, and continually real- locates resources in the way
that does most good for most people, as indicated by the actual choices and preferences of those
people.11
The goal of the judge should not be to make sure each person is equalrather
ensure each person is sufficient
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005 What Matters is
Absolute Poverty, Not Relative Poverty http://www.cdams.kobe-u.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf
Therefore, sufficientarianism is an alternative to economic egalitarianism. Sufficientarianism presents the
idea of sufficiency as an alternative to the idea of economic equality. The essence of sufficientarianism is
to show that the idea of economic equality has no intrinsic value. According to sufficientarianism, when
people consider what is important for their own lives, the amount of goods owned by other people
becomes irrelevant. Instead, comparison with the amount of goods owned by others prevents people from
seeking what they consider valuable for themselves. It is unnecessary to attach moral significance to
economic egalitarianism. While Frankfurt enumerates some reasons for the failure of economic
egalitarianism, he indicates that egalitarians do not actually defend the idea of equality, as indicated by
the priority view. In other words, egalitarians objections are not based on their moral aversion to a person
holding a smaller amount of goods as compared to other people. In reality, their objection is to the fact
that the person owns only a remarkably small amount of goods.
This naturally gives rise to the following
questions. What does sufficiency imply? What is the standard of sufficiency? Although Frankfurt does not
define the meaning of sufficiency in concrete terms, it does not imply that sufficientarianism is pointless.
Indeed, the meaning of sufficiency can be defined in various ways. However, the essence of
sufficientarianism is to seek what one finds valuable in his/her life and not compare the amount of goods
one owns with that of others; this is crucial to judge sufficiency.
Everything is relativethe goal should not be to carve everyone into the same
statuerather ensure each person is sufficientthis is distinct from economic
egalitarianism
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005 What Matters is
Absolute Poverty, Not Relative Poverty http://www.cdams.kobe-u.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf
Irrespective of the definition of sufficiency selected, sufficientarianism cannot justify distribution to those
whose circumstances are above the standard of sufficiency. Therefore, it does not lead to the implausible
conclusion that goods should be distributed to millionaires in a society that comprises only billionaires and
millionaires. Sufficientarianism, which rejects economic egalitarianism and simultaneously requires
distribution to those below the standard of sufficiency, is consistent with moderate libertarianism or
classical liberalism, which rejects distribution aimed at reducing income disparity and admits the necessity
of distribution that guarantees a minimum standard of living. Indeed, the interpretation of
sufficientarianism that I present in this paper might conflict with the original intention of sufficientarians.
As we have seen, I support sufficientarianism. Despite differences between
sufficientarianism and the priority view, I re-emphasize the fact that they have a common crucial viewpoint
regarding egalitarianism. They share the belief that being worse off than others does not have moral
significance in terms of the ethics of distribution. While the idea of equality that emphasizes relativity with
others is set as a default position in the argument on distribution, both theories demand criticism of the
above assumption. Egalitarians often confuse equality with priority or sufficiency; however, it is important
to bear in mind that the apparent plausibility of egalitarianism is derived from its humanitarian appeal.
The point I wish to emphasize is that absolute poverty, and not relative poverty, is important. Next, before
Page 54 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
turning to an examination of the connection between sufficientarianism and libertarianism, I shall consider
the necessity of highlighting the abuse of egalitarianism.
Egalitarianism fosters never-ending comparison and obligation a

sufficientarian framework should take precedence.
Page 2007 Edward.
Justice Between Generations: Investigating a
Sufficientarian Approach. Journal of Global Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007,
pgs 3-20.
In contrast to egalitarians and prioritarians, some theorists, such as Harry Frankfurt, hold that benefits and
burdens should be distributed in line with the doctrine of sufficiency. This states that as many people as
possible should have enough (of the currency of justice adopted) to pursue the aims and aspirations they
care about over a whole life; and that this aim has lexical priority over other ideals of justice
(Frankfurt 1987, pp. 2143; 1997, pp. 314). Attaining what we really care about, for Frankfurt, requires a
certain level of well-being, but once this level is reached there is no further relationship between how welloff a person is and whether they discover and fulfil what it is that they really care about. Frankfurt holds
that, above the level of sufficiency, it is neither reasonable to seek a higher standard of living nor expect,
as amatter of justice, any additional allocation of some currency of justice to further improve their
prospects. It is important to add that having enough is not the same as living a tolerable life in the sense
that one does not regret ones existence. Rather it means a person leads a life that contains no substantial
dissatisfaction. According to Frankfurt, the flaw in intrinsic egalitarianism lies in supposing that it
is morally important whether one person has less than another regardless of how much either
of them has (Frankfurt 1987, p. 34). What matters, Frankfurt argues, is not that everyone should have
the same but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough it would be of no moral consequence
whether some had more than others (Frankfurt 1987, p. 21; original emphasis). This does not mean,
however, that egalitarian and prioritarian concerns will always frustrate sufficiency since each and every
person should be helped to the threshold of sufficiency if possible, and those who can be helped to lead a
decent life are often among the worst off in a population. But the aim of reducing inequality, or of
improving the position of the worst off, has no intrinsic value for sufficientarians.
Moderate sufficentarianism offers a pluralist approach to justice which

maximizes contextual equality
Page 2007
One way of responding to the problems raised by these two examples would be to construct a pluralist
approach to distributive justice. Pluralism, in this context, means that we would appeal to contrasting
ideals in different contexts (Daniels 1996, p. 208). There are three possibilities, which I can only sketch
here. First, the ideals could apply in different distributive circumstances. For example, we might give lexical
priority to sufficiency when at least some can be brought up to the threshold, but appeal to equality or
priority when all are above, or all below, the threshold (Crisp 2003, pp. 758ff.). Second, sufficiency might
be allocated non-lexical priority over other values so that large gains in these values will sometimes
outweigh lesser gains in sufficiency. Arneson has usefully labeled this moderate sufficientarianism
(Arneson 2006, p. 28). The strength of this view is that it can explain why we should opt for (2) over (1)
since it offers tremendous gains in both equality and priority with no adverse impact on
sufficiency. Similarly, though more controversially, moderate sufficientarians have at least some reason
to opt for (4) over (3) since great benefits arise, in terms of equality and priority, if we ignore the
sufficiency of the few for the prize of giving major benefits to the many. Third, we might subsume one ideal
under another while attributing some degree of intrinsic value to the subsumed ideal. Sufficientarians
generally view inequality as regrettable because of its consequences, such as the way in which it inhibits
economic growth, undermines political processes, or is a malign influence on cultural life. Yet, there is a
more subtle way that inequality matters. This is that some people might fail to reach the standards of a
decent life if they are continually faced with the discomfiture that many others are far better off. Similarly,
some people might fall below the threshold of sufficiency if they begin to enjoy life less as a result of
Page 55 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
identifying with the resentment of others who are worse off (Marmor 2003, pp. 127ff).
Page 56 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****PRIVATIZATION*****
**Privatization Good / Government Bad**
So-called welfare rights restrict freedom, rationalize the coercive transfer of
wealth, and destroy charitable feelings, turning the case.
Kelley, Ph.D., Princeton University, 98
(David Kelley, Ph.D, Princeton University, philosopher, author, founder and senior fellow of the Atlas
Society, 98, A Life of Ones Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State, p 151)
We have examined the nature of welfare rights, their history, and the philosophical case for them. We have
examined the arguments for believing in such rights and seen how the many issues they raise play out in
the concrete reality of welfare programs. The conclusion can no longer be resisted: the concept of
welfare rights is invalid. There is no warrant for claiming rights to food, shelter,
and medical care, to income maintenance, child support, and retirement
pensions, at taxpayer expense. Such rights cannot be justified by appeal to freedom, to
benevolence, or to community. They do not expand but curtail freedomthat of program clients
as well as of taxpayers. They make charity compulsory, undermining any genuine
benevolence donors might have toward the poor. They replace the voluntary bonds of a
society of contract with the coercive power of the state, undermining genuine
community. The concept does not provide a valid rationale for the welfare state; it provides a mere
rationalization for the coercive transfer of wealth . If we want a system based on genuine rights,
one that promotes genuine human welfare, we should privatize or simply terminate the
government programs. In place of "social insurance," the market can provide real and
affordable insurance to protect against the risk of illness, accidents, disability, and
unemployment. And for retirement, as we saw in the last chapter, private savings instruments
provide a much better return than most people can expect from Social Security. At the very
least, people should be allowed to opt out of the social insurance programs, forgoing the benefits to which
they would otherwise be entitled in exchange for exemption from payroll taxes. A number of plans have
been put forward to allow opting out without harming the interests of current retirees.
Health care policies are coercive.

Bissell, The Objectivist Center, No Date
(Andrew
Bissell, The
Objectivist Center,
No Date,
Health
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1297-Right_To_Health_Care.aspx)
Care
Is
it
right?
First, it is very important not to conflate the right to life with a right to health care . The right
to life is central to the Objectivist ethics and politics, and health care is certainly essential to maintaining
ones life. However, as Rand puts it: A right does not include the material implementation of
that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by
ones own effort. ("Mans Rights", The Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 113-114) In this sense, an apt
comparison can be drawn to the right of free speech; your right to speak your mind does not create some
obligation on the part of others to support that expression, financially or otherwise. Ayn Rand unmasks the
fallacy at the root of the right to health care and all other such economic rights: A single question
would make the issue clear: At whose expense? ("Mans Rights", The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 113) Health
care doesnt simply grow on trees; if it is to be made a right for some, the means to
provide that right must be confiscated from others. Health care exists because of the
efforts of doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and even the engineers who design and
build lifesaving machines. There are really only a few ways, then, that it can be provided .
These medical personnel can offer their services as part of a mutual exchange of benefit for benefit, in a
system of free, market exchange. Or, they can be forced to provide these services at the point of a gun, as
in the movie John Q. Or, the government can arrogate to itself the title of the sole health care
Page 57 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
provider, funding its operations through forced taxation. The problems with forcing
doctors to treat patients are obviousfirst, of course, it requires wanton violation of their
rights, and represents government enforcement of the principle that a doctors life is not
his own, but instead belongs to the state or the community . And no one will want to enter
the medical profession when the reward for years of careful schooling and study is not fair
remuneration, but rather, patients who feel entitled to ones efforts, and a government that enslaves
the very minds upon which patients lives depend.
Free health care means slavery.
Brown, Staff Writer, 04
(John
Brown,
Staff
Writer,
The
Daily
Beacon,
Senior
in
Political
Science,
9/28/04,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1229567/posts)
A "right" is the ability and autonomy to perform a sovereign action. In a free society
founded on the ideal of liberty, an individual has an absolute ability to perform such an
action - so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of another individual. Health care is
not speech: In order for you to exercise a theoretical "right" to health care, you must
infringe on someone else's rights. If you have a "right" to health care, then it means you
must also have the right to coerce doctors into treating you, to coerce drug companies
into producing medicine and to coerce other citizens into footing your medical bill. This is
Orwellian. "Freedom" for you cannot result in slavery for others . Thus the concept of a "right"
to health care is an oxymoron: It involves tak[es] away the rights of other individuals.
Surely, though, we can agree that doctors, the pharmaceutical industry and insurance companies earn
excessive profits, you say. Well, that depends on what your definition of "excessive" is. Doctors literally
hold the lives of their patients in their hands. How much is someone who saves lives everyday worth? The
same is true of pharmaceutical companies. While it has become fashionable to condemn their profits, the
fact is that these profits fund medical research, which leads to more medicines being produced, and,
consequently, more lives saved. Insurance companies spread the cost of health care among
many people who might not otherwise be able to afford it, and thus make health care
readily available for many.
The state is dehumanizing because of bureaucracy and the ability to make war.
Stephens, software engineer, 04
(Robert L. Stephens, software engineer, 6/2/04,
http://robertlstephens.com/essays/essay_frame.php?essayroot=stephensrobert-l/&essayfile=002BadInfluence.html)
Dehumanization, of a sort, is yet one more inevitable consequence of the sheer size and
structure of the modern state. There is simply no way for the agents of an organization claiming to
"serve" hundreds of thousands (or hundreds of millions!) of people to know anything about the vast
majority of those individuals beyond some disembodied entries on a tax return, or an arbitrary accounting
convenience like a Social Security number. To borrow a phrase often used by critics of large private
enterprises, the modern state is "beyond human scale."
Another, more insidious, form of dehumanization is inseparable from the political process
that is the very essence of the state. To see this, let's first consider the most extreme act of
the state: war. In order to break down people's natural resistance to the killing of other human beings,
states have historically made dehumanization of the enemy one of the major
components of their war propaganda. With the enemy reduced to less-than-human status, it's
easier to justify the use of lethal force against him.
The government is inherently dehumanizing because it seeks to control

people.
Morrison, J.D., Boston College Law School, 06
Page 58 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
(Steven R. Morrison, J.D., Boston College Law School, Criminal Law, Fall 06, Dartmouth Law Journal,
Dehumanization and Recreation: A Lacanian Interpretation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, pp. 120121, http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=steven_morrison)
At this point, we have discussed how the law denies a persons humanity . However, it creates
something new in its place, since "[a]t each instant of its intervention, this law creates something new.
Every situation is transformed by its intervention." The re-creation of an individual depends on what will
best eliminate discordant ideas, since "[a] discordant statement [is] unknown in law." This may be seen as
Lacans way of saying `that the law as a master will do what it must to preserve its power,
that is, to preserve "the existing relations of production and the moral and social order ."
Therefore, if society views minorities as criminal, then the PSG will shape itself to fulfill that prophesy. If
judges are seen as abusive of their discretion in judging, then the FSG will create judges that are "mere
automatons, permitted only to apply a mathematical formula." lf the Sentencing Commission becomes
sympathetic toward the idea of downward departures and the rigid strictures of PROTECT, then Congress
will create a Commission that becomes a mere tool for a tough-on-crime policy of sentence increases. The
master wants uniformity, predictability, and severity, and will censor and recreate others
in its drive to achieve these goals.
Government is stripping doctors rights through coercive action
Jonathan, M.D. Rosman, 2002 psychiatrist in private practice in Pasadena, is a
senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, It's My Life! A Doctor Has a Right to
His Own Life, February 20 2002
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?
page=NewsArticle&id=5316&news_iv_ctrl=1021] -=Max Rispoli=th
Every doctor, like individuals in other jobs, has a right to work for himself and for his own
enjoyment, and to make a ton of money at it if he can. As individuals, doctors have a
right to offer their patients treatment according to their best judgment, and to charge
such fees as they judge their expertise to be worth. Conversely, patients have the right
to accept or reject our advice and services, and to shop around for the best deals they
can get. Having the right to your life does not guarantee health or medical treatment at
the doctors' expense, but it does guarantee that every individual has the freedom to
seek whatever treatment he wishes, according to his own judgment and his own means.
Individual rights means the freedom to act within one's means; it does not mean an
entitlement to the goods and services provided by others. However, not only have American
doctors been stripped of their professional freedom by all the various oversight agencies (which include
licensing boards, the Health Care Financing Administration, managed care companies, peer review
committees and more), but--more important--they have also been morally disarmed. Our intellectuals have
taught doctors that need comes before ability, and that healthy and rich doctors have a duty to support
sick and poor patients. They have taught doctors that the consumers of medical services (patients) are
morally superior to the providers of medical services (doctors), just because the consumers are in need.
Bureaucrats have eagerly latched on to this altruistic idea, and have erected a maze of welfare laws and
regulations to satisfy the needs of the poor and the sick, and to "protect" them from "greedy" doctors.
Thanks to these controls, it has become very difficult for doctors to think or to act freely on their own
judgment. And it is the best doctors, the most dedicated and those least ready to relinquish their
independent judgment, who have been the first to leave the practice of medicine when doctors' rights
were trampled on. Who will ultimately be left if this trend continues? To quote Dr. Hendricks in Ayn Rand's
novel Atlas Shrugged, "Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to
place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man
who resents it--and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't." To save American medicine, American
doctors need to be saved from altruism. To accomplish this, doctors must vigorously challenge the invalid
notion of a "right" to health care. Nobody has a right to an antibiotic made by someone else, just as he
does not have a right to someone else's car. Nobody has a right to have his gallbladder removed, just as
he does not have a right to have his toilet fixed by a plumber . No one has a right to demand that a
doctor treat him, but doctors do have rights, just as do auto workers and plumbers, to
Page 59 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
practice their profession (or trade) free from coercion.

The welfare state is flawed it looks only at the outcomes rather than the
process which is immoral because looking at outcomes only assumes that the
poor have been cheated not that they have tried and failed
Walter E. Williams (John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Economics
Department at George Mason University) January 15, 1996. THE ARGUMENT FOR FREE MARKETS:
MORALITY VS. EFFICIENCY. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n2-3-3.html
Justice: Process vs. Results
At the heart of most interventionist policy is a vision of justice. Most often this vision evaluates the
presence of justice by looking at results. Social justice has considerable appeal and as such is used as
justification for interventionist statism. There are several criticisms of the concept of social justice that
Hayek has answered well, but defenders of personal liberty must make a greater effort to demystify the
term and show that justice or fairness cannot be determined by examining results. The results people often
turn to in order to determine the presence or absence of justice are educational and occupational status,
income, life expectancy, and other socioeconomic factors. But justice or fairness cannot be determined by
results. It is a process question. Consider, for example, that three individuals play a regular game of poker.
The typical game outcome is: individual A wins 75 percent of the time, while individuals B and C win 15
percent and 10 percent of the time, respectively. By knowing the game's result, nothing unambiguous can
be said about whether there has been "poker justice.'' Individual A's disproportionate winnings are
consistent with his being an astute player, clever cheater, or just plain lucky. The only way one can
determine whether there has been poker justice is to examine the game's process. Process questions
would include: Did the players play voluntarily? Were the poker rules neutral and unbiasedly applied? Was
the game played without cheating? If the process were just, affirmative answers would be given to those
three questions and there would be poker justice irrespective of the outcome. Thus, justice is really a
process issue. The most popular justification for the interventionist state is to create or ensure fairness
and justice in the distribution of income. Considerable confusion, obfuscation, and demagoguery regarding
the sources of income provide statists with copious quantities of ammunition to justify their
redistributionist agenda. Income is not distributed. In a free society, income is earned. People serving one
another through the provision of goods and services generate income. We serve our fellow man in myriad
ways. We bag his groceries, teach his children, entertain him, and heal his wounds. By doing so, we receive
"certificates of performance.'' In the United States, we call these certificates dollars. Elsewhere they are
called pesos, francs, marks, yen, and pounds. Those certificates stand as evidence (proof) of our service.
The more valuable our service to our fellow man (as he determines), the greater the number of certificates
of performance we receive and hence the greater our claim on goods and services. That free-market
process promotes a moral discipline that says: Unless we are able and willing to serve our fellow man, we
shall have no claim on what he produces. Contrast that moral discipline to the immorality of the welfare
state. In effect the welfare state says: You do not have to serve your fellow man; through intimidation,
threats, and coercion, we will take what he produces and give it to you. The vision that sees income as
being "distributed'' implies a different scenario for the sources of income never made explicit. The vision
that sees income as being distributed differs little from asserting that out there is a dealer of dollars. It
naturally leads to the conclusion that if some people have fewer dollars than others, the dollar dealer is
unfair; he is a racist, sexist, or a multi-nationalist. Therefore, justice and fairness require a re-dealing
(income redistribution) of dollars. That way the ill-gotten gains of the few are returned to their "rightful''
owners. That vision is the essence of the results-oriented view of justice underpinning the welfare state.
People who criticize the existing distribution of income as being unfair and demand government
redistribution are really criticizing the process whereby income is earned. Their bottom line is that millions
of individual decision makers did not do the right thing. Consider the wealth of billionaire Bill Gates, the
founder of MicroSoft. Gates earned billions because millions of individuals voluntarily spent their money on
what they wanted--his products. For someone to say that Gates's income is unfair is the same as saying
that the decisions of millions of consumers are wrong. To argue that Gates's income should be forcibly
taken and given to others is to say that somehow third parties have a right to preempt voluntary decisions
made by millions of traders. When sources of income are viewed more realistically, we reach the
conclusion that low income, for the most part, is a result of people not having sufficient capacity to serve
their fellow man well rather than being victims of an unfair process. Low-income people simply do not have
the skills to produce and do things their fellow man highly values. Seldom do we find poor highly
Page 60 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
productive individuals or nations. Those who have low incomes tend to have low skills and education and
hence low productive capacity. Our challenge is to make those people (nations) more productive. Another
explanation of low income is that the rules of the game have been rigged. That is, people do have an
ability to provide goods and services valued by their fellow man but are restricted from doing so. Among
those rules are minimum wage laws, occupational and business licensure laws and regulations, and
government-sponsored monopolies. Hence, another argument for free-market capitalism is that it is good
for low-income, low-skilled people.
Capitalism is the best system to foster freedom, which is a moral necessity

David Boaz (executive vice president to the Cato Institute) 1997: Editorial: Pro-Choice.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-19n4-2.html
Kristol and Wolfson are struggling, not just against the principles on which America was founded, but
against the modern world. It is capitalism that has given us moderns so many choices. Capitalism is the
economic system of free people; it is what happens when you let people alone. The virtues that capitalism
rewards--prudence, discipline, initiative, self-reliance, new ideas--and the affluence it creates tend to push
people in the direction of confidence in their own abilities, skepticism about organized authority, and a
desire to manage their own affairs in all realms of life. That's why capitalism is not in the long run
compatible with political repression or governmental restrictions on freedom.
Freedom is also necessary for the development of strong moral character. Surely Kristol and Wolfson don't
want to undermine the bourgeois virtues, but the effect of restricting choice is to eliminate the incentive
and the opportunity for people to make good choices and develop good habits. People do not develop
prudence, self-reliance, thrift, and temperance when their choices are imposed by force. Welfare-state
liberals undermine moral character when they subsidize indulgence in destructive choices. Big-government
conservatives undermine character when they deny people the right to shape their own characters
through their choices.
Limited government is key to prevent tyranny, which killed more people than
both World Wars combined the plan provides positive rights, or entitlements
that causally fail to protect the right to life
Erich Weede (Professor of Sociology at the University of Bonn) Winter 2008: Human Rights, Limited
Government, and Capitalism. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj28n1/cj28n1-3.pdf
Negative rights serve to protect the individual, his liberty, and his property from coercion and violence.
Negative rights prevent others from undertaking some types of actions, but they do not oblige others to
help one. In order to safeguard negative rights government has to be limited. The link between negative
rights and limited government was already well understood long before the term human rights gained
currency. In the late 17th century, Locke ([1690] 2003: 161, 189) wrote: The supreme power cannot take
from any man part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end
of government . . . wherever the power, that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the
preservation of their properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue
them into arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny,
whether those that thus use it are one or many.
The right to life certainly is a fundamental human right. It is a negative right since it only requires that
others do not kill one. In this context, one should recall that about 169 million people have been killed by
states or their governments in the 20th century (Rummel 1994). Communists and National Socialists
established the most murderous regimes. Among the victims of communism, there are tens of millions of
deaths from starvation after the coerced collectivization of agriculture in Stalins Soviet Union or Maos
China. Although the 20th century suffered two world wars and other bloody wars, fewer people died on the
battlefield or because of bombing campaigns than have been murdered or starved to death by their own
governments. Whoever wants to protect human rights should therefore first of all focus on the necessity of
protecting people from the state and its abuses of power.
Positive Rights
Positive rights or entitlements commit the state and its officials to undertake certain types of actionfor
example, to guarantee certain minimal standards of material well-being. The American Bill of Rights (1789)
is limited to negative or protective rights, while the United Nations General Declaration of Human Rights
(1948) and the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000) encompass both protective rights
and entitlements.1 The trend from short lists of negative rights to long lists of negative and positive rights
Page 61 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
has been accompanied by a rapid and sustained increase in public spending in the West (Tanzi and
Schuknecht 2000).
Classical liberals, in contrast to people called liberals in 20th century America and social democrats in
Europe, demanded the primacy of individual liberty and thereby of protective rights and limited
government. Providing people with entitlements forces the state to curtail the negative rights and liberties
of individuals. In order to fund entitlements the state has to tax (i.e., to take coercively from) some people
in order to provide for others. Entitlements have to rest on coercion and redistributionthat is, on a
greater restriction of negative rights or individual liberty than would otherwise be necessary. As the
balance of achievements and victims of communism demonstrates, the attempt to provide entitlements
did not prevent tens of millions of deaths from starvation. Actually, the attempt to provide more than
negative rights resulted in something less: the lack of respect of negative and positive rights. As I shall
argue, this association between the attempt to guarantee entitlements by a monopoly of coercion and
central planning is causally related to the repeated failure to protect even the right to life.
Free markets are inherently non-violent because they rely on voluntary

associations whereas governments force and compel, leading to violence.
Branden, psychotherapist, author, teacher, 95
(Nathaniel, psychotherapist, author, teacher, January 1995, Individualism and
the Free Society, Part 2, http://www.fff.org/freedom/0195d.asp)
Whatever the differences in their specific programs, all the enemies of the free
communists, socialists, fascists, welfare statists- are unanimous in their belief
market economythat they have a

right to dispose of the lives, property, and future of others, that private ownership of the
means of production is a selfish evil , that the more a person has achieved, the greater is his or her debt to those who have not achieved it,
that men and women can be compelled to go on producing under any terms or conditions their rulers decree, that freedom is a luxury that may have been permissible in a
primitive economy, but for the running of giant industries, electronic factories, and complex sciences, nothing less than slave labor will do. Whether they propose to take over
the economy outright, in the manner of communists and socialists, or to maintain the pretense of private property while dictating prices, wages, production, and distribution, in
Since the
moral justification offered for the rule of force is humankind's need of the things that
persons of ability produce, it follows (in the collectivist's system of thought) that the greater an
individual's productive ability, the greater are the penalties he or she must endure, in the
form of controls, regulations, expropriations . Consider, for example, the principle of the progressive income tax: those who produce
the manner of fascists and welfare statists, it is the gun, it is the rule of physical force that they consider "kind," they who consider the free market "cruel."
the most are penalized accordingly; those who produce nothing receive a subsidy, in the form of relief payments. Or consider the enthusiastic advocacy of socialized medicine.
What is the justification offered for placing the practice of medicine under government control? The importance of the services that physicians perform-the urgency of their
patients' need. Physicians are to be penalized precisely because they have so great a contribution to make to human welfare; thus is virtue turned into a liability. In denying
human beings freedom of thought and action, statists and collectivist systems are anti-self-esteem by their very nature. Self-confident, self-respecting men and women are
unlikely to accept the premise that they exist for the sake of others
A free society cannot be maintained without an
ethics of rational self-interest.
Neither can it be maintained except by men and women who have achieved a healthy level of self-esteem. And a
healthy level of self-esteem cannot be maintained without a willingness to assert-and, if necessary, fight for-our right to exist. It is on this point that issues of psychology, ethics,
and politics converge. If I may allow myself a brief aside, one might imagine that psychologists, social scientists, and philosophers who speak enthusiastically and reverently
about freedom, self-responsibility, autonomy, the beauty of self-regulating systems, and the power of synergy (the behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of the
parts taken separately) would naturally be champions of noncoercion. More often than not, as I have already indicated, just the opposite is true. They tend to be among the most
a defining
feature of a synergistic society is that participation in it is voluntary. If people do not
choose to engage in a given cooperative activity, the implication is that they do not
perceive that activity to be helpful , either for themselves or for others. Efforts to promote social
vociferous in crying for the coercive apparatus of government to further their particular ideals. To quote Waterman once again:
It should be recognized that
cooperation within a synergistic society may appropriately include such techniques as education,
persuasion, and negotiation. However, the use of political force to compel cooperation
represents the abandonment of the synergistic ideal.
A free society cannot automatically
guarantee the mental or emotional well-being of all its members. Freedom from external coercion is
not a sufficient condition of our optimal fulfillment, but it is a necessary one. The great
virtue of capitalism-laissez-faire capitalism, as contrasted not only with the more
extreme forms of statism but also with the mixed economy we have today-is that it is the
one system whose defining principle is precisely this barring of physical coercion from
human relationships. No other political system pays even lip service to this principle
Page 62 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Turn aff/neg creates dependence which decreases incentives to work tanks

the economy
Jrg Guido Hlsmann (professor of economics at the University of Angers in France) 2008: The Political
Economy of Moral Hazard
A central occupation of economists is to analyze the nature, causes, and effects of incentives the
circumstances that are held to motivate human action. Economists agree on the positive role that "good"
incentives play to increase production. They also agree that "perverse" incentives have an opposite
impact. One of these perverse incentives is called moral hazard, the subject of our present essay. Moral
hazard is the incentive of a person A to use more resources than he otherwise would have used, because
he knows, or believes he knows, that someone else B will provide some or all of these resources. The
important point is that this occurs against B's will and that B is unable to sanction this expropriation
immediately. The mere incentive to rely on resources provided by others is not per se problematic. For
example, the announcement of a future inheritance might prompt the prospective heir to spend more in
the present than he would otherwise have spent. In such cases we would not speak of moral hazard. A
genuine moral-hazard problem appears however if A has the possibility to use B's resources against B's will
and if he knows this. Laymen would call A's incentives a "temptation to steal" or a "temptation to act
irresponsibly." Economists, ever weary of moralizing, have espoused the technocratic expression "moral
hazard." Thus the essential feature of moral hazard is that it incites some people A to expropriate other
people B. The B-people in turn, if they realize the presence of such a moral hazard, have an incentive to
react against this possible expropriation. They make other choices than those that they would consider to
be best if there were no moral hazard. Many economists have therefore concluded that moral hazard
entails market failures; it brings about a different allocation of resources than the one that would exist
in the absence of moral hazard. Conventional economic theory explains moral hazard as a consequence of
the fact that market participants are unequally well informed about economic reality. In other words, moral
hazard results from "asymmetries of information" and the theory of moral hazard is therefore considered to
be a part of the economics of information.
Taking wealth forcefully kills charitable desires.

Rothbard, economist, Austrian School, 04
(Murray Rothbard, economist, Austrian School, 04, Welfare and the Images of
Charity, p 465)
The mistake, they say, is to convert moral pressure into compulsion to force people to do what everyone
agrees it would be morally desirable for them to do. Murray Rothbards view is typical. He recognizes that
charity is a good thing, but writes, [I]t makes all the difference in the world whether the aid is given
voluntarily or is stolen by force. [I]t is hardly charity to take wealth by force and hand it over to someone
else. Indeed this is the direct opposite of charity, which can only be an unbought, voluntary act of grace.
Compulsory confiscation can only deaden charitable desires completely, as the wealthier grumble that
there is no point in giving to charity when the state has already taken on the task. This is another
illustration of the truth that men can become more moral only through rational persuasion, not through
violence, which will, in fact, have the opposite effect}
The alternative results in beneficial forms of capitalism. Only altruism results

in the dangerous forms of capitalism that their authors assume.
More, founder of Extropy Institute, 86
(Max More, founder of Extropy Institute, 1986, THE IMPORTANCE OF SELFISHNESS, THE DANGERS OF
ALTRUISM, http://www.thedegree.org/philn004.pdf)
Finally, it would be fitting to consider the matter of competition in the context of the pursuit of rational selfinterest. Many people say that capitalism is an entirely competitive economic system.
They say that competition, while it serves a number of useful purposes, breeds hostility,
violence, and unhappiness. The first assertion is false and the second may or may not be
true depending on how it is interpreted. Objectivists are principled moral agents , not
materialists and can therefore happily join in by condemning the rat race. The first point to note is that
capitalism is both cooperative and competitive. Firms compete within a market but firms
Page 63 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
also cooperate every time they buy and sell raw materials, semi-finished goods, etc.,
from each other. Individuals within a firm must cooperate to get their jobs done. Every
time anyone buys anything on the free market, cooperation is occurring ; both parties get
together to make a mutually beneficial exchange. On the other hand, in a socialist economy you are
told what to produce and have little or no choice as to what you consume . Where
competition exists in a free market it promotes progress and benefits everyone. In a socialist system,
competition is for positions of coercive power. Within a free market or mixed economy such
as ours more than one type of competition is possible. One can compete in a friendly,
relaxed way, always bearing in mind ones values and rational self-interest. Or one can madly,
obsessively, irrationally compete for ends set by other people whether society, the company, the
government, or parents. This second type of competition is truly a rat race, a scrambling for
advancement where ones self-interest and values are lost sight of. It is not competition between
those pursuing their rational self-interest that is bad. It is competition between those
trying to fulfill their irrational whims (perhaps for wealth or fame), or to conform to standards set by
others. It is common for people to wear themselves down developing heart disease, ulcers, and
hypertension, to become heavy drinkers, insomniacs, or pillpoppers, with no regard for their happiness.
Capitalism does not demand this, and though it does not prevent it (only force, with all its
consequences, can do that), it does function better without it. Studies have shown that most successful
managers in business are generally pleasant, non-compulsive individuals who are a
pleasure to work for. It is altruism which promotes overly strenuous (and misguided)
effort since the individual does not matter only the good of the
company/government/ society/ones parents matters . The rationally self-interested
person has a great deal of self-esteem. The altruist lacks self-esteem. And it is lack of self-esteem
that leads to neurotic, inappropriately competitive behaviour since the esteem of other
people must be earned at all cost to fill the gap . (See Brandens The Psychology of Self-Esteem
for the importance of this factor.) If one has no self-worth one must compete hard to prove oneself to
others. Rational people do not need to win, since that implies that you cant be happy without defeating
someone. There is no need to win. To play the game of life according to ones values, in pursuit of ones
happiness, ones self-interest, is all that matters.
Capitalism solves war economic interdependencies

Erich Weede (Professor of Sociology at the University of Bonn) Winter 2008: Human Rights, Limited
Government, and Capitalism. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj28n1/cj28n1-3.pdf
Capitalist development contributes not only to prosperity but also to reducing the risk of war . From a
human rights perspective, the avoidance of war is a paramount concern because the fog of war has
frequently been used as a cover for human rights abuses and war crimes (Apodaca 2001; HarrelsonStephens and Callaway 2001; Richards, Gelleny, and Sacko 2001).8 Econometric studies (Gartzke 2005,
2007; Russett and Oneal 2001; Weede 2005) are compatible with the following causal relationships
between economic freedom, prosperity, and peace: Whether assessed by financial market openness,
trade, or property rights, economic freedom contributes to peace. The more trade there is between two
states or the more they are economically interdependent, the less likely military conflict between them
becomes.
In addition to this direct effect of economic freedom on the avoidance of war, there is an indirect effect via
prosperity and democracy that is well documented (Lipset 1994; Russett and Oneal 2001; Weede 2005).
The freer an economy is, the more prosperous it is likely to be. The more prosperous a country is, the more
likely it is to be a democracy.9 Military conflict between democracies is extremely unlikely. Economic
freedom and free tradethat is, the global expansion of capitalism and the corresponding catch-up
opportunities for poor countriesconstitute the beginning of the causal chain leading to democracy and
peace, at least to peace among prosperous or capitalist democracies. Economic freedom and free trade
also exert a direct pacifying impact. Therefore, it is preferable to call this set of pacifying conditions the
capitalist (or market-liberal) peace rather than the democratic peace.
Page 64 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Economically free countries are less likely to go to war put away your
democracy add-ons because the alt. solves better
Erik Gartzke (Associate Professor of Political Science PhD, University of Iowa) 2005: Future Depends on
Capitalizing on Capitalist Peace
With terrorism achieving "global reach" and conflict raging in Africa and the Middle East, you may have
missed a startling fact - we are living in remarkably peaceable times.
For six decades, developed nations have not fought each other. France and the United States may chafe,
but the resulting conflict pitted french fries against "freedom fries," rather than French soldiers against U.S.
"freedom fighters." Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac had a nasty spat over the EU, but the English aren't
going to storm Calais any time soon.
The present peace is unusual. Historically, powerful nations are the most war prone. The conventional
wisdom is that democracy fosters peace but this claim fails scrutiny. It is based on statistical studies that
show democracies typically don't fight other democracies.
Yet, the same studies show that democratic nations go to war about as much as other nations overall. And
more recent research makes clear that only the affluent democracies are less likely to fight each other.
Poor democracies behave much like non-democracies when it comes to war and lesser forms of conflict.
A more powerful explanation is emerging from newer, and older, empirical research - the "capitalist
peace." As predicted by Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Norman Angell and others, nations with high levels of
economic freedom not only fight each other less, they go to war less often, period. Economic freedom is a
measure of the depth of free market institutions or, put another way, of capitalism.
The "democratic peace" is a mirage created by the overlap between economic and political freedom.
Democracy and economic freedom typically co-exist. Thus, if economic freedom causes peace, then
statistically democracy will also appear to cause peace.
When democracy and economic freedom are both included in a statistical model, the results reveal that
economic freedom is considerably more potent in encouraging peace than democracy, 50 times more
potent, in fact, according to my own research. Economic freedom is highly statistically significant (at the
one-per-cent level). Democracy does not have a measurable impact, while nations with very low levels of
economic freedom are 14 times more prone to conflict than those with very high levels.
But, why would free markets cause peace? Capitalism is not only an immense generator of prosperity; it is
also a revolutionary source of economic, social and political change. Wealth no longer arises primarily
through land or control of natural resources.
The free market is a moral necessity

Conclusion
The struggle to extend and preserve free markets must have as its primary focus the moral argument.
State interventionists stand naked before well-thought-out moral arguments for private ownership of
property, voluntary exchange, and the parity of markets. People readily understand moral arguments on a
private basis--for example, one person does not have the right to use force against another to serve his
own purposes. However, people often see government redistribution as an acceptable use of force. In a
democratic welfare state that coercion is given an aura of legitimacy. The challenge is to convince people
that a majority vote does not establish morality and that free markets are morally superior to other forms
of human organization.
Government coercion destroys freedom the free market system is the highest
moral ground and will solve all other problems
James A. Dorn (vice president for academic affairs at the Cato Institute and
professor of economics at Towson University in
Maryland) 2005: Why Freedom Matters.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/dorn-
080105.pdf
The future of civilization depends on preserving and spreading freedom. As a moral principle, freedom
means we ought to respect private property rights, broadly understood as the rights to life, liberty, and
property. As a practical matter, when private property rights are protected by law, individuals will be free
Page 65 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
to trade for mutual gain and be held responsible for their behavior. Social and economic coordinationor
what F. A. Hayek called spontaneous orderemerges from the voluntary decisions of millions of free
people under limited government and the rule of law. Those nations that have failed to adopt freedom as a
first principle have also failed to realize the benefits of freedom. They have ignored the great liberal idea,
as articulated in The Law by Frdric Bastiat in the mid-nineteenth century, that the solution of the social
problem lies in liberty. By social problem Bastiat meant the problem of coordination that confronts every
societythat is, the problem of satisfying peoples wants for goods and services without central planning.
The beauty of the market system, based on private property rights and freedom of contract, is that it
allows individuals to continuously adjust to new information about wants, resources, and technology, and
to engage in mutually beneficial exchanges. Economic freedom increases the range of choices and thus
the wealth of nations. Those countries with greater economic freedom have higher standards of living than
those with less freedom (figure 1). Moreover, countries that have liberalized more quicklyas measured by
the index of economic freedomhave tended to grow faster than countries that have failed to liberalize or
that have liberalized more slowly (figure 2). Economists James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, the authors
of the Fraser Institutes annual Economic Freedom of the World, find that long term differences in
economic freedom explain approximately two-thirds of the variation in cross-country per capita GDP. It is
no secret that countries that have opened to the forces of international trade and have restrained the
growth of government have prospered, while those countries that have limited the scope of the market
have stagnated. Hong Kongs consistent adherence to market-liberal principles has resulted in long-run
prosperity and the worlds freest economy since 1970. In its 2005 Index of Economic Freedom, the
Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal once again ranked Hong Kong number one. On hearing the
good news, Financial Secretary Henry Tang remarked,I am pleased virtues we have been upholding to
keep Hong Kong flourishing as a free market economy have once again been reaffirmed by the
international community. Those virtues include credibility and reliability, prudence and thrift,
entrepreneurial alertness, personal responsibility, respect for others, and tolerance. They are fostered by
private property rights, the rule of law, freedom of contract, open trade, low tax rates, and limited
government. Nations that have not followed the virtues of Hong Kong have not reaped the long-run
benefits of economic freedom. North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Iraq, and Haiti are but a few examples. The
lesson is that the virtues of the market require constant practice if they are to survive and flourish.
Government policy must be market-friendly and transparent; it cannot be muddled. Markets discount
future effects of current policy changes. If those changes are in the direction of greater economic freedom,
they will be immediately rewarded and wealth created. Illiberal trade policies, higher tax rates, increased
government spending, erratic monetary policy, and wage-price controls undermine private property rights,
send negative signals to the global capital markets, and destroy the wealth of nations. The failure of
central planning in the Soviet Union and China has moved those countries in the direction of greater
economic freedom, but the ghost of communism still haunts Russia, while the Chinese Communist Party
has yet to abandon its monopoly on power. Leaders of emerging market economies need to recognize that
economic freedom is an important component of personal freedom, that free-market prices and profits
provide useful information and incentives to allocate resources to where consumers (not politicians or
planners) deem them most valuable, and that markets extend the range of choice and increase human
welfare. Most important, leaders must understand that ultimately economic liberalization requires limited
government and constitutionally protected rights. Emerging market economies, especially in Asia, have
discovered the magic of the market; they have also found that chaos emerges when the institutional
infrastructure necessary for free markets is weakened by excessive government. When politics trumps
markets, coercion and corruption follow. The Ethical Basis the ethical basis of the market system is often
overlooked, but not by those like Zhang Shuguang, an economist at the Unirule Institute in Beijing, who
were deprived of their economic liberties under central planning. He compares the coercive nature of
planning with the voluntary nature of the market and concludes: In the market system . . . the
fundamental logic is free choice and equal status of individuals. The corresponding ethics . . . is mutual
respect, mutual benefit, and mutual credit.1 The moral justification for individual freedom is selfevident.
In Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama wrote:We all desire happiness and wish to avoid
suffering. . . . Ethical conduct is not something we engage in because it is somehow right in itself but
because, like ourselves, all others desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. Given that this is a natural
disposition, shared by all, it follows that each individual has a right to pursue this goal. Freedom without
rules is an illusion. The famous Zen master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in his classic text, Zen Mind, Beginners
Mind: People, especially young people, think that freedom is to do just what they want. . . . But it is
absolutely necessary . . . to have some rules. . . . As long as you have rules, you have a chance for
freedom. The rules necessary for a market-liberal order are rules to protect the private sphere so
individuals can pursue their self-interest while respecting the equal rights of others. Without clear rules to
limit the use of force to the protection of persons and property, freedom and justice will sufferand
Page 66 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
economic development, properly understood, will cease. In 1740 the great liberal David Hume wrote that
the peace and security of human society entirely depend [on adherence to] the three fundamental laws of
nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of
promises (A Treatise of Human Nature). His legacy of liberty should not be forgotten. Development and
Freedom in Economic Analysis and Policy in Underdeveloped Countries, the late Peter (Lord) Bauer argued
that economic development and freedom are inseparable: I regard the extension of the range of choice,
that is, an increase in the range of effective alternatives open to people, as the principal objective and
criterion of economic development. Economists have found that countries with secure private property
rights create more wealth (as measured by real GDP per capita) than countries in which property is not
protected by law. Trade liberalization is vital to the process of development. Voluntary international
exchange widens consumers range of effective choices and lowers the risk of conflict. There is a saying in
China: Wu wei ze wu shu bu weiIf no unnatural control, then there is nothing you cannot do. In the
Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu advocates the principle of nonintervention (wu wei) as the ideal way of ruling. The
wise ruler says,I take no action and the people of themselves are transformed. I engage in no activity and
the people of themselves become prosperous. 2 To take no action does not mean to do nothing, but
rather, as Chinese scholar Derk Bodde has noted, to refrain from those actions that are forced, artificial,
and unspontaneous.3 A natural order is one consistent with free markets and free people; it is Adam
Smiths simple system of natural liberty.As former Czech President Vclav Havel so elegantly stated after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the free-market economy is the only natural economy, the only kind that
makes sense, the only one that can lead to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of
life itself.4 Leaders in the West as well as the East should keep the following five lessons in the forefront of
their minds as they contemplate future policy decisions: (1) private property, freedom, and justice are
inseparable; (2) justice requires limiting government to the protection of persons and property; (3)
minimizing the use of force to defend life, liberty, and property will maximize freedom and create a
spontaneous market-liberal order; (4) private free markets are not only moral, they create wealth by
providing incentives to discover new ways of doing things and increase the range of alternatives; and (5)
governments rule best when they follow the rule of law and the principle of noninterference.
Government power inevitably leads to war and mass genocide limiting the
power of the government and fostering individual freedom solves
Rudolph Joseph Rummel (professor emeritus of political science at the
University of Hawaii) 1994: Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder. Journalof
Peace Research 31 (1): 110
Now for the overview. The principle conclusion emerging from previous work on the causes of war and this
project is that power kills, absolute power kills absolutely. The more power a government has, the more it
can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, the more it will make war on others and
murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more it is
diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.8 At the extremes
of power, totalitarian communist governments murder their people by the tens of millions, while many
democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers. As listed in Table 1 , this
century's megamurderers--those states killing in cold blood, aside from warfare, 1,000,000 or more men,
women, and children--have murdered over 151,000,000 people, almost four times the almost 38,500,000
battle-dead for all this century's international and civil wars up to 1987. The most absolute Power, that is
the communist U.S.S.R., China and preceding Mao guerrillas, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Vietnam, and
Yugoslavia, as well as Nazi Germany, account for near 128,000,000 of them, or 84 percent . No one of the
remaining megamurderers, which include the regimes of Pakistan, 9 wartime Japan, Nationalist China, Cambodia, communist Vietnam,
post-War II Poland,10 and communist Yugoslavia, were democratic when it committed its democide. Then there are the kilomurderers,
or those states that have killed innocents by the tens or hundreds of thousands, the top five of which were the China Warlords (19171949), Atatrk's Turkey (1919-1923), the United Kingdom (primarily due to the 1914-1919 food blockade of the Central Powers and
Levant in and after World War I, and the 1940-45 indiscriminate bombing of German cities), Portugal (1926-1982), and Indonesia
(1965-87). These are shown in Table 1. Some lesser kilomurderers were communist Afghanistan, Angola, Albania, Rumania, and
Ethiopia, as well as authoritarian Hungary, Burundi, Croatia (1941-44), Czechoslovakia (1945-46), Indonesia, Iraq, the Czar's Russia,
and Uganda. For its indiscriminate bombing of German and Japanese civilians, the United States must also be included on this list.
These and other kilomurderers add almost 15,000,000 people killed to the democide for this century. As listed in Table 2, the most
lethal regime in this century was that of the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during 1975 through
1978. In less than four years of governing they exterminated over 31 percent of their men, women, and
children; the odds of any Cambodian surviving these four long years was only about 2.2 to 1. As
mentioned, the Appendix exemplifies some of the estimates of this killing. The major and better known
episodes and institutions for which these and other regimes were responsible are listed in Table 3. Far
Page 67 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
above all is gulag--the Soviet slave-labor system created by Lenin and built up under Stalin. In some 70
years it likely chewed up almost 40,000,000 lives, over twice as many as probably died in some 400 years
of the African slave trade, from capture to sale in an Arab, Oriental, or New World market. In total, during
the first eighty-eight years of this century, almost 170,000,000 men, women, and children have been shot,
beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; or buried alive, drowned,
hanged, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed,
helpless citizens or foreigners. The dead even could conceivable be near a high of 360,000,000 people.
This is as though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a
plague of absolute power and not germs. Adding the human cost of war to this democide total,
governments have violently killed over 203,000,000 people in this century. Table 4 breaks down this toll by
type of regime. Figure 1 graphs the regime comparisons. Now, democracies themselves are responsible
for some of the democide. Almost all of this is foreign democide during war, and mainly those enemy
civilians killed in indiscriminate urban bombing, as of Germany and Japan in World War II . It also includes
the large scale massacres of Filipinos during the bloody American colonization of the Philippines at the
beginning of this century, deaths in British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boar War, civilian deaths due to starvation
during the aforementioned British blockade, the rape and murder of helpless Chinese in and around Peking in 1900, the atrocities
committed by Americans in Vietnam, the murder of helpless Algerians during the Algerian War by the French, and the unnatural
deaths of German prisoners of war in French and American POW camps after World War II . All this killing of foreigners by
democracies may seem to violate the principle that power kills, absolute power kills absolutely, but really
underlines it. For in each case, the killing was carried out in secret, behind a conscious cover of lies and
deceit by those agencies and power-holders involved. All were shielded by tight censorship of the press
and control of journalists. Even the indiscriminate bombing of German cities by the British was disguised before the House of
Commons and in press releases as attacks on German military targets. That the general strategic bombing policy was to attack
working men's homes was kept secret still long after the war. And finally, Figure 2 (one of the most important comparisons on
democide and power produced by this project) displays the range of democide estimates for each regime, that is, level of power. As
mentioned over 8,100 estimates of democide from over a thousand sources were collected to arrive at a most likely low and high for
democide committed by 219 regimes or groups. The totals that have been displayed in previous figures have been the sum of
conservatively determined mid-totals in this range. Figure 2 then presents for each type of regime, such as the authoritarian, this
range resulting from the sum of all the lows and highs for all the democide of all regimes of that type. The difference between the
three resulting ranges drawn in the figure can only be understood in terms of power. 11 As the arbitrary power of regimes increase left
to right in the figure, the range of their democide jumps accordingly and to such a great extent that the low democide for the
authoritarian regime is above the democratic high, and the authoritarian high is below the totalitarian low. The empirical and
theoretical conclusion from these and other results is clear. The way to virtually eliminate genocide and
mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic
freedom. This is the ultimate conclusion of this project.
Government provision is inefficient and ineffective three reasons.

Blank, UMich, 2k
(Rebecca M. Blank, UMich, 03-2k, When Can Public Policy Makers Rely on
Private Markets? The Effective Provision of Social Services, Economic Journal
Vol. 110 Issue 462, pC34-C49)
First, government inefficiencies might become large enough that even with somewhat
higher quality, the cost of allowing government management offsets the benefits . As
Stiglitz (1989) has noted, `public management' is itself a public good, and one that is often hard for voters
to observe easily. Wolf (1988) reviews a large number of studies on the comparative
efficiency of the public and private sector, noting that most -- but by no means all -- of them
conclude the private sector is able to operate at lower (in some cases very much lower) costs.[6]
Few of these studies focus on social service areas, however. Poterba (1996) notes that it is not clear that
the government is markedly less efficient in comparison to the non-profit sector, which provides the
primary private-sector alternative to the public sector in many areas of social services in the United States.
Second, the more that government is plagued by patronage and corruption problems,
the less attractive is the government management of services. Such problems may be one
particular reason why the government is less efficient, but they are likely to also affect the quality of
services provided, as well as the extent to which the government meets public goals about access and
equity in the provision of services. Of course, it is worth noting that corruption in the public sector in many
countries often mirrors corruption in the private sector. In this situation, it is unclear which sector is the
preferred provider of services.
Third, the government may be ineffective in providing higher quality services. Poor
Page 68 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
management and inefficiencies in the public sector may be causally related to low
quality services, in which case the price/quality tradeoff posited above is an inaccurate
characterisation; lower prices and higher quality may be complements rather than substitutes. Indeed, in
cases where the public sector underpays workers relative to the market, or provides particularly bad
managerial oversight, the quality of government-provided services may be very low. (There are plenty of
examples of this in my current hometown of Washington, D.C.) The lower the quality of publicly-provided
services, the less apparent force there is to the argument that the private sector will provide services at
too low a quality level. As Wolf (1988) has noted, there is extensive `nonmarket failure' in
government, just as there may be market failure in the private sector.

Eliminating licensing requirements for medical establishments and restrictions
on medical supplies, deregulating health insurance, and eliminating subsidies
such as Medicaid key to greater effectiveness and availability of health care.
Hoppe, Prof. Emeritus of Econ, University of Nevada, 93
(Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Prof. Emeritus of Econ, University of Nevada, 04/1993,
A Four-Step Health-Care Solution, Mises Institute,
http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=279)
It's true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but
government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations
and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing
government controls. It's time to get serious about health care reform. Tax credits, vouchers, and
privatization will go a long way toward decentralizing the system and removmg unnecessary burdens from
business. But four additional steps must also be taken: 1. Eliminate all licensing requirements
for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care
personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater
variety of health care services would appear on the market. Competing voluntary
accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing --if health
care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their
consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it. Because consumers would no longer be
duped into believing that there is such a thing as a "national standard" of health care, they will increase
their search costs and make more discriminating health care choices. 2. Eliminate all
government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and
medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders
innovation and increases costs. Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products
would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their
own--rather than the government's--risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and
sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide
increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees. 3. Deregulate the health insurance
industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the
insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example,
because it is in one's own hands to bring these events about.
Because a person's health, or lack of it, lies increasingly

within his own control, many, if not most health risks, are actually uninsurable. "Insurance" against risks whose likelihood an
individual can systematically influence falls within that person's own responsibility. All insurance, moreover, involves the pooling of
individual risks. It implies that insurers pay more to some and less to others. But no one knows in advance, and with certainty, who
the "winners" and "losers" will be. "Winners" and "losers" are distributed randomly, and the resulting income redistribution is
unsystematic. If "winners" or "losers" could be systematically predicted, "losers" would not want to pool their risk with "winners," but
with other "losers," because this would lower their insurance costs. I would not want to pool my personal accident risks with those of
professional football players, for instance, but exclusively with those of people in circumstances similar to my own, at lower costs.
Because of legal restrictions on the health insurers' right of refusal--to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable--the present healthinsurance system is only partly concerned with insurance. The industry cannot discriminate freely among different groups' risks. As a
result, health insurers cover a multitude of uninnsurable risks, alongside, and pooled with, genuine insurance risks. They do not
discriminate among various groups of people which pose significantly different insurance risks. The industry thus runs a system of
income redistribution--benefiting irresponsible actors and high-risk groups at the expense of responsible individuals and low risk
groups. Accordingly the industry's prices are high and ballooning. To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted
freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate
among any groups of individuals. Uninsurable risks would lose coverage, the variety of insurance policies for the remaining coverage
Page 69 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
would increase, and price differentials would reflect genuine insurance risks. On average, prices would drastically fall. And the reform
4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy.

Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased
breed illness and disease, and promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we
eliminate them, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living.
In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid. Only these four steps,
although drastic, will restore a fully free market in medical provision. Until they are
adopted, the industry will have serious problems, and so will we, its consumers.
would restore individual responsibility in health care.
Abolishing federal programs is the first step to solving poverty allows private
sector to grow.
Blanchette, Research Fellow, 07
(Jude Blanchette, Henry Hazlitt Research Fellow at the Foundation for
Economics Education, The Shortcomings of Government Charity May 2007,
The Freeman Volume: 57 Issue: 4
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-shortcomings-of-governmentcharity/) /A.C.
History shows that it is only through private voluntary solutions that we see true human
compassion. Organizations and individuals, in the spirit of compassion, provided poverty relief
that embraced generosity, but recognized the dire consequences of haphazardly given
aid. Most social workers of a century ago understood that good character, self-reliance, and strong social
ties were virtues that must be instilled in the poor if there were to be any gains made in alleviating
poverty. Before the Depression private solutions played an important moral and material role for the poor.
Whereas government relies on coercion , charities and fraternal societies embody the
qualities that make volunteerism socially advantageous. Conversely, the past 70 years
have shown that government has not prudently handled, and cannot prudently handle,
the plight of the poor. Rather than help those in need of assistance during times of trouble , the
federal government has imprisoned them in a political power game , resulting in increased
dependence. Only abolition of the government dole will allow the private sector to
once again achieve the levels of social welfare seen in the past.
Lower tax rates induce charitable giving studies prove.

Benzing, economics professor, 04
(Cynthia Benzing, Ph.D Drexel University, Associate Dean of the College of Business and Public Affairs,
Chairperson and Professor of Economics and Finance, Thomas Andrews The effect of tax rates and
uncertainty on contributory crowding out, September 2004, Atlantic Economic Journal
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6413/is_3_32/ai_n29125440/pg_11/?tag=content;col1) /A.C.
According to the results of this experiment, uncertainty and tax rates significantly influence both
the rate of voluntary contributions and the crowding out effect . Subjects voluntarily
contributed a higher percentage of income when the tax rate was low and
subjects were uncertain as to whether they would be disadvantaged. This leads one to conjecture that low
income individuals with less education and skills may be more inclined to voluntarily contribute to income
support and social programs because their probability of needing such support is higher. High income, two
wage earning families are less likely to ever need welfare, food stamps, etc. and, consequently, are less
inclined to voluntarily contribute to such programs. If this is the case, then taxation to compel the
contribution of higher income individuals may well increase the supply of income support and social
programs. This study points to progressive taxation as a means of maintaining or increasing the supply of
social programs. With respect to crowding out , 97 percent of contributions were crowded
out when tax rates were increased from 0 to l0 percent .
Page 70 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Failure to privatize collapses the economy

Bresiger, business writer & editor, 08
Gregory Bresiger, business writer & managing editor of Traders Magazine, The Non-Issue that Should be
an issue, 7/3/2008, Von Mises http://mises.org/story/3020) /A.C.
But they do matter, according to one of the great economic historians, Joseph Schumpeter. Indeed,
history has endless episodes of nations that experienced incredible economic and social
problems owing to the government, which took over bigger and bigger pieces of the
economy.
If the will of the people demands higher and higher public expenditures , if more and
more means are used for purposes for which private individuals have not produced them,
if more and more power stands behind this will, and if finally all parts of the people are
gripped by entirely new ideas about private property and the forms of life then the tax
state will have run its course and society will have to depend on other motive forces for
its economy than self-interest. This limit can certainly be reached. Without doubt, the
tax state can collapse.
**Alternative to Government Provision**
The alternative is to reject the coercive policies of the affirmative. By
embracing negative freedoms, the free market will alleviate social ills, turning
the case.
Rothschild, University of Linz, Vienna, Austria, 03
(Kurt Rothschild, University of Linz, Vienna, Austria, 2003, Reflections on an anniversary: Friedman's
Capitalism and Freedom, Journal of Economic Studies, Volume 30, Number 5, pp. 548-557(10),
IngentaConnect) jz
The usual distinction between negative and positive freedom is that the first
demands that individuals should not be interfered with when carrying out their desired
actions (which in turn must not interfere with the plans of other people), while positive freedom is
concerned with the question to what degree individuals are given the opportunity to
choose between different actions. Nothing speaks against adopting one's personal preference as a
concept of Freedom which includes both aspects, the positive and the negative one. Amartya Sen or John
Rawls are the outstanding examples of social scientists adopting such a view. But this wider perspective
leads to a more complicated situation when it comes to practical applications of one's philosophy. While
policies and institutions in both politics and economics may very well foster at the same time both
positive and negative freedoms, there are also frequent cases where the two come into conflict. Then,
difficult problems of trade-offs can arise[2]: How much can be taken away from some people (e.g. through
taxes) reducing the degree of their (negative) freedom, in order to increase the degree of (positive)
freedom of some other people (e.g. through subsidies). Friedman gets rid of such difficult choices
in his abstract and practical deliberations by making negative freedom a dominant and
sole target. He draws a sharp division between equality of rights and equality of
opportunity, on the one hand, and material equality or equality of outcome on the other (p.
195). While he accepts the first target, he rejects the second because it might come into
conflict with the first. This confrontation of the two supposedly contradictory alternatives has two
decisive flaws. First, equality need not (and cannot in practice) be a question of complete equality, but only
of degrees of equality which makes it unnecessary to draw a sharp either-or line, and second, the two
alternatives are not completely independent of each other. In particular, equality of opportunity is not
independent of the degree of equality or inequality of material means. Friedman, however, insists that the
first alternative has to be the dominant principle of a free society. This does not mean
that he does not care about social and other societal problems. He does. But in his view
Page 71 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
they should as far as possible be left to voluntary private activities with state
interference kept at a minimum, because coercion is abhorred . I find it hard, as
a liberal, to see any justification for graduated taxation solely to redistribute income. This
seems a clear case of using coercion to take from some in order to give to others and
thus to conflict head-on with individual freedom (p. 174). Added to this rejection of
coercion is Friedman's belief that the undisturbed free market with its
efficiency can contribute to an alleviation of social problems. Government
motives and actions are regarded with doubt and distrust . This brings problems
connected with Friedman's approaches to capitalism and government. Freedom both in its wider and
narrower (Friedman-type) sense can be divided into political and economic freedom. In both cases, the
problem is for Friedman the only one that power-based coercion can force people to act differently from
what they really want to do. In the political field, this raises the question: how far the state should be
allowed to interfere into private decisions. This will be dealt with later. But political freedom is also
connected with economic freedom, which deals with freedom for transactions in the economic sphere. For
Friedman, with his stress on negative freedom and his scepticism about government power, which would
be enhanced by controlling economic affairs, economic freedom achieves priority. Freedom in
economic arrangements is an end in itself and is also an indispensable means

toward the achievement of political freedom (p. 8, italics added).
We should reject coercion for deliberative democracy.
Medearis, Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, 05
(John Medearis, Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, 2005, Social Movements
and Deliberative Democratic Theory, British Journal of Political Science, 35 : 53-75 Cambridge University
Press)
I adopt a view of coercion rooted in the current conceptualization of deliberation itself .

Indeed, before offering a definition, it is worth exploring the close connection between non-coercion and
deliberation. One of the deliberative theorists basic premises is that only those decisions are legitimate
that are or could be supported by citizens for reasons they have reflected upon and think are good
ones. Coercion, simply as it is conventionally understood as compelling through force or threats
stands in obvious contrast to such a notion of deliberation . For coercion, in this quite ordinary
sense, would bypass the attempt to gain reasoned support. This is surely why Dryzek contrasts
coercion with persuasion and contends that deliberative democratic theory in general
(not just his variety) rejects coercion .11 A principled rejection of coercion runs deep in
the writings of Habermas and Rawls, who have not only endorsed deliberative
democracy, but, more importantly, provided much of its intellectual apparatus . In a
frequently-cited formulation, Habermas writes that participants in argumentation cannot avoid the
presupposition that the structure of their communication rules out all external or internal coercion other
than the force of the better argument and thereby also neutralizes all motives other than that of the
cooperative search for truth.12 Such a co-operative search for truth, or action oriented to
reaching understanding, is the principled heart of at least one major strand of

deliberation.13 A similar understanding of coercion is clearly also embedded in Rawlss
central insistence that parties to deliberation offer each other reasons and forms of cooperation that they can accept, as he puts it, for the right reasons and not merely
because of a balance of political and social forces or sanctions.14 Likewise, a number of
central features of Gutmann and Thompsons influential deliberative writings would seem
to rule out coercion: their Rawlsian commitment to reciprocity, one of three putative deliberative
values, which involves a sole reliance on reasons that are shared or could come to be shared; their
stringent demand that people who disagree continue to reason together to reach mutually acceptable
decisions; and their disapproval of outcomes that turn, strategically, on actors self-interests.15 Bohman,
similarly, makes the exposing of coercion one of the three conditions of deliberative
legitimacy in pluralistic societies.16 Of course, deliberative democrats do not claim that politics can
Page 72 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
be entirely non-coercive, any more than they claim politics can be entirely deliberative. But they do claim
that decisions are democratically legitimate only in so far as they are deliberative. And thus from their
perspective, decisions are democratically legitimate only in so far as the processes from
which they result are non-coercive.
Reject coercion in favor of capitalism and individual rights.

Biddle, editor and publisher of The Objective Standard, 06
(Craig Biddle, editor and publisher of The Objective Standard, The Objectivist Standard, Spring 2006, Vol.
1, No. 1, Introducing The Objective Standard, http://theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006spring/introducing-the-objective-standard.asp)
In the realm of politics, we recognize that in order to take life-promoting action, a person
must be free to do so; he must be free to act on the judgment of his mind, his basic
means of living. The only thing that can stop him from doing so is other people, and the only
way they can stop him is by means of physical force. Thus, in order to live peacefully together in a
societyin order to live together as civilized beings , rather than as barbarianspeople must
refrain from using physical force against one another. This fact gives rise to the principle of
individual rights, which is the principle of egoism applied to politics. The principle of
individual rights is the recognition of the fact that each person is morally an end in
himself, not a means to the ends of others ; therefore, he morally must be left free to act on his
own judgment for his own sake, so long as he does not violate that same right of others. This principle
is not a matter of personal opinion or social convention or divine revelation; it is a matter
of the factual requirements of human life in a social context . A moral societya
civilized societyis one in which the initiation of physical force against human beings is
prohibited by law. And the only social system in which such force is so prohibited
consistently and on principleis pure, laissez-faire capitalism.
Capitalismwhich, contrary to
widespread mis-education, is not merely an economic systemis the social system of
individual rights, including property rights, protected by a strictly limited government . In a
laissez-faire society, if people want to deal with one another, they may do so only on
voluntary terms, by uncoerced agreement. If they want to receive goods or services from
others, they may offer to exchange value for value to mutual benefit; however, they may not seek to gain
any value from others by means of physical force. People are fully free to act on their own
judgment and thus to produce, keep, use, and dispose of their own property as they see
fit; the only thing they are not free to do is to violate the rights of others. In a capitalist
society, individual rights cannot legally be violated by anyoneincluding the
government.
Rejection of the collectivist welfare policies of the aff is critical to imagining a
better world. Only through this can we establish concrete foundations for
reasonable change.
Ebeling, president of Foundation for Economic Freedom, 06
(Richard Ebeling, president of Foundation for Economic Freedom, October 2006, Principles Must Come
Before Politics, http://www.nassauinstitute.org/articles/article636.php?view=print)
The real political task, however, is not to try to attract votes or nudge policy in the context of the
existing bell curve of voter preferences. Rather, it is to move the curve in the direction of
individual freedom, limited constitutional government, and a truly free market. In other
words, the task is to shift the curve's dome over to where its individualist tail end is today, so that
someday the middle mass of voters will more or less hold views generally consistent with classical-liberal
ideas. But this requires looking beyond what is politically expedient today . Indeed, it
Page 73 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
requires ignoring what seem to be the boundaries of the politically possible

and instead thinking in terms of the politically desirable . If policies really
consistent with individual freedom are ever to be implemented, we must first explain to
our fellow citizens what such a society of freedom would look like, how it would work,
and why it is desirable. They must slowly but surely come to see the vision of liberty.
Maybe part of the reason so many people seem unable or unwilling to think beyond five minutes is that
they are so infrequently challenged to do. Maybe our fellow citizens find it hard to break out
of the current mindset of the existing interventionist welfare state because

they are too rarely offered a clear and consistent case for the classical-liberal
ideal and why it would be good for them and others they care about . Maybe people are often
trapped in the policies of the short run precisely because they almost never are presented with a political
and economic philosophy of freedom for the long run. Politics will always only reflect the existing
distribution of people's political views. Political campaigns , therefore, will never be the
primary method for transforming society from less free to more free. This will only happen
outside of the narrow political process -through a change in the climate of ideas. Though most
people don't know it, they are guided by an implicit set of political and economic
principles when they think about and decide on what they want government to do. These
principles are the ideological residues of nineteenth- and twentieth-century collectivism.
They need to be replaced with a new set of political and economic principles,
those of classical liberalism. When a sufficient number of our fellow citizens
accept classical liberalism, politics will follow principle and the interventionist
welfare state will be opposed and finally abolished. This is why a radical change in
principles must come before any successful change in politics .
Alt view the invisible victims
Demystification of the State
A. V. Dicey (1914: 257) wrote:
The beneficial effect of State intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and so
to speak visible, whilst its evil effects are gradual and indirect, and lie outside our sight.... Hence the
majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favour upon government intervention. This
natural bias can be counteracted only by the existence, in a given society, ... of a presumption or prejudice
in favour of individual liberty, that is of laissez-faire.
One can hardly determine the casualties of war simply by looking at survivors. We must ask what
happened to those whom we do not see. Similarly, when evaluating interventionist public policy we cannot
evaluate it simply by looking at its beneficiaries. We must discover its victims. Most often the victims of
public policy are invisible. To garner greater public support against government command and control, we
must somehow find a way to make those victims visible.
In all interventionist policy there are those who are beneficiaries and those who are victims. In most cases
the beneficiaries are highly visible and the victims are invisible. A good example is the minimum wage law.
After enactment of an increase in the minimum wage law, politicians accompanied by television crews
readily point to people who have benefitted from the legislation. The beneficiaries are those with a fatter
paycheck. Thus, the politician can lay claim to the wisdom of his legislation that increased minimum
wages. Moreover, the politician is also a beneficiary since those now earning higher wages will remember
him when election time comes around. By parading minimum wage beneficiaries across the stage, those
who oppose minimum wage increases can be readily portrayed as having a callous, mean-spirited
disregard for interests of low-wage workers.
A political strategy of those who support liberty should be that of exposing the invisible victims of
minimum wage laws. We need to show those who have lost their jobs, or do not become employed in the
first place, because their productivity did not warrant being employed at the minimum wage. We should
find a way to demonstrate jobs destroyed by minimum wages such as busboys, gasoline station
attendants, and movie ushers. We must show how marginally profitable firms have been forced out of
business, though surviving firms may have the same number of employees. We should show how capital
Page 74 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
was artificially substituted for labor as a result of higher mandated wages and how firms have adjusted
their production techniques in order to economize on labor. The particular adjustments firms make in
response to higher mandated wages are less important than the fact that adjustments will be made.
A more dramatic example of the invisible victims of interventionist state policy can be found in the
regulation of medicines and medical devices, as in the case of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in
the United States. Essentially, FDA officials can make two types of errors. They can err on the side of
undercaution and approve a drug with dangerous unanticipated side effects. Or they can err on the side of
overcaution, not approving a useful and safe drug, or creating costly and lengthy drug approval
procedures.
Errors on the side of undercaution lead to embarrassment and possibly loss of bureaucratic careers and
promotions because the victims of unsafe drugs will be visible through news stories of sick people,
congressional investigations, and hearings. However, errors on the side of overcaution, through extensive
delay in the approval of drugs--as in the cases of propranolol, Septra, and other drugs--impose virtually no
costs on the FDA. Victims of FDA errors on the side of overcaution are mostly invisible to the press, the
public, and politicians.
Those victims should be made visible. Once the FDA (or some other approving agency) approves a drug
widely used elsewhere with no untoward effects, we should find people who died or needlessly suffered as
a result of the FDA's delay. For political efficiency we cannot simply offer intellectual arguments. We must
get pictures and stories of FDA victims in an effort to appeal to a sense of fair play, decency, and common
sense among the citizenry. But there is also a role for intellectual arguments in the sense of teaching
people that any meaningful use of "safe'' must see safety as a set of tradeoffs rather than a category. The
attempt to get a "safe'' drug means that people will die or needlessly suffer during the time it takes to
achieve greater safety. That toll must be weighted against the number of people who might die or become
ill because of the drug's earlier availability and attendant unanticipated harmful side effects. People should
also be taught to understand that if a 100 percent safe drug is ever achieved, it will be the only thing in
this world that is 100 percent safe.
Americans want smaller government when taxes matter

Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, 09
(David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, 6/23/09, CATO Institute, http://www.cato-atliberty.org/2009/06/23/americans-want-smaller-government/)
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll again shows that voters prefer smaller
government with fewer services to larger government with more services: Obama has
used the power and financial resources of the federal government repeatedly as he has dealt with the
countrys problems this year, to the consternation of his Republican critics. The poll found little
change in underlying public attitudes toward government since the inauguration, with
slightly more than half saying they prefer a smaller government with fewer services to a
larger government with more services. Independents, however, now split 61 to 35
percent in favor of a smaller government; they were more narrowly divided on this
question a year ago (52 to 44 percent), before the financial crisis hit.The Post calls a 54 to 41
lead for smaller government barely more than half, which is fair enough, though its twice as large as
Obamas margin over McCain. Its also twice as large as the margin the Post found in the same poll in
November 2007.Ive always thought the smaller government question is incomplete. It offers
respondents a benefit of larger governmentmore servicesbut it doesnt mention that the cost of larger
government with more services is higher taxes. The question ought to give both the cost and
the benefit for each option. A few years ago a Rasmussen poll did ask the question that
way. The results were that 64 percent of voters said that they prefer smaller government
with fewer services and lower taxes, while only 22 percent would rather see a more
active government with more services and higher taxes. A similar poll around the same
time, without the information on taxes, found a margin of 59 to 26 percent. So its
reasonable to conclude that if you remind respondents that more services means
higher taxes, the margin by which people prefer smaller government rises by about 9
points. So maybe the margin in this poll would have been something like 59 to 37 if both sides of the
question had been presented.
Page 75 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
AT: Cant imagine. Confinement to the politically possible makes change

impossible. Prefer the reformist policies
Ebeling, president of Foundation for Economic Freedom, 06
(Richard Ebeling, president of Foundation for Economic Freedom, October 2006, Principles Must Come
Before Politics, http://www.nassauinstitute.org/articles/article636.php?view=print)
there are many people who talk about dealing with the dangers of bigger
and bigger government and the budgetary burdens it imposes on all of us . But, again,
rather than focusing on fundamentals, theirs is often only an attempt to find short-term
gimmicks to deal with the problems. This, too, is the result of focusing on politics. It's
often pointed out that the political preferences of voters are distributed in the shape of a bell
curve. At the ends are the political "extremists," collectivists and individualists respectively. In between,
under the dome, are the vast majority of voters who are somewhere "in the middle." If a politician is to
be elected, it is explained, he [or she] must appeal to a significant number in that middle ,
since there are just not enough votes at either end of the curve to win an election. Thus he [or she]
must weave together a patchwork of inconsistent and often contradictory positions that
will reflect the diverse political views of his potential constituents. This also limits what
market-oriented think tanks in either Washington or in the various state capitals can offer as
policy options in the debates about the role of government. Even while seeming to be
nudging the debate more in a free-market, smaller government direction, th e
boundaries in which they can frame their proposals are constricted by what
the politicians consider "politically possible." Beyond those boundaries the policy
advocate becomes a "kook," a pie-in-the-sky "nut," an extremist who does not realize that "nobody" is
going to take those views seriously. The policy advocate risks losing political legitimacy and a
hearing in the halls of power-which is why his organization is located in that center of political
decision-making. This often means that policy proposals are "watered down" to be
politically acceptable. Even the defense of a policy is often couched in terms designed to avoid the
At the same time,
impression that its advocates support anything as radical as, well, laissez faire and the end to the
interventionist welfare state. Any detailed and fundamental discussion of government policy is therefore
implicitly ruled out of court.
Once attention is focused on influencing what
government is doing right now, the debate is defined by what is politically

practicable today.
Page 76 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Private Charities CP**

Private charities are more successful than the government at providing aid
Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, 96
(Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute,
December 96, Cato Policy Report, Replacing Welfare,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-18n6-1.html)
Private efforts have been much more successful than the federal government's failed
attempt at charity. America is the most generous nation on earth. Americans already
contribute more than $125 billion annually to charity. In fact, more than 85 percent of all
adult Americans make some charitable contribution each year. In addition, about half of
all American adults perform volunteer work; more than 20 billion hours were worked in
1991. The dollar value of that volunteer work was more than $176 billion. Volunteer work
and cash donations combined bring American charitable contributions to more than $300
billion per year, not counting the countless dollars and time given informally to family members,
neighbors, and others outside the formal charity system. Private charities have been more
successful than government welfare for several reasons. First, private charities are able
to individualize their approach to the circumstances of poor people in ways that
governments can never do. Government regulations must be designed to treat all
similarly situated recipients alike. Glenn C. Loury of Boston University explains the difference
between welfare and private charities on that point. "Because citizens have due process rights
which cannot be fully abrogated . . . public judgments must be made in a manner that
can be defended after the fact, sometimes even in court." The result is that most
government programs rely on the simple provision of cash or other goods and services
without any attempt to differentiate between the needs of recipients.
Government eligibility requirements skew aid distribution
In addition to being better able to target individual needs, private charities are much
better able to target assistance to those who really need help. Because eligibility
requirements for government welfare programs are arbitrary and cannot be changed to
fit individual circumstances, many people in genuine need do not receive assistance,
while benefits often go to people who do not really need them. More than 40 percent of
all families living below the poverty level receive no government assistance. Yet more
than half of the families receiving means-tested benefits are not poor. Thus, a student
may receive food stamps, while a homeless man with no mailing address goes without.
Private charities are not bound by such bureaucratic restrictions.
Governmental programs are inefficient; Private charities arent
Private charity also has a better record of actually delivering aid to recipients.
Surprisingly little of the money being spent on federal and state social welfare programs
actually reaches recipients. In 1965, 70 cents of every dollar spent by the government to fight
Page 77 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
70 cents of every dollar goes, not to poor people,

but to government bureaucrats and others who serve the poor. Few private charities
have the bureaucratic overhead and inefficiency of government programs.
poverty went directly to poor people. Today,
A greater diversity of solutions makes private charities more effective

Second, in general, private charity is much more likely to be targeted to short-term
emergency assistance than to long-term dependence. Thus, private charity provides a
safety net, not a way of life. Moreover, private charities may demand that the poor
change their behavior in exchange for assistance. For example, a private charity may
reduce or withhold benefits if a recipient does not stop using alcohol or drugs, look for a
job, or avoid pregnancy. Private charities are much more likely than government
programs to offer counseling and one-on-one follow-up rather than simply provide a
check. By the same token, because of the separation of church and state, the government cannot
support programs that promote religious values as a way out of poverty. Yet church and
other religious charities have a history of success in dealing with the problems that often
lead to poverty.
Private Charity causes an attitudinal shift encouraging recipients to escape
poverty
Finally, and perhaps most important, private charity requires a different attitude on the
part of both recipients and donors. For recipients, private charity is not an entitlement
but a gift carrying reciprocal obligations. As Father Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute describes it,
"An impersonal check given without any expectations for responsible behavior leads to a
damaged sense of self-worth. The beauty of local [private charitable] efforts to help the
needy is that . . . they make the individual receiving the aid realize that he must work to
live up to the expectations of those helping him out." Private charity demands that
donors become directly involved. Former Yale political science professor James Payne
notes how little citizen involvement there is in government charity:
Private Charity promotes participatory democracy
Private charity demands that donors become directly involved. Former Yale political
science professor James Payne notes how little citizen involvement there is in
government charity: We know now that in most cases of government policy making,
decisions are not made according to the democratic ideal of control by ordinary citizens.
Policy is made by elites, through special interest politics, bureaucratic pressures, and
legislative manipulations. Insiders decide what happens, shaping the outcome according to their own
preferences and their political pull. The citizens are simply bystanders.
Private charity, in
contrast, is based on "having individuals vote with their own time, money, and energy."
Page 78 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Only the counterplan solves informal private networks are not only solve
poverty but protect key values
Ultimately, the struggle to achieve and preserve freedom must take place in the habits and minds of
individuals. And, as admonished by the Constitution of the State of North Carolina (Art. I, Sec. 35), "The
frequent reference to fundamental principles is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty.'' It
is those fundamental principles that deliver economic efficiency and wealth, not the other way around.
Fundamental moral principles or values are determined in the arena of civil society. Values such as thrift,
hard work, honesty, trust and cooperative behavior, based on shared norms, are the keys to improving the
human condition and provide the undergirding for a free-market economy. Just as important are such social
institutions as respect for private property, sanctity of contracts, educational institutions, clubs, charities,
churches, and families. All those institutions provide the glue to hold society together in terms of common
values and provide for the transmission of those values to successive generations. Too often informal
institutions and local networks are trivialized and greater favor is given to the intellectual's narrow
conception of what constitutes knowledge and wisdom. The importance of informal networks such as
friends, church members, neighbors, and families cannot be underestimated--as demonstrated in the
following example of small proprietorships.[1] The critical determinants of a proprietor's success are
perseverance, character, ability, and other personal characteristics. Banks seldom finance the
establishment of such business. Most small businesses are financed through friends and family. The reason
is that those are the people who have the lowest cost in acquiring the necessary information about the
proprietor's characteristics deemed critical for success. Also, friends and family, who lend the proprietor
money, have a personal stake in the business and have an incentive to moderate their likely bias in favor
of the borrower. Clearly, a formal lending institution could query friends and relatives. However, the
information obtained would have greater bias because friends and relatives would not have sufficient stake
in the business to offset any personal bias they had in favor of the borrower.
Privatization promotes choice and increases quality of services to all people

The case for privatization includes other claims besides improved efficiency, budget savings, and increased economic
growth. The key word is choice. Advocates claim that privatization will enlarge the range of
choice for individuals while serving the same essential functions as do traditional
programs. Thus, if Social Security were privatized, the Federal government would still
require people to put aside funds for retirement but would allow them to choose their
own retirement investments. Educational vouchers would not abolish laws requiring children to go to school
but would allow families to choose which one. Asset sales and shifts of services from public agencies to private
contractors might permit greater choice among suppliers. Proponents of privatization maintain that
greater choice would serve the interests of equity. The rich have always been able to
afford private schools; educational vouchers would give the middle classes and the poor
that ability. Social Security, they say, favors whites, whose longer life expectancy
enables them to receive greater retirement benefits than do blacks; privatization would
allegedly correct that bias. According to the privatizers, greater freedom of choice will
generally lead to a more just distribution of benefits.
Product choice because of privatization will resolve the inefficiency preventing
high quality goods and services
Choice is unquestionably the single strongest point in the case for privatiza tion. The
uniformity of public programs and services is often a grave limitation. Even where it is
not logically required, the demands of equal treatment are often interpreted to prohibit
heterogeneity in public services. Rules requiring uniform pricing also impede the
Page 79 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
production of varied services, especially those of high quality. These barriers to

heterogeneity have long been a weakness of public ser vices, but the problem grows
more serious as personal income increases with eco nomic growth. Larger numbers of consumers
demand the more varied, specially designed services available previously only to those with the highest incomes. This
demand for qualityor rather for different qualities constitutes a source of dissatisfaction with the public sector that
may be expected to grow.
Privatizing is a prerequisite to eliminating poverty.

Blanchette, Research Fellow, 07
(Jude Blanchette, Henry Hazlitt Research Fellow at the Foundation for
Economics Education, The Shortcomings of Government Charity May 2007,
The Freeman Volume: 57 Issue: 4
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-shortcomings-of-governmentcharity/) /A.C.
For large charities such as the Salvation Army and smaller local charities run by churches
and other private organizations, the fight against poverty has been going on for the past
150 years. Tragically, standing in their way has been the federal government .
Besides an effort to wage war on poverty beginning in the 1960s, the federal government
has attempted to intercede and dole out aid since the beginning of Franklin Roosevelts New Deal.
These interventions have proven costly and yielded disastrous results . By continually
siphoning funds away from the private sector , lawmakers and bureaucrats further
diminish the ability of civil society to deal with the problem of poverty. (As
Charles Murray shows in Losing Ground, poverty was declining steadily through the 1950s and 1960s up
until the Great Society programs kicked in during the early 1970s.)
If the plight of the poor is to be truly addressed, Americans should study the lessons of the past. Earlier
in the twentieth century, private charities offered a more effective cure for chronic
indigence, and it was through mutually beneficial activities and voluntary funding that the
spirit of American compassion was unleashed. In the best interests of the poor , the
government should withdraw itself completely from all activities designed to

help them and allow civil society its full range of motion .
Unfortunately, most social commentators see increased state action as the best (indeed, the only) way to
fight poverty. With apologies to Ian McEwan, the welfare state has become the repository of collective
fantasy. Private charities, they often argue, financed by volunteers and private donations, cannot meet
the immense burden of welfare provision. Advocates of public assistance see private enterprise as an
economic system that functions on Hobbesian self-interest and that would leave the poor to suffer if profit
could not be squeezed from their labor.
Many proponents of laissez faire recognize these common protestations, but are unable to provide cogent
rebuttal. On the surface it would seem that only government, with its vast infrastructure
and immense financial resources, can improve the plight of the poor. Private charities,
subject to the vagaries of voluntary donations, are a far less reliable source of income.
Yet if this were the case, how is it that after more than 40 years since the Great Society
and more than $8 trillion spent (in 2000 dollars) so little headway has been made by the
government in alleviating poverty ? This is not to say that poverty has not diminished in America .
Indeed, the market economy has virtually eliminated extreme poverty in the United
States. The average poor American lives a lifestyle that would be envied by most of the worlds citizens.
But this is a product of the market economy not government handouts. It is only through wealth
creation, not wealth distribution, that we see the wellspring of human progress.
Page 80 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Private charities solve poverty

Awenius, retired attorney, 84
(Robert Awenius, retired attorney, Why Not Private Charity, November 1984 The Freeman Volume: 34
Issue: 11 http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/why-not-private-charity/) /A.C.
For some period of time there has been considerable evidence that private charity is
superior to government welfare as a means of overcoming poverty in America . Empirical
data suggests that private charity indeed would do more for the poverty-level families of
this nation than is being achieved under the present welfare system. However, we must not
conclude that this seemingly radical plan is anything new in the annals of mankind. In the nineteenth
century one of Englands most powerful voices for social reform, Charles Dickens, professed a belief in
private charity as opposed to public charity. He opposed government charity because of its ineffectiveness.
He was convinced that the polestar of charity was the human beings innate concern for another creature.
He felt that the aid and assistance extended by private persons was more powerful , useful,
and kind than the charity of government . Just to cite his views is to affirm the favored position of
private charity, as in the following statement: Following the Napoleonic Wars much discontent and unrest
prevailed in England, but instead of revolution the Victorian Age brought relative peace, manifested by
great reforms such as the Reform Acts of 1832, the Factory Reform of 1833, and the Poor Laws of 1834.
With these reforms passed, the general bent of the programs was to treat the symptoms of poverty, not
the causes. As a result, there was a great alienation of the working masses and only partial satisfaction
within the commercial and industrial strata of society. That is the very same complaint we hear today
concerning our welfare laws: alienation of welfare clients and complaint of the taxpayers who are
shouldering the burden of the necessary taxation to support the system. Today in the United States
the bulk of the donating public make their contributions to philanthropy by taxes through
their government or privately to organized charities . There is negligible warmth of heart
between the public donors (taxpayers) and the recipientsalbeit, there is slight concern by
those giving funds as to direct knowledge of the state of affairs or indigency of the beneficiaries. There is
undoubtedly more concern in this regard in the case of private charities. Also, there is some little
suspicion on the part of many contributors that a considerable number of those who ask
for charity are undeserving . This same attitude was true during Dickens time when, beginning about
1818, the upper classes made attempts to protect themselves by forming a Mendicity Society, where
subscribers contributed funds to the Society rather than give directly to beggars. The Society investigated
each case to see if each had merit.
Government programs are ineffective and trade-off with private efforts.

Awenius, retired attorney, 84
(Robert Awenius, retired attorney, Why Not Private Charity, November 1984 The Freeman Volume: 34
Issue: 11 http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/why-not-private-charity/) /A.C.
The adoption of welfare state procedures and plans tends to encourage the destructive
activity of the modern state in the mass liquidation and redistribution of wealth . The
normal and hitherto accepted role of government has been to maintain law, justice , and
order, defend the nation abroad, and to permit every man the ownership of his property.
In general, the governments business in the past was to protect the common welfare of its citizens.
The destructive effect of the welfare state is manifested in its expropriation , taxation,
arbitrary creation of money and credit all done in the name of the poor. The effect
or
of
this damaging tendency is to abolish the independent citizen and foster the idea that all
the people should look to Washington for subsistencei.e., to become parasites, wholly
dependent on government for all their needs and wants . With this tendency, the politicians
follow a short-term expediency of approving sophisticated theft (in redistributing the wealth) without
regard to ultimately damaging long-term results.
The very people who have done so much and will do so much in aiding private charity
the great middle classare economically squeezed by the welfare state and find its
Page 81 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
capacity to support private charity greatly diminished.

Private charities solve coercion.
Reed, adjunct scholar, 01
(Lawrence W. Reed, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, president of the Mackinac Center for Public
Policy in Midland, Michigan, Charity and Free Will, 8/9/2001 http://mises.org/story/751)/A.C.
From start to finish, what private charities do is a manifestation of free will . No one is
compelled to provide assistance. No one is coerced to pay for it . No one is required to
accept it. All parties come together of their own, individual volition . And thats the magic
of it. The link between the giver, the provider, and the receiver is strong precisely because
each knows he can walk away from it at the slightest hint of insincerity, broken promises, or
poor performance. Because each party is giving of his own time or resources voluntarily, he tends to
focus on the mission at hand and doesnt get bogged down or diverted by distant or
secondary agendas, like filling out the proper paperwork or currying favor with the political powersthat-be.
Private charity best targets causes, not symptoms.

Johnston, economist, 98
Jim Johnston, economist and a member of the board of directors of the Heartland Institute,Welfare and
Charity: Yes, There Is a Difference, Juny/July 1998 http://www.newcoalition.org/Article.cfm?
artId=768
There are probably more solutions than there are causes for poverty . The reason is that many
"solutions" are not well considered, and sometimes they actually worsen the condition of the poor. Clearly,
effective help for the poor takes more than just good intentions. Wealth and poverty have been important
topics in economics for more than 200 years since Adam Smith, a professor of moral philosophy, published
The Wealth of Nations in 1776. One of the most important contributions made recently to the
literature is by Jennifer Roback Morse, a fellow economist who is a person of deep religious
conviction. Morse has compared government welfare and private charity in a way that
helps to understand the issue in a new light . She points out that private charity operates
to treat particular causes of poverty . The help is tailored to the individual person . By
contrast, government welfare does not, and should not, discriminate among recipients . The
discretion of social workers must be circumscribed in order to reduce corruption in the system.
Taxes trade off with charity.

Garret and Rhine, economic researchers, 09
Thomas A. Garrett and Russell M. Rhine, economic researchers at the Federal Reserve,Government
Growth and Private Contributions to Charity, July 2009 http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2007/2007012.pdf)/A.C.
We obtained the interesting result that a decrease in state and local government spending on education
increases private giving to education, and that increased education giving then leads to a reduction in
federal government spending on education. We argued that this one-way relationship is a result of
changing fundraising efforts and the nature of state and local government versus federal government
education expenditures (general appropriations versus grants, respectively) and the relative size of each
toward total education expenditures. In addition to a reduction in private charitable
contributions resulting from government spending on charitable organizations ,
government growth itself, ignoring the destination of government spending, may reduce private
charitable contributions. Private contributions may decrease because of reduced

Page 82 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
disposable income that results from higher taxes used to fuel future government growth .
Page 83 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****UTILITARIANISM GOOD / DEON BAD*****

**Util Good For Rights**
Utilitarianism upholds self-ownership and thus liberty.
Bailey, lecturer Politics at Princeton, 97
(James Bailey, lecturer Politics at Princeton, 1997, Utilitarianism, Institutions,
and Justice, Oxford University Press, p. 160)
attempts to subvert utilitarianism through appeals to formal
properties about theories of justicesuch as finality and publicitydo not work either. The
I have also tried to show that
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. Yale, 02
(Philip Harvey, J.D. Yale, Spring 2002, Human Rights and Economic Policy
Discourse: Taking Economic and Social Rights Seriously, 33 Colum. Human
Rights L. Rev. 353)
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
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.
in deciding whether legislative enactments comply with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Util protects rights in social and constitutional hierarchies.

Bailey, lecturer Politics at Princeton, 97
(James Bailey, lecturer Politics at Princeton, 1997, Utilitarianism, Institutions, and Justice, Oxford University
Press, p. 153-154)
Even in a world full of rules and institutionslike 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
Page 84 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
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.
Utilitarian calculus is the only way to determine rights relative importance.

Brandt, professor of philosophy @ U Mich. 1992
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pg
199.
Before turning to possible " deeper" difficulties, let me make just one point favorable to the utilitarian view,
that it tells us, in principle, how to find out what are a person's rights, and how stringent they are, relative
to each other, which is much more than can be said of most other theories, unless reliance on intuitions is
supposed to be a definite way of telling what a person's rights are. How does one do this, on the utilitarian
theory? The idea, of course, is that we have to determine whether it would maximize long-range
expectable utility to include recognition of certain rights in the moral code of a society, or to include a
certain right with a certain degree of stringency as compared with other rights. (For instance, it might be
optimistic to include a right to life with more stringency than a right to liberty and this with more
stringency than the right to pursue happiness.) Suppose, for instance, one wants to know what should be
the scope of the " right to life." Then it would be proper to inquire whether the utility-maximizing moral
system would require people to retrain from taking the life of other adults, more positively to support life
by providing adequate medical care, to abstain from life-termination for seriously defective infants or to
refrain from abortion, to require abstaining from assisting a person with terminal illness in ending his own
life if he requests it, to refrain from assisting in the discharge of a sentence of capital punishment, or to
refrain from killing combatants in war time and so on. If one wants to know whether the right to life is
stronger than the right of free speech on political subjects, it is proper to inquire whether the utility
maximizing moral code would prefer free speech to the cost of lives (and in what circumstances).
Page 85 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Util Good: Generics**

Their moral imperatives revolve around a flawed libertarian methodconsequences must be evaluated first to escape the cycle
Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97
(Jefferey Friedman, PoliSci Bernard U, 1997, "What's Wrong with
Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pp. 435-436)
The effect of libertarian straddling on libertarian scholarship is suggested by a passage in the scholarly
appendix to Boazs collection of libertarian essays, The Libertarian Reader. There, Tom G. Palmer (also of
the Cato Institute) writes that in libertarian scholarship, the moral imperatives of peace and voluntary
cooperation are brought together with a rich understanding of the spontaneous order made possible by
such voluntary cooperation, and of the ways in which coercive intervention can disorder the world and set
in motion complex trains of unintended consequences (Boaz r997b, 416, emphasis added). Palmers
ambiguous brought together suggests (without coming right out and saying) that even if there were
no rich understanding of spontaneous order, libertarianism would be sustained by moral

imperatives? But in that case, why develop the rich understanding of spontaneous order
in the first place, and why emphasize its importance now that it has been developed?
Spontaneous order is, on Palmers own terms, irrelevant, since even if a rich understanding of it yielded the
conclusion that markets are less orderly or less spontaneous than states, or that the quality of the order
they produce is inferior to that produced by states, we would still be compelled to be libertarians by moral
imperatives. The premise of the philosophical approach is that nothing can possibly trump freedom-cumprivate property. But if libertarian freedom is an end in itself and is the greatest of all values,
ones endorsement of it should not be affected in the slightest by such empirical

questions as whether libertarianism would spell starvation or warfare. The premise of the
empirical approach is, conversely, that such consequences do matter. Why investigate
the effects of libertarianism if they could not conceivably outweigh the putative intrinsic
value of private property? If a priori reasoning tells us that laissez-faire capitalism is just,
come what may, then why should we care to find out what may, in fact, come?
Policy must be viewed through a consequentialist framework- slipping into the
libertarian mindset only recreates the root cause of the affirmative harms
Friedman, Political Science at Bernard University, 97
(Jefferey Friedman, PoliSci Bernard U, 1997, "What's Wrong with
Libertarianism," Critical Review, Volume: 3, pp. 458-459)
On the one hand, the reclamation of the Enlightenment legacy can lead in far more directions than the
politicalscience path I have suggested. It is surely important to launch anthropological, economic,
historical, sociological, and psychological investigations of the preconditions of human happiness. And
post-libertarian cultural historians and critics are uniquely positioned to analyze the unstated assumptions
that take the place of the requisite knowledge in determining democratic attitudes. A prime candidate
would seem to be the overwhelming focus on intentions as markers for the desirability of
a policy. If a policy is well intended, this is usually taken to be a decisive consideration in
its favor. This heuristic might explain the moralism that observers since Tocqueville have noticed afflicts
democratic cultures. To date, this phenomenon is relatively unexplored. Analogous opportunities for
insightful postlibertarian research can be found across the spectrum of political behavior. What is
nationalism, for example, if not a device that helps an ignorant public navigate the murky waters of politics
by applying a simple us-versus-them test to any proposed policy? Pursuit of these possibilities, however,
must be accompanied by awareness of the degeneration of postwar skepticism into libertarian ideology. If
the post-libertarian social scientist yields to the hope of re-establishing through

consequentialist research the antigovernment politics that has until now been sustained
by libertarian ideology; she will only recreate the conditions that have served to retard
serious empirical inquiry. It is fashionable to call for political engagement by scholars and
to deny the possibility that one can easily isolate ones work from ones political
sympathies. But difficulty is no excuse for failing to try. Libertarians have even less of an excuse
Page 86 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
than most, since, having for so long accused the intellectual mainstream of bias and
insulation from refutation, they should understand better than anyone the importance of
subverting ones own natural intellectual complacency with the constant reminder that
one might be wrong. The only remedy for the sloppiness that has plagued libertarian
scholarship is to become ones own harshest critic. This means thinking deeply and
skeptically about ones politics and its premises and, if one has libertarian sympathies,
directing ones scholarship not at vindicating them, but at finding out if they are
mistaken.
Governments must weigh consequences
Harries, editor and founder of National Interest, Senior Fellow at Centre for
Independent Studies, 94
(Owen Harries, editor and founder of National Interest, Senior Fellow at Centre
for Independent Studies, Spring 1993/1994, Power and Civilization, The
National Interest)
Performance is the test. Asked directly by a Western interviewer, In principle, do you believe in one
standard of human rights and free expression?, Lee immediately answers, Look, it is not a matter of
principle but of practice. This might appear to represent a simple and rather crude pragmatism. But in its
context it might also be interpreted as an appreciation of the fundamental point made by Max Weber that,
in politics, it is the ethic of responsibility rather than the ethic of absolute ends that is
appropriate. While an individual is free to treat human rights as absolute, to be observed
whatever the cost, governments must always weigh consequences and the competing claims
of other ends. So once they enter the realm of politics, human rights have to take their
place in a hierarchy of interests, including such basic things as national security and the
promotion of prosperity. Their place in that hierarchy will vary with circumstances, but no responsible
government will ever be able to put them always at the top and treat them as inviolable
and over-riding. The cost of implementing and promoting them will always have to be considered.
Moral absolutism suffers from tunnel vision that generates evil and political
irrelevance
Isaac, PhD.Yale, Prof. PoliSci Indiana-Bloomington, dir. Center for the Study of
Democracy and Public Life, 02
(Jeffrey C. Isaac, PhD.Yale, Prof. PoliSci Indiana-Bloomington, dir. Center for
the Study of Democracy and Public Life, Spring 2002, End, Means, and
Politics, Dissent Magazine, vol. 49, no. 2)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an
unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern
may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal
flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of ones intention does not ensure the achievement
of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised
parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view
them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it
fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of
powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics-as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating
violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it
fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions;
it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just
as the alignment with good may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of good
that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough
Page 87 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
that ones goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the
effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically
contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not
true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
Utilitarianism key to policy making
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.731-2, professor of
law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law Journal. The Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy,
Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)
Evolutionary progression toward majoritarian decision-making follows from the utilitarian function of social
organization to enhance human need/want fulli1lment. Because the need/want preference of
community members are best known to them, resource allocations and behavior
constraints that significantly reflect their in- put best implement those preferences. The
need/want fulfillment of such members expands with their approval of community
decision-making institutions. Such approval lowers the costs of dissenter disruption while
increasing psychological security and productive efficiency. The utilitarian enhancedfulfillment goal is most effectively implemented by communities that optimize (not
maximize) individual participation in policy formulation . Optimal participation involves the
selection of capable officials who make independent community fulfillment decisions but remain subject to
effective community supervision. Self-constrained majoritarianism thus appears to be the evolving political
counterpart of utilitarianism, a continuity suggested by the progression of western nations from autocracy
toward representative democracy, the enhanced need/want fulfillment that has accompanied the
progression, and the inability of totalitarian governments to match that fulfillment.
Policymakers should adapt utilitarian calculus applicable throughout society

Goodin90 [RobertE. Goodin The Utilitarian Response. Ed p. 140-1 http://books.google.com/books?
id=l3ZBwjK_1_QC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=%22That,+I+submit,+is+a+fallacy
%22+goodin&source=bl&ots=9hUQGnLTzV&sig=URHUw3uamFPyVmKwTyG1onBQvZI&hl=en&ei=zKxmSsf
VMpCEtgfLvP3yDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1]
The distinction I shall here propose works along a dimension orthogonal to that one. Instead of
differentiating utilitarianisms on the basis of what they are used to choose, I suggest doing so on the basis
of who is supposed to use the utilirarian calculus to make choices, Implicitly, contemporary discussions of
varieties of utilitatianism are all standardly addresses, first and foremost, to individuals acting in their
personal capacities and making choices which, while they may affect others as well, principally affect the
choosers own lives, Implicitly, public officials choices of general social policy. A different menu of options
in some respects greater, in others, less, but in any case different- is available to public and private users.
That, I submit, is a fallacy. It does not matter who is using the utilitarian calculus, in what circumstances
and for what purposes. Using the felicific calculus for micro-level purposes of guiding individuals choices of
personal conduct is altogether different from using it for macro-level purposes of guiding public officials
shoices of general social policy. A different menu of options in some respects greater, in others, less, but
in any case different is available to public and private choosers. Those differences are such as to
neutralize in the public sphere, most of the objections standardly lodged against utilitarianism in the
private sphere. True through such complaints may be as applied to utilitarianism as a standard of personal
conduct, they are irrelevant (or anyway much less problematic) as applied to utilitarianism as a standard of
public policy. Or so I shall argue.
Page 88 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
In a nuclear world, you have to weigh consequences

Bok, Prof. Phil. Brandeis, 88
(Sissela Bok, Prof. Phil. Brandeis, 1988, Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, ed.
David Rosenthal and Fudlou Shehadi, pp. 202-203)
The same argument can be made for Kants other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: So act as to
use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an
end, never simply as a means; and So act as if you were always through actions a law-making member
in a universal Kingdom of Ends. No one with a concern for humanity could consistently will to risk
eliminating humanity in the person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all members in a
universal Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice. To risk their collective death for the sake of following
ones conscience would be, as Rawls said, irrational, crazy. And to say that one did not intend
such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop other persons from bringing it about
would be beside the point when the end of the world was at stake. For although it is true
that we cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit , the Latin
maxim presents a case where we would have to take such a responsibility seriouslyperhaps
to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing an innocent person, in order that the world not
perish.
Utilitarianism necessitates public policy that requires that leaders take the
action which is in the best interest of people
Shaw Philosophy Professor 1999 (William H. Shaw, 1999, Philosophy and Chair
of the Philosophy at SJSU, contemporary ethics: taking account of
utilitarianism p 171-2)
Utilitarianism ties right and wrong to the promotion of well-being, but it is not only n personal ethic or a
guide to individual conduct. lt is also a "public philosophy" - that is, a normative basis for public policy and
the structuring of our social, legal, and political institutions. Indeed, it was just this aspect of utilitarianism
that primarily engaged Bentham, john Stuart Mill, his father James, and their friends and votaries. For them
utilitarianism was, first and foremost, a social and political philosophy and only secondarily a private or
personal moral code. In particular, they saw utilitarianism as providing the yardstick by which to measure,
assess, and, where necessary, reform government social and economic policy and the judicial institutions
of their day. In the public realm , utilitarianism is especially compelling. Because of its
consequentialist character, a utilitarian approach to public policy requires officials to

base their actions, procedures, and programs on the most accurate and detailed
understanding they can obtain of the circumstances in which they are operating and
the likely results of the alternatives open to them . Realism and empiricism are the hallmarks of a
utilitarian orientation, not customary practice, unverified abstractions, or wishful Promotion of the well
being of all seems to be the appropriate, indeed the only sensible, touchstone for assessing public policies
and institutions, and the standard objections to utilitarianism as a personal morality carry little
or no weight against it when viewed as a public philosophy . Consider, for instance, the
criticisms that utilitarianism is too impersonal and ignores one's individual attachments and personal
commitments, that it is coldly calculating and concerned only with maximizing, that it demands too much
of moral agents and that it permits one to violate certain basic moral restraints on the treatment of others.
The previous two chapters addressed sorne of these criticisms; others will be dealt with in Chapter 8. The
point here, though, is that far from undermining utilitarianism as a public philosophy , these
criticisms highlight its strengths. We want public officials to be neutral, impersonal. and
detached and to proceed with their eyes firmly on the effects of the policies they pursue
and the institutions that their decisions shape. Policy making requires public officials to
Page 89 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
address general issues, typical conditions. and common circumstances. Inevitably, they
must do this through general rules, not on a case by case basis. As explained later in this chapter, this
fact precludes public officials from violating the rights of individuals as a matter of policy.
Moreover, by organizing the efforts of countless individuals and compelling each of us to play our part in
collective endeavors to enhance welfare, public officials can make it less likely that utilitarianism will
demand too much of any one individual because others are doing too little. Utilitarians will seek to
direct and coordinate people's actions through effective public policy and to reshape, in
utility-enhancing ways, the institutions that structure the choices people face. By doing
so, utilitarians can usually accomplish more good than they can through isolated
individual action, however dedicated and well intentioned . For this reason, they will strive to
Easter institutions that false over from individuals much of the task of promoting the general welfare of
society. General welfare is a broad goal, of course, and sensible policies and institutions
will typically focus on more specific desiderata - such as promoting productivity,

increasing individual freedom and opportunity, improving peoples physical health,
guaranteeing their personal security, and so on that contribute significantly to
people's well-being. Implementing even there goals can prove difficult. Furthermore, many of the
problems facing society have no simple answers because they are tangled up with contested issues of fact
and controversial questions of psychology, sociology, and economics. To the extent that utilitarians
disagree among themselves over these matters, their policy recommendations will diverge. Nevertheless,
by clarifying what is at stake and continually orienting discussion toward the promotion of well-being, a.
utilitarian approach provides the necessary framework for addressing questions of institutional design and
for fashioning effective public policy. The present chapter explicates the utilitarian approach to three
matters that have long engaged social and political philosophers and that concern.
Page 90 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Consequences matter the tunnel vision of moral absolutism generates evil

and political irrelevance
Deontology is bad in the context of public policy five reasons

Woller, 1997 (Gary, Economics Professor at BYU, Policy Currents, June,
http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf , p. 11)
At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for
public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in
public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a
regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually
making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies
the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that
any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so . Any number of policies might
work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That
deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather
significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to
be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring
the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can,
as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an
extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of
regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984;
Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be
troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The
number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be
employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate
against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy . It is
seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It
therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link
between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably
assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the meansend language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety
are an insufficient, though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.
Maximizing all lives is the only way to affirm equal and unconditional human
dignity
Cummiskey, 1996 (David, Associate Philosophy Professor at Bates College, Kantian
Page 91 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Consequentialism, p. 145-146)
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some
abstract social entity. It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive
overall social good. Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost
for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that to use a person in this way
does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the
only life he has. But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our
failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we fail to
sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one
life, who will bear the cost of our inaction . In such a situation, what would a conscientious
Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? A morally
good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that rational nature
exists as an end in itself (GMM 429). Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all
conduct. If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value, then the rational
solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many
rational beings as possible (chapter 5). In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist
Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints. As we saw in chapter 1, however, even most
Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered constraints require a non- value-based
rationale. But we have seen that Kants normative theory is based on an unconditionally valuable
end. How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings
even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings? If the moral law is
based on the value of rational beings and their ends, then what is the rationale for prohibiting a
moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value? If I sacrifice some for the sake of
others, I do not use them arbitrarily, and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational
beings. Persons may have dignity, that is, an unconditional and incomparable worth that
transcends any market value (GMM 436), but persons also have a fundamental equality that
dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others (chapters 5 and 7). The
concept of the end-in-itself does not support the view that we may never force another to
bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational
beings, then equal consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save
many.
Utilitarianism is the most moral outlookprovides the most benefits for the
most number of people
Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethic, Developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire
Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer, This article appeared originally in Issues in
Ethics V2 N1 (Winter 1989), http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/calculating.html
Over the years, the principle of utilitarianism has been expanded and refined so that today there are many
variations of the principle. For example, Bentham defined benefits and harms in terms of pleasure and
pain. John Stuart Mill, a great 19th century utilitarian figure, spoke of benefits and harms not in terms of
pleasure and pain alone but in terms of the quality or intensity of such pleasure and pain. Today utilitarians
often describe benefits and harms in terms of the satisfaction of personal preferences or in purely
economic terms of monetary benefits over monetary costs. Utilitarians also differ in their views about the
kind of question we ought to ask ourselves when making an ethical decision. Some utilitarians maintain
that in making an ethical decision, we must ask ourselves: "What effect will my doing this act in this
situation have on the general balance of good over evil?" If lying would produce the best consequences in
a particular situation, we ought to lie. Others, known as rule utilitarians, claim that we must choose that
act that conforms to the general rule that would have the best consequences. In other words, we must ask
ourselves: "What effect would everyone's doing this kind of action have on the general balance of good
over evil?" So, for example, the rule "to always tell the truth" in general promotes the good of everyone
and therefore should always be followed, even if in a certain situation lying would produce the best
consequences. Despite such differences among utilitarians, however, most hold to the general principle
that morality must depend on balancing the beneficial and harmful consequences of our conduct.
Page 92 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Ethics are accessed through the evaluation of consequences through an

impartial outlook
David Sanford Horner, Policies for a nanosociety: Can we learn now from our future mistakes? 2005 bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar
At the same time Moor wishes to retain the notion that consequences count that is that the evaluation
of a given policy requires the evaluation of the consequences and often the consequences of that policy
compared with other the consequences of other possible policies (Moor, 1999, p.66). Moors approach
involves two stages. Firstly, the application of an impartiality test and then secondly the appraisal of
the various outcomes and consequences of actions and policies, weighing the good consequences
and the bad consequences, of those policies surviving the impartiality test. In the first stage
deliberation takes place over the various policies to determine whether or not they meet ethical criteria. A
policy is determined to be ethical if (a) it does not cause any unnecessary harm to individuals and groups
and (b) it supports individual rights, the fulfilling of duties etc. In the second stage the best policy is
selected from the set of just policies arrived at in the deliberation stage by ranking ethical policies in
terms of benefits and (justifiable) harms. In carrying out this evaluation of policies we are required to:
(a) weigh carefully between the good consequences and bad consequences in ethical policies, and (b)
distinguish between disagreements about facts and disagreements about principles and values, when
deciding which ethical policy should be adopted (Tavani, 2004, 60 61).
Turn calculation is inevitable and justified every action requires calculation,

and refusing to engage in calculation means allowing the worst atrocities to
occur.
Campbell, Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle, 1998
[David, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia, p. 186-188]
"that justice exceeds law and calculation, that the unpresentable
cannot and should not serve as alibi for stay ing out of juridico-political
battles, within an institution or a state, or between institutions or states and others. "
Indeed, "incalculable justice requires us to calculate." From where do these insistences come? What is behind, what is
That undecidability resides within the decision, Derrida argues,
ex ceeds the determinable
109
animating, these imperatives? It is both the character of infinite justice as a heteronomic relationship to the other, a relationship that because of its
"left to itself, the incalculable and giving (donatrice) idea of justice is

always very close to the bad, even to the worst, for it can always be reappropriated by the
most perverse calculation." 170 The necessity of calculating the incalculable thus
responds to a duty, a duty that inhabits the instant of madness and compels the decision
to avoid "the bad," the "perverse calculation," even "the worst." This is the duty that also
dwells with deconstructive thought and makes it the starting point , the "at least necessary condition," for
the organization of resistance to totalitarianism in all its forms. And it is a duty that
responds to practical political concerns when we rec ognize that Derrida names the bad,
the perverse, and the worst as those violences "we recognize all too well without yet having thought
them through, the crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, reli gious or nationalist
fanaticism."
undecidability multiplies responsi bility, and the fact that
Furthermore, the duty within the decision, the obligation that recognizes the necessity of negotiating the possibilities provided by the impossibilities
of justice, is not content with simply avoiding, con taining, combating, or negating the worst-violence-though it could certainly begin with those strategies.
Instead, this responsibility, which is the responsibility of responsibility, commissions a "utopian" strat egy. Not, a strategy that is beyond all bounds of
possibility so as to be considered "unrealistic," but one
the necessity of calculation takes the possibility summoned by the

calculation as far as possible, "must take it as far as possible, beyond the place we find
ourselves and beyond the already identifiable zones of morality or politics or law, beyond
the distinction between national and international, public and private, and so on.""' As Derrida
which in respecting
declares, "The condition of possibility of this thing called responsibility is a certain experience and experiment of the possibility of the impossible: the
testing of the aporia from which one may invent the only possible invention, the impossible invention.""' This leads Derrida to enunciate a proposition
that many, not the least of whom are his Habermasian critics, could hardly have expected: "Nothing seems to me less outdated than the classical
emancipatory ideal. We cannot attempt to disqualify it today, whether crudely or with sophistication, at least not without treating it too lightly and forming
the worst complicities."14
Residing within-and not far below the surface-of Derrida's account of the experience of the undecidable as the context for
the decision is the duty of deconstructive thought, the responsibility for the other, and the opposition to totalitarianism it entails.
The Levinasian supplement that Critchley argues deconstruction requires with respect to politics thus draws out that which is already
present. It is, though, perhaps an element that needs to be drawn out, for Derrida has been candid about, and often criticized for, his
political hesitancy. In answer to a question about the potential for translating the "theoretical radicality of deconstruction" into a
Page 93 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
praxis," Derrida confessed (his term) "that I have never succeeded in directly relating deconstruction to existing
political codes and programmes."
This "failure" is derived not from any apolitical sentiment
within deconstructive thought but from the "fundamentally metaphysical"
nature of the political codes within which both the right and the left presently
operate. The problem for politics that this disjuncture cre ates is, according to Derrida,
that one has "to gesture in opposite di rections at the same time: on the one
hand to preserve a distance and suspicion with regard to the official political
codes governing reality; on the other, to intervene here and now in a practical
and engaged manner whenever the necessity arises." This, Derrida laments, results in a "dual
"radical political
115
allegiance" and "perpetual uneasiness" whereby the logic of an argument structured in terms of "on the one hand" and "on the
other hand" may mean that political action, which follows from a decision between the competing hands, is in the end insufficient to the
intellectual promise of deconstructive thought 16 But in The Other Heading, Derrida's reflection on the question and politics of
European identity, the difficulty of simultaneously gesturing in different directions is posed in an affirmative political manner.
Rejection of prediction is an implicit prediction which undercuts good

predictions.
Fitzsimmons 06
(Michael, defense analyst in Washington D.C. for Global Politics and Strategy. The Problem of Uncertainty
in Strategic Planning. 484.4 (2006), pp. 131-146.
<http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/00396330601062808>; d/l 7/15/09)
Finally, the planning for post-war operations in Iraq offers another perspective on the tangled relationship
between uncertainty and strategy. Problems of predicting the future are at the heart of intelligence
analysis and its role in national-security strategy. While few would question the fragility of intelligence
estimates or the chequered history of judgements made by the US intelligence community, prediction
remains an important part of its mission. Beyond collecting and reporting raw information, intelligence
organisations are often expected to identify trends and consider the implications of alternative strategies
on the behaviour of allies and adversaries. To accomplish this difficult mission, intelligence analysts must
rely on two crucial resources: good analytic tradecraft that provides transparent standards of evidence,
and subject-matter expertise that enables an appreciation for the subtleties of complex human
phenomena. But standards of evidence and subject-matter expertise are exactly the sorts of factors
decision-makers sceptical of the reliability of prediction might be apt to discount. If uncertainty defines the
strategic environment, then what greater insight can the expert analyst bring to bear on strategy than the
generalist? This attitude could marginalise intelligence analysis in strategic decision-making. US planning
for the aftermath of the Iraq War exemplifies how such marginalisation has played a significant role in
recent strategic decision-making. In the judgement of Paul Pillar, the senior US intelligence official for
Middle East analysis from 2000 to 2005, what is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is
not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of
the most important U.S. policy decisions in recent decades.26 While great volumes of ink have been
spilled in the debate over intelligence estimates of Iraqi nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, there is
much more clarity about the intelligence communitys estimates of the political environment the US would
face in post-war Iraq. Those estimates accurately predicted most of the major challenges that developed,
from insurgency and sectarian violence to the strengthening of Irans geopolitical hand and the galvanising
effect on foreign radical Islamists.27 The reported expectations of most key administration officials bore
little resemblance to these predictions.28 Rumsfelds famous distinction between known unknowns and
unknown unknowns came in response to a reporters question on the intelligence supporting assertions of
linkages between the Iraqi government and terrorist organisations.29 The implication of his remark was
that presumption of a genuine Iraqiterrorist linkage was justified because the absence of evidence to
support the presumption did not conclusively disprove it. Here, as with the post-war planning assumptions,
uncertainty served to level the playing field between facts and analysis, on the one hand, and the
preconceptions of senior leadership on the other. Many of the US governments experts on Iraq and the
Arab world outside the intelligence community were also marginalised in the planning for the Iraq War. In
2002, the State Department launched the Future of Iraq Project to write a detailed plan for the
governance of a post-Saddam democratic Iraq. Participants included dozens of career Middle East
specialists from the State Department and the intelligence community, as well as native Iraqis. The
projects report covered a wide variety of topics, from development of a constitution to the management of
municipal utilities. In the end, however, leaders in the White House and the Pentagon viewed the report as
too pessimistic and ignored many of its conclusions.30 Another well-publicised instance where decisionPage 94 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
makers rejected expert advice on weak grounds was the public exchange between Pentagon civilian
leaders and the Army chief of staff regarding the number of ground troops required for successful posthostilities operations in Iraq. One month prior to the invasion, General Eric Shinseki told the Senate Armed
Services Committee that establishing security and conditions for political stability in Iraq following the end
of major combat operations would take several hundred thousand coalition ground troops. His estimate
was based on the application of troop-topopulation ratios from previous security and stabilisation
operations.31 While fairly rudimentary, the thrust of this analysis was shared by a variety of expert
analysts outside the government.32 Two days after Shinsekis testimony, both Rumsfeld and Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz publicly renounced the estimate. Wolfowitz told the House Budget
Committee that Shinseki was wildly off the mark, and offered several unsubstantiated and, in retrospect,
incorrect predictions about post-war attitudes toward American forces among Iraqis and US allies. Having
made these predictions, he then proceded to reject the validity of making predictions, insisting that the
most fundamental point is that we simply cannot predict ... we have no idea what we will need unless and
until we get there on the ground.33 In effect, by denying the validity of prediction, Wolfowitz locked
himself into a very specific but implicit prediction that conformed to his own preconceptions. The point is
neither that Army generals are always better qualified to make such judgements than civilians, nor that
hindsight shows Shinsekis judgement to be better than Wolfowitzs. It is that the grounds for the decision
that was actually made on troop levels were conspicuously shakier than those of Shinsekis judgement,
and yet they prevailed. The mistakes that were made in the Bush administrations post-war planning for
Iraq are entirely consistent with a bias in decision-making against the authority of expertise in predicting
the future, and the invocation of uncertainty in this instance became a rationale for rigidity in planning
rather than flexibility.
Predictions are key to check disasters

Kurasawa 04
[Fuyuki Kurasawa, Professor of Sociology York University of Toronto, Cautionary Tales: The Global Culture
of Prevention and the Work of Foresight, Constellations, 11(4), 2004]
When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from
some intellectual circles is a deep-seated skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically
postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even
harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of
historical analysis. If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to
be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be
predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The
future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose
speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and
turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise While this
argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the
necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latters total
opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute
certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and
to prepare for crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility
into the work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for
responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final
section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency
and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on
the shoulders of present generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of
destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a
result of human action shaped by decisions in the present including, of course, trying to anticipate and
prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our successors. Combining a sense of analytical
contingency toward the future and ethical responsibility for it, the idea of early warning is making its way
into preventive action on the global stage. Despite the fact that not all humanitarian, techno- scientific,
and environmental disasters can be predicted in advance, the multiplication of independent sources of
knowledge and detection mechanisms enables us to foresee many of them before it is too late. Indeed, in
recent years, global civil societys capacity for early warning has dramatically increased, in no small part
due to the impressive number of NGOs that include catastrophe prevention at the heart of their mandates.
These organizations are often the first to detect signs of trouble, to dispatch investigative or fact-finding
missions, and to warn the international community about impending dangers; to wit, the lead role of
Page 95 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
environmental groups in sounding the alarm about global warming and species depletion or of
humanitarian agencies regarding the AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, frequently months or even years
before Western governments or multilateral institutions followed suit
Despite studies predictions experts are still trustworthy

Caplan 5
[Bryan Caplan, Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, EconLog, 12-26-2005,
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2005/12/tackling_tetloc_1.html]
Philip Tetlock, one of my favorite social scientists, is making waves with his new book, Expert Political
Judgment. Tetlock spent two decades asking hundreds of political experts to make predictions about
hundreds of issues. With all this data under his belt, he then asks and tries to answer a bunch of Big
Questions, including "Do experts on average have a greater-than-chance ability to predict the future?," and
"What kinds of experts have the greatest forecasting ability?" This book is literally awesome - to
understand Tetlock's project and see how well he follows through fills me with awe. And that's tough for me
to admit, because it would be easy to interpret Tetlock's work as a great refutation of my own. Most of my
research highlights the systematic belief differences between economists and the general public, and
defends the simple "The experts are right, the public is wrong," interpretation of the facts. But Tetlock finds
that the average expert is an embarassingly bad forecaster. In fact, experts barely beat what Tetlock calls
the "chimp" stategy of random guessing. Is my confidence in experts completely misplaced? I think not.
Tetlock's sample suffers from severe selection bias. He deliberately asked relatively difficult and
controversial questions. As his methodological appendix explains, questions had to "Pass the 'don't bother
me too often with dumb questions' test." Dumb according to who? The implicit answer is "Dumb according
to the typical expert in the field." What Tetlock really shows is that experts are overconfident if you exclude
the questions where they have reached a solid consensus.
Page 96 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Consequentialism accesses their internal linkwe make the best decisions

based on moral AND utilitarian consequences
Normative Ethics by Shelley Kagan, Westview Press 1997, Page 61, http://books.google.com/books?
id=YllnYJ9R0q0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=deontology+vs.+consequentialism&client=firefoxa&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1
Consequentialism is not calculativein fact, it rejects complete calculation

because thats not an accurate way to determine impacts
Page 97 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Concrete decision making - Only Utilitarianism makes justifications based on

the end result rather then ambiguous language
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.758-9, professor of
Disregarding the significance of evolutionary survival, nonutilitarian intuitionists deny that utilitarianism
provides a "moral" basis for choice between competing need/want fulfillments. They seek instead to
identify the intuitive "preexisting rights that must, they insist, underlie such choice.' But they disclose no
nonrnystical. source of the rights,*' which are, in fact, derived from the search for increased per capita
need/want fulfillment. Although frequently accorded a transcendental immutability, rights identify the
resource and behavior allocations that are perceived by the community as enhancing such fulfillment.
Indeed, revelation of various a priori rights or moral standards is often accompanied by
disparagement of other such rights or standards as crypto-nti1itarian. A priori rights

divorced from need/want fulfillment depend on the magic power of language. When not
determined by social consequences, the morality of behavior tends to be resolved by
definition of the words used to characterize the behavior. Necessarily ambiguous
generalizations, evolved to describe and correlate heterogeneous events, acquire a
controlling normative role . Definition, of course, reflects human experience. But the equivocal
significance of that experience may be replaced with the illusory security of fixed meaning. Ethical
connotations are then drawn not from the underlying empirical lessons that provide a context for meaning,
but from inflexible linguistic "principles and their emotional overtones. Derivation of meaning from the
social purposes that engender the terminology leads to a utilitarian appraisal of need] want fulfillment.
The preexisting rights of nonutilitarian morality are usually identified as components of

"liberty," "equality, and autonomy,"' labels that suggest a concern with individual
need/want fulfillment and its social constraints. Liberty is perceived as freedom for
behavior that improves the quality of existence, such as speech, religion, and other "civil
rights activity; equality as rejection of disparate individual worth and "discriminatory"
treatment; autonomy as the individual choice implied by liberty and equality.
Utilitarianism prevents nuclear war
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.758, professor of
Without effective reciprocity, self-defense is the only survival remedy. Passive resistance to a Hitler has
survival costs that are acceptable to few communities. Rejection of those costs is perhaps being
accommodated with the intolerable survival costs of nuclear warfare by payment of more immediate
nuclear-deterrence costs. Negotiations to reduce the nuclear-deterrence costs confront the participants
with a predicament like the "prisone1s dilemma"' if nuclear weapons can escape detection: although
both participants would benefit from a reduction, each is impelled to increase its nuclear weapons as
protection against an undetected increase by the other. But each may also be impelled to refrain from their
use. If that accommodation fails, so may the evolutionary process. While the accommodation holds,
nonnuclear self defense remains the survival remedy pending a reciprocity solution.
The survival costs of nonnuclear warfare of course continue to be high, but when the
survival costs of capitulation are perceived as exceeding them, compensation for
combatants commensurate with risk would provide a kind of market accommodation for
those induced thereby to volunteer and would reduce the disproportionate wartime-conscription assessment.
Page 98 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Utilitarianism inevitable
utilitarianism reconciles autonomy and reciprocity, surmounts the strident intuitionist attack, and exposes
the utilitarian underpinning of a priori rights." In the context of the information provided by biology,
anthropology, economics, and other disciplines, a functional description of evolutionary utilitarianism
identities enhanced per capita need/want fulfillment as the long-term utilitarianmajoritarian goal, illuminates the critical relationship of self interest to that goal, and discloses the trialand-error process of accommodation and priority assignment that implements it . The description
confirms that process as arbiter of the tension between individual welfare and group
welfare (i.e., between autonomy and reciprocity)* and suggests a utilitarian imperative:
that utilitarianism is unavoidable, that morality rests ultimately on utilitarian self interest,
that in the final analysis all of us are personal utilitarians and most of us are social
utilitarians.
Utilitarianism is inevitable - people are inherently utilitarians
Gino et al 2008 [Francesca Gino Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Don Moore Tepper Business School, Carnegie
Mellon University, Max H. Bozman Harvard Business School, Harvard University
No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-080.pdf]
A home seller neglects to inform the buyer about the homes occasional problems with flooding in the
basement: The seller intentionally omits it from the houses legally required disclosure document, and fails
to reveal it in the negotiation. A few months after the closing, the basement is flooded and destroyed, and
the buyer spends $20,000 in repairs. Most people would agree that the sellers unethical behavior
deserves to be punished. Now consider the same behavior on the part of a second seller, except that it is
followed by a long drought, so the buyer never faces a flooded basement. Both sellers were similarly
unethical, yet their behavior produced different results . In this paper, we seek to answer the
question: Do people judge the ethicality of the two sellers differently, despite the fact that
their behavior was the same? And if so, under what conditions are peoples judgments of ethicality
influenced by outcome information? Past research has shown some of the ways that people
tend to take outcome information into account in a manner that is not logically justified
(Baron & Hershey, 1988; Allison, Mackie, & Messick, 1996). Baron and Hershey (1988) labeled this
tendency as the outcome bias.
Extending prior work on the effect of outcome severity on judgments (Berg-Cross, 1975; Lipshitz, 1989;
Mitchell & Kalb, 1981; Stokes & Leary, 1984), their research found that people judge the wisdom and
competence of decision makers based on the nature of the outcomes they obtain. For
instance, in one study participants were presented with a hypothetical scenario of a
surgeon deciding whether or not to perform a risky operation (Baron & Hershey, 1988).
The surgeon knew the probability of success. After reading about identical decision
processes, participants learned either that the patient lived or died, and were asked to
rate the quality of the No Foul 4 surgeons decision to operate. When the patient died,
participants decided it was a mistake to have operated in the first place.
Page 99 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Consequentialism is best, short term impacts are key even when the long-term
impacts are uncertain
Cowen 2004 [Tyler Cowen, Department of Economics George Mason University
The epistemic Problem does not refute consequentialismNovember2,2004
http://docs.google.com/gview?
a=v&q=cache:JYKgDUM8xOcJ:www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/Epistemic2.pdf+
%22nuclear+attack+on+Manhattan%22+cowen&hl=en&gl=us]
Let us start with a simple example, namely a suicide bomber who seeks to detonate a nuclear device in
midtown Manhattan. Obviously we would seek to stop the bomber, or If we stop the bomber, we know that
in the short run we will save millions of lives, avoid a massive tragedy, and protect the long-term strength,
prosperity, and freedom of the United States. Reasonable moral people, regardless of the details of their
meta-ethical stances, should not argue against stopping the bomber. No matter how hard we try to stop
the bomber, we are not, a priori, committed to a very definite view of how effective prevention will turn out
in the long run. After all, stopping the bomber will reshuffle future genetic identities, and may imply the
birth of a future Hitler. Even trying to stop the bomber, with no guarantee of success, will remix the future
in similar fashion.Still, we can see a significant net welfare improvement in the short run, while facing
radical generic uncertainty about the future in any case. Furthermore, if we can stop the bomber, our longrun welfare estimates will likely show some improvement. The bomb going off could lead to subsequent
attacks on other major cities, the emboldening of terrorists, or perhaps broader panics. There would be a
new and very real doorway toward general collapse of the world. While the more distant future is remixed
radically, we should not rationally believe that some new positive option has been created to
counterbalance the current destruction and the new possible negatives. To put it simply, it is difficult to see
the violent destruction of Manhattan as on net, in ex ante terms, favoring either the short-term or longterm prospects of the world. We can of course imagine possible scenarios where such destruction works
out for the better ex post; perhaps, for instance, the explosion leads to a subsequent disarmament or antiproliferation advances. But we would not breathe a sigh of relief on hearing the news of the destruction for
the first time. Even if the long-run expected value is impossible to estimate, we need only some probability
that the relevant time horizon is indeed short (perhaps a destructive asteroid will strike the earth). This will
tip the consequentialist balance against a nuclear attack on Manhattan.
Concept of morals not mutually exclusive with utilitarianism

204-205.
There is, however, another line of thinking that connects desirability with moral obligation for the
utilitarian, and in fact shows why a utilitarian requires a concept of moral obligation and what the
concept will be. This line of reasoning goes as follows. We begin with the assumption that the utilitarian
wants to maximize happiness in society. Now, he knows that one important means to his goal, indeed the
only one within our control, is human actions with that effect. So he will want acts that produce welfare,
ideally ones that will maximize it as compared with other options. Let us say, then, that he will want expedient acts
as a means to happiness. But the thoughtful utilitarian will further ask himself how he can bring it about that people perform acts
which, taken together, will maximize happiness. One way, and surely a good way up to a point, is to employ moral education to make
people more sympathetic or altruistic; if they become so, they will tend to act more frequently to produce happiness in others. It
looks, however, ;as if such educational encouragement of sympathy is not enough, mainly because people are ill-informed about the
probable consequences of what they do, and in any case because the intent to do as much good as one can may lead to action at
cross-purposes rather than to more beneficial cooperative behavior. S o the utilitarian, who wants maximal happiness,
will do something more than just try to motivate people to aim directly at it. It will occur to him that a legal
system, with its sanctions and implicit directives, will both guide people what to do, and at the same time
provide motivation to conform to the legal standards. He will want, with Bentham, a legal system which as
a whole will maximize happiness by producing pro-social conduct at the least cost. Moreover, the one thing
should be clear: If the moral system has been carefully devised, there will not be gross disparity between
what it requires and conduct that promises to maximize benefit. To avoid such disparity, an optimal ruleutilitarian moral code will contain " escape clauses." For instance, it will permit a driver to obstruct a
driveway illegally when there is an emergency situation. But suppose there is a minor disparity between
the requirements of the moral code and what will do most good: suppose Mary will have to walk to work
Page 100 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
tomorrow, but the gain in convenience to the person who obstructs her driveway will be: greater than the
loss to her. Will the consistent utilitarian then advise the driver to park illegally? Let us suppose the
utilitarian has decided that a utility maximizing moral code will not direct a person to do what he thinks will
maximize expectable utility in a particular situation, but to follow certain rules - roughly, to follow his
conscientious principles, as amended where long-range utility requires. If he has decided this, then it is
inconsistent of him to turn around and advise individuals just to follow their discretion about what will
maximize utility in a particular case. Of course, the utilitarian will want everyone to be sensitive to the
utility of giving aid to others and avoiding injury; requirements or encouragement to do so are pan of our
actual moral cede, and it is optimal for the code to be $0. But once it is decided that the optimal code is
not that of act-utilitarianism, the utilitarian will say it is desirable for a person to follow the optimal moral
code, that is, follow conscience except where utility demands amendment of the principles of the code, So
it seems the consistent utilitarian will conclude that there is a moral obligation not to obstruct Mary' s
driveway illegally, in accordance with the optimal code.
Successful integration of morality into utilitarian calculus possible

212.
My conclusion is that if we are to be utilitarians in the sense that we think morality should maximize longrange utility, and at the same time think that a utilitarian morality should have room for recognition of
rights that cannot be overridden by marginal gains in utility, there are two positions we must espouse.
First, we must hold that a person does the right act, or the obligatory act, not by just following his actual
moral principles wherever they may lead, but by following the moral principles the acceptance of which in
society would maximize expectable utility. Of course, this means that people who want to do what is right
may have to do some thinking about their moral principles in particular situations. Second, we must
emphasize that the right act is the one permitted by or required by the moral code the acceptance of
which promises to maximize utility, and not compromise, except in extreme circumstances, in order to do
what in a particular situation will maximize utility , where so doing conflicts with the utility-maximizing
code. Only if we do this will we have room for a concept of " a right" which cannot be overridden by a
marginal addition to the general welfare. It is clear that acting morally in this sense will never be very
costly in utility, and where it is costly at all, that is the price that has to be paid for a policy, a morality of
principle. If my exegesis of J. S. Mill is correct, these recommendations are ones in which he would join.
Utilitarianism is inevitable it will indefinitely permeate human thought
Allison, Professor of Political Philosophy at University of Warwick, 1990

(Lincoln, The Utilitarianism Response)
And yet if an idea can be compared to a castle, though we find a breached wall, damaged foundation and a weapons spiked where not actually destroyed, there still remains a keep, some thing central and
defensible,
with
in
utilitarianism.
As
Raymond
Frey
puts it,
utilitarianism has never ceased to occupy
a central place in
moral
theorizing ... [and] has come to have a significant impact upon the moral thinking of many laymen. The simple core of the doctrine lies in the ideas that actions should be judged by their consequences and that the best actions are those
which make people, as-a whole, better off than do the alternatives. What utilitarianism always excludes there fore, is any idea-about the Tightness or wrongness of actions which is not explicable in terms of the consequences of those actions.
The wide acceptance of utilitarianism in this broad sense may well be residual for many
people. Without a serious God (one, this is, prepared to reveal Truth and instruction) or a convincing deduction of ethical prescription from pure reason, we are likely to turn towards Bentham and to
judge actions on there consequences for people's well-being.
Because of the advent of nuclear omnicide, ethics should not be held absolute
Joseph Nye, Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs @
Harvard University, Nuclear Ethics, 1986
The significance and the limits of the two broad traditions can be captured by contemplating a hypothetical case. Imagine that you are visiting a Central American country and you happen upon a village square
where an army captain is about to order his men to shoot peasants lined up against a wall. When you ask the reason, you are told someone in this village shot at the captains men last night. Why you object to the
killing of possibly innocent people, you are told that civil wars do not permit moral niceties. Just to prove the point that we all have dirty hands in such situations, the captain hands you a rifle and tells you that if you
will shoot one peasant, he will free the other. Otherwise both die. He warns you not to try any tricks because his men have their guns trained on you. Will you shoot one person with the consequences of saving one,
or will you allow both to die but preserve your moral integrity by refusing to play his dirty game? The point of the story is to show the value and limits of both traditions, Integrity is clearly an important value, and
many of us would refuse to shoot. But at what point does the principle of not taking an innocent life collapse before the consequentialist burden? Would it matter if there were 20 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 actions by consequences? Do absolutist
approaches to integrity become self-contradictory in a world of nuclear weapons
Do what is right though the world should perish was a difficult

Page 101 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
t may be literally
possible in the Nuclear age, it seems more than ever to be self-contradictory. Absolutist
ethics bear a heaver burden of proof in the nuclear age than ever before.
principle even when Kant expounded it in the eighteenth century, and there is some evidence that he did not mean it to be taken literally even then. Now that i
Once an action enters the policy realm we must use a Consequentialist approach, this is
necessary to minimize suffering and conflict.
Murray in 97, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh,

[Alastair J. H., Reconstructing Realism: between Power Politics and
Cosmopolitan Ethics, p. 110]
Weber emphasised that, while the 'absolute ethic of the gospel' must be taken seriously, it is inadequate to the tasks of evaluation presented by politics. Against this 'ethic of ultimate ends' Gesinnung he
therefore proposed the 'ethic of responsibility' Verantwortung. First, whilst the former dictates only the purity of intentions and pays no attention to consequences, the ethic of responsibility commands
acknowledgement of the divergence between intention and result. Its adherent 'does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his [OR HER] own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will
the 'ethic of ultimate ends' is incapable of dealing adequately with

the moral dilemma presented by the necessity of using evil means to achieve moral
ends: Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the 'salvation of the soul.' If, however, one chases after the ultimate
say: these results are ascribed to my action'. Second,
good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be changed and discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences is lacking. The 'ethic of responsibility', on
the other hand, can accommodate this paradox and limit the employment of such means, because it accepts responsibility for the consequences which they imply. Thus, Weber maintains that only the ethic of
responsibility can cope with the 'inner tension' between the 'demon of politics' and 'the god of love'. 9 The realists followed this conception closely in their formulation of a political ethic.10 This influence is
the political
actor has, beyond the general moral duties, a special moral responsibility to act wisely ... The individual , acting on his own behalf,
may act unwisely without moral reproach as long as the consequences of his inexpedient action concern only [her or]
himself. What is done in the political sphere by its very nature concerns others who must suffer from unwise action. What is here done with good intentions but unwisely and hence with disastrous results
particularly clear in Morgenthau.11 In terms of the first element of this conception, the rejection of a purely deontological ethic, Morgenthau echoed Weber's formulation, arguing that:
is morally defective; for it violates the ethics of responsibility to which all action affecting others, and hence political action par excellence, is subject.12
Utilitarianism and other forms of calculation are inevitable
Stelzig, Tom J.D. candidate at U PENN, 1998 (University of Pennsylvania Law

Review)
when substantially
more good will result - Thomason's Trade Off Idea n. 107 - then almost ever situation will involve a true conflict of
rights. Determining the resolution of these rights-conflicts would require that morality be
supplemented with principles other than rights. If this is correct, rights would perform relatively little theoretical work beyond triggering these
principles. Whatever principles would be regularly invoked for resolving rights-conflicts
would do the bulk of the work of determining right action . Such a notion does not sit well with the claim that deontology exhausts
If the latter is true, no more need be said to show that deontological norms do not exhaust morality. If the former is correct, because rights claims may be overridden only
morality, for the reason already discussed.
Individual and government choices on morality are different, once we play the role of policy
makers we must follow a utilitarian calculus
Goodin, Fellow of philosophy at Austialian National University, 1990 (Robert,

The Utilitarian Response)
It does matter who is using the utilitarian calculus, in what circumstance and
for what propose. Using the felicific calculus for micro-level purposes of guiding individuals choices of personal conduct is altogether different from using it for macro-level purposes of guiding
public officials choices of general social policy. A different menu of option in some respects greater, in others, less, but in any case different is available to
public and private choosers. Thos differences are such as to neutralized in the public
sphere, most of the objections standardly lodged against utilitarianism in the private
sphere. True though such complaints may be as applied to utilitarianism as a standard of
personal conduct they are irrelevant (or anyway much less problematic) as applied to
utilitarianism as a standard of public policy . Or so I shall argue.
That, I submit is a fallacy.
Page 102 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Consequences come first for governments - only our evidence draws the
distinction between moral theories for individuals and governments
Harries, editor of National Interest, 1994 (Owen, The National Interest, Spring,
p. 11)
Performance is the test. Asked directly by a Western interviewer, "In principle, do you believe in one standard of human rights and free expression?", Lee immediately answers, "Look, it is not a matter of principle
in
politics, it is "the ethic of responsibility" rather than "the ethic of absolute ends" that is
appropriate. While an individual is free to treat human rights as absolute, to be observed
whatever the cost. Governments must weigh consequences and the competing claims of
other ends. So once the enter the realm of politics, human rights have to take their place in a hierarchy of interests,
including such basic things as national security and the promotion of prosperity.
but of practice." This might appear to represent a simple and rather crude pragmatism. But in its context it might also be interpreted as an appreciation of the fundamental point made by Max Weber that,
Moral rights and wrongs are based on consequences proves

Consequentialism is best
Johnson, 85 (Conrad D. Johnson, 'The Authority of the Moral Agent', Journal of
Philosophy 82, No 8
(August 1985), pp. 391)
If we follow the usual deontological conception, there are also well-known difficulties. If it is simply wrong to kill the innocent,
the wrongness must in some wav be
connected to the consequences. That an innocent person is killed must be a consequence that has some important bearing on the wrongness of the action; else why be
so concerned about the killing of an innocent? Further, if it is wrong in certain cases for the agent to weigh the
consequences in deciding whether to kill or to break a promise, it is hard to deny that
this has some connection to the consequences . Following one line of thought, it is consequentialist
considerations of mistrust that stand behind such restrictions on what the agent may
take into account.3 But then again it is hard to deal with that rare case in which the agent can truly claim that his judgement about the consequences is accurate, or, in that last resort of the
philosophical thought experiment, has been verified by the Infallible Optimizer.
Ignoring consequences is immoral - they sacrifice others to preserve moral

purity. It is most moral to act to produce the best end regardless of the moral
cleanliness of the means
Ailinsky 1971
(Saul D., Activist, Prof, Social Organizer with Int'l Fame, Founder of Industrial Areas Foundation, Rules for Radicals, p. 24-7)
"Does this particular end justify this particular means?" Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change,
the question of means and ends arises. The person [man] of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the
possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the
immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to
conscience is the virtue of observers and not of

agents of action in action one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent
both with one s individual conscience and the good of [humankind. The choice must
always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal
salvation. He [or she1 who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has
peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't care enough for people to be
"corrupted" for them. The people [men] who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics of means and ends-which with rare exception is conspicuous for its sterility-rarely
bed; he who fears corruption fears life. The practical revolutionary will understand Geothe's "
write about their won experiences in the perpetual struggle of life and change. They are strangers, moreover, to the burdens and problems of operational responsibility and the unceasing pressure for immediate
decisions. They are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends
as if studying a navigational chart on land. They can be recognized by one of two verbal brands; "We agree with the ends but not the means," or "This is not the time." The means-and- end moralists or non-doers
always wind up on their ends without any means. The means-and- 'ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their
The fear of soiling ourselves by

entering the context of history is not virtue, but a way of escaping virtue." These nondoers were the ones who chose not to fight the Nazis in the only way they could have been fought; they were the ones who drew their
window blinds to shut out the shameful spectacle of Jews and political prisoners being dragged through the streets; they were the ones who privately deplored the horror of it all-and did nothing. This is
the nadir of immorality. The most unethical of all means is the nonuse of any means . It is this
real political position. In fact, they are passive-but real-allies of the Haves. They are the ones Jacques Maritain referred to in his statement, "
species of man who so vehemently and militantly participated in that classically idealistic debate at the old League of Nations on the ethical differences between defensive and offensive weapons. Their fears of
action drive them to refuge in an ethics so divorced from the politics of life that it can apply only to angels, not to men. The standards ofjudgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the
world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be. 1 present here a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends: first, that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies
inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. When we are not directly concerned our morality overflows; as La Rochefoucauld put it, "We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."
Page 103 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Justice must save humanity and weigh

Sissela Bok, Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis, Applied Ethics and Ethical
Theory, Ed. David Rosenthal and Fudlou Shehadi, 1988
The same argument can be made for Kant's other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: "So act as to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an
end, never simply as a means"; and "So act as if you were always through actions a law-making member in a universal Kingdom of Ends."
No one with a concern for
humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating humanity in the person of himself and every other or to risk the death of all members in a universal
Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice. To risk their collective death for the sake of following one's conscience would be, as Rawls said, "irrational, crazy." And to say
that one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop other persons from
bringing it about would be beside the point when the end of the world was at stake , For although it is true that we cannot
be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where we would have to take such a
responsibility seriously - perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing an innocent person, in order
that the world not perish.
Utilitarian actions only act as a last resort. Lack of alternatives means the only
inhuman action is to not act at all.
Nielsen, 93 Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary (Kai, Absolutism and Its
Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber Pg 170-71)
If there really is no other way of

unsticking our fat man and if plainly, without blasting him out, everyone in the cave will
drown, then, innocent or not, he should be blasted out. This indeed overrides the principle that the
Forget the levity of the example and consider the case of the innocent fat man.
innocent should never be deliberately killed, but it does not reveal a callousness toward life, for the people involved are caught in a
desperate situation in which, if such extreme action is not taken, many lives will be lost and far greater misery will obtain.
Moreover, the people who do such a horrible thing or acquiesce in the doing of it are not
likely to be rendered more callous about human life and human suffering as a result. Its
occurrence will haunt them for the rest of their lives and is as likely as not to make them more rather than less morally sensitive. It is
not even correct to say that such a desperate act shows a lack of respect for persons . We
are not treating the fat man merely as a means. The fat man's person-his interests and
rights-are not ignored. Killing him is something which is undertaken with the greatest
reluctance. It is only when it is quite certain that there is no other way to save the lives
of the others that such a violent course of action is justifiably undertaken. Alan Donagan,
arguing rather as Anscombe argues, maintains that "to use any innocent man ill for the sake of some
public good is directly to degrade him to being a mere means" and to do this is of course
to violate a principle essential to morality, that is, that human beings should never merely be treated as means
but should be treated as ends in themselves (as persons worthy of respect).l1 But, as my above remarks show, it need not be
the case, and in the above situation it is not the case, that in killing such an innocent
man we are treating him merely as a means. The action is universalizable, all alternative
actions which would save his life are duly considered, the blasting out is done only as a
last and desperate resort with the minimum of harshness and indifference to his
suffering and the like. It indeed sounds ironical to talk this way, given what is done to him. But if such a terrible situation
were to arise, there would always be more or less humane ways of going about one's grim task. And in acting in the more
humane ways toward the fat man, as we do what we must do and would have done to
ourselves were the roles reversed, we show a respect for his person .12 In so treating the
fat man-not just to further the public good but to prevent the certain death of a whole
group of people (that is to prevent an even greater evil than his being killed in this way}- the claims of justice are
not overriden either, for each individual involved, if he is reasonably correct, should
realize that if he were so stuck rather than the fat man, he should in such situations be
blasted out. Thus, there is no question of being unfair. Surely we must choose between evils here, but is
there anything more reasonable, more morally appropriate, than choosing the lesser evil when doing or allowing some evil cannot be
avoided? That is, where there is no avoiding both and where our actions can determine whether a greater or lesser evil obtains,
should we not plainly always opt for the lesser evil? And
is it not obviously a greater evil that all those other

Page 104 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
innocent people should suffer and die than that the fat man should suffer and die? Blowing
up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is still
more monstrous.
Overriding rights is justified when more rights of others and lives are at stake.
Kateb 92 William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics Emeritus at Princeton
University (George, Cornell University Press; The Inner Ocean: Individualism and
Democratic Culture pg 12)
One can even think, against utilitarianism, that any substantive outcome achieved by morally proper procedure is morally right and
utilitarianism has a necessary

pace in any democratic country's normal political deliberations . But its advocates must know its place,
hence acceptable (so long as rights are not in play). The main point, however, is that
which ordinarily is only to help to decide what the theory of rights leaves alone. When may rights be overridden by government? I
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
have two sorts of cases in mind:
countenance, the state's overriding of rights for these two reasons. The subject is painful and liable to dispute every step of the way.
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
For the state to override-that is, sacrificea right of some so that others may keep it.
be saved, so a third parrylet us say, the statecan (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 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.
We must choose the lesser evil. Hard and fast rules about what is right must
be made to limit further atrocities against civilization
Issac 02 Professor of political science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center
for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale (Jeffery C., Dissent
Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, Ends, Means, and Politics, p. Proquest)
WHAT WOULD IT mean for the American left right now to take seriously the centrality of means in politics? First, it would mean taking
There is a tendency in some

quarters of the left to assimilate the death and destruction of September 11 to more
ordinary (and still deplorable) injustices of the world system--the starvation of children in Africa, or the repression
of peasants in Mexico, or the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel. But this assimilation is only
possible by ignoring the specific modalities of September 11. It is true that in Mexico,
Palestine, and elsewhere, too many innocent people suffer, and that is wrong . It may even be
true that the experience of suffering is equally terrible in each case. But neither the Mexican nor the Israeli
government has ever hijacked civilian airliners and deliberately flown them into crowded
office buildings in the middle of cities where innocent civilians work and live, with the
intention of killing thousands of people. Al-Qaeda did precisely this. That does not make
the other injustices unimportant. It simply makes them different. It makes the September 11
hijackings distinctive, in their defining and malevolent purpose--to kill people and to create terror and havoc. This was not an
ordinary injustice. It was an extraordinary injustice. The premise of terrorism is the sheer
superfluousness of human life. This premise is inconsistent with civilized living anywhere. It threatens people of every
seriously the specific means employed by the September 11 attackers--terrorism.
Page 105 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Because it threatens everyone, and threatens values

central to any decent conception of a good society, it must be fought . And it must be fought in a
way commensurate with its malevolence. Ordinary injustice can be remedied. Terrorism can only be
stopped. Second, it would mean frankly acknowledging something well understood, often too eagerly embraced, by the twentieth
century Marxist left--that it is often politically necessary to employ morally troubling means in the
name of morally valid ends. A just or even a better society can only be realized in and through political practice; in our
race and class, every ethnicity and religion.
complex and bloody world, it will sometimes be necessary to respond to barbarous tyrants or criminals, with whom moral suasion
such situations our choice is not between the wrong that confronts us and our
ideal vision of a world beyond wrong. It is between the wrong that confronts us and the
means--perhaps the dangerous means--we have to employ in order to oppose it. In such
situations there is a danger that "realism" can become a rationale for the Machiavellian
worship of power. But equally great is the danger of a righteousness that translates, in
effect, into a refusal to act in the face of wrong. What is one to do? Proceed with caution. Avoid casting
won't work. In
oneself as the incarnation of pure goodness locked in a Manichean struggle with evil. Be wary of violence. Look for alternative means
when they are available, and support the development of such means when they are not. And never sacrifice democratic freedoms
and open debate. Above all, ask the hard questions about the situation at hand, the means available, and the likely effectiveness of
different strategies.
Moral policy only blocks decision making necessary to limit further damage.
Injustice can only be destroyed by inaction to make sacrifices
Issac, 02 Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center
for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale (Jeffery C., Dissent
Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, Ends, Means, and Politics, p. Proquest)
It is assumed that U.S. military

intervention is an act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to
which intervention is a response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace
activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime--the
Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that
most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a
Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring
criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important;
they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague and
empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or
international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no
such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral
goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power.
As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked.
Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the
Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To
accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are
necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not
to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As
writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern
with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a
world.
kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does not ensure the
Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally

compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence,
then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of
their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral
purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice .
This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a
achievement of what one intends.
Page 106 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to

oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as
much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action,
rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may
engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it
it is equally important, always, to ask about the

effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically
contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are
not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
is not enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic;
Utilitarianism is the only moral framework and alternatives are inevitability

self-contradictory
Nye, 86 (Joseph S. 1986; Phd Political Science Harvard. University; Served as Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Nuclear Ethics pg. 18-19)
Imagine that
an army captain is about to
The significance and the limits of the two broad traditions can be captured by contemplating a hypothetical case.34
you are visiting a Central American country and you happen upon a village square where
order his men to shoot two peasants lined up against a wall. When you ask the reason, you are told
someone in this village shot at the captain's men last night. When you object to the killing of possibly innocent people, you are told
that civil wars do not permit moral niceties. Just to prove the point that we all have dirty hands in such situations, the captain hands
and tells you that if you will shoot one peasant, he will free the other. Otherwise both
die. He warns you not to try any tricks because his men have their guns trained on you. Will you shoot one person with
the consequences of saving one, or will you allow both to die but preserve your moral
integrity by refusing to play his dirty game? The point of the story is to show the value and
limits of both traditions. Integrity is clearly an important value, and many of us would
refuse to shoot. But at what point does the principle of not taking an innocent life
collapse before the consequentialist burden? Would it matter if there were twenty or 1,000 peasants to be
saved? What if killing or torturing one innocent person could save a city of 10 million
persons from a terrorists' nuclear device? At some point does not integrity become the ultimate egoism of
fastidious self-righteousness in which the purity of the self is more important than the lives of countless others? Is it not better
to follow a consequentialist approach, admit remorse or regret over the immoral means,
but justify the action by the consequences? Do absolutist approaches to integrity become self-contradictory in a
you a rifle
world of nuclear weapons? "Do what is right though the world should perish" was a difficult principle even when Kant expounded it in
Now that it may

be literally possible in the nuclear age, it seems more than ever to be selfcontradictory.35 Absolutist ethics bear a heavier burden of proof in the nuclear age than
ever before.
the eighteenth century, and there is some evidence that he did not mean it to be taken literally even then.
Politics can only be one of responsibility. Rational policy makers must consider
first whether to put rights before all else.
Harris, 94 (Owen Spring 1994; Editor of National Interest Journal of International
affairs and diplomacy; Power of Civilizations Via Questia)
Performance is the test. Asked directly by a Western interviewer, "In principle, do you believe in one standard of human rights and
free expression?", Lee immediately answers, "Look, it is not a matter of principle but of practice." This might
appear to represent a simple and rather crude pragmatism. But in its context it might also be interpreted as an appreciation of the
politics, it is "the ethic of responsibility" rather than "the

ethic of absolute ends" that is appropriate. While an individual is free to treat human
rights as absolute, to be observed whatever the cost, governments must always weigh
fundamental point made by Max Weber that, in
Page 107 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
consequences and the competing claims of other ends. So once they enter the realm of politics, human
rights have to take their place in a hierarchy of interests, including such basic things as national security
and the promotion of prosperity. Their place in that hierarchy will vary with circumstances, but no
responsible government will ever be able to put them always at the top and treat them
as inviolable and over-riding. The cost of implementing and promoting them will always
have to be considered. Lee's answer might also be compared to Edmund Burke's conclusions on how England should
govern its colonies, as expressed in his Letter to the Sheriffs of the City of Bristol in 1777: |I~t was our duty, in all soberness, to
conform our government to the character and circumstances of the several people who composed this mighty and strangely
I never was wild enough to conceive that one method would serve for the
whole, that the natives of Hindostan and those of Virginia could be ordered in the same
manner, or that the Cutchery court and the grand jury of Salem could be regulated on a
similar plan. I was persuaded that government was a practical thing made for the
happiness of mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle of uniformity to gratify the
schemes of visionary politicians.
diversified mass.
Only consequentialism can resolve conflicting moral values and promote

healthy society
Bailey, 97 (James Wood 1997; Oxford University Press; Utilitarianism, institutions,

and Justice pg 9)
A consequentialist moral theory can take account of this variance and direct us in our
decision about whether a plausible right to equality ought to outweigh a plausible right
to freedom of expression. 16 In some circumstances the effects of pornography would surely be malign enough to justify
our banning it, but in others they may be not malign enough to justify any interference in freedom. I? A deontological
theory, in contrast, would be required either to rank the side constraints, which forbid
agents from interfering in the free expression of others and from impairing the moral
equality of others, or to admit defeat and claim that no adjudication between the two
rights is possible. The latter admission is a grave failure since it would leave us no
principled resolution of a serious policy question. But the former conclusion is hardly attractive either. Would
we really wish to establish as true for all times and circumstances a lexical ordering between two side constraints on our actions
without careful attention to consequences? Would we, for instance, really wish to establish that the slightest malign inegalitarian
effect traceable to a form of expression is adequate grounds for an intrusive and costly censorship? Or would we, alternatively, really
wish to establish that we should be prepared to tolerate a society horrible for women and children to live in, for the sake of not
Consequentialist accounts can avoid such a

deontological dilemma. In so doing, they show a certain healthy sense of realism about
what life in society is like. In the world outside the theorist's study, we meet trade-offs at
every tum. Every policy we make with some worthy end in Sight imposes costs in terms
of diminished achievement of some other plausibly worthy end. Consequentialism
demands that we grapple with these costs as directly as we can and justify their
incurrence. It forbids us to dismiss them with moral sophistries or to ignore them as if we
lived in an ideal world.
allowing any infringement on the sacred right of free expression?18
Morals and questions of human dignity will constantly conflict making

deontological policy making impossible
Kateb 92 William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus, Princeton
Democratic Culture pg 14-15)
Let us say that a society of rights-based individualism encourages these and other crepuscular activities to become topics for open
that that fact can be taken as a paradoxical sign of the moral grandness
of such a society, for practically every desire can be honestly admitted and talked about
and popular discussion;
Page 108 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
despite shame or without shame; that a society devoted to rights has no absolutely
compelling arguments, in every case, to prohibit them and that, nevertheless, civilization (democratic or not) so we are
trained to understand it commits us to continue to condemn and prohibit them. The issue must be raised in dismay, and I am not able
is not agreeable to admit that a particular right of one

person may apparently conflict with a different right of someone else. Familiar antagonisms include
that between the rights to a fair trial unprejudiced by excessive publicity and the right of
press to report a story and its background fully, or that between the right to privacy
again, the right of the press to do what it thinks is its work. Though I believe, as I have
said, that some rights (including freedom of the press) are more fundamental than others, in some
conflicts no clear priority is likely to be established and only ad hoc adjustments are
desirable. To be sure, although these conflicts may be less frequent or stark than is
claimed by those who are impatient with the rights in question, conflicts nevertheless
take place. This is a fact of life which no appeal to an elaborated theory of rights can eliminate. If it is a shortcoming in the
to deal with it adequately. Can rights conflict? It
theory of rights, it is also a shortcoming that no supplementary principle such as utilitarianism can make good.
Human value and dignity is impossible to determine externally, utilitarianism

is only alternative.
Kateb 92 William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics Emeritus at Princeton
Democratic Culture pg 13-14)
We can say in regard to the relevant examples that no one has the right to enslave or
mutilate or ritually kill another, even with the others permission. There is no right to accept anothers
renunciation of a right. One cannot cooperate with or take advantage of another persons
abdication of humanity. We can also say, for other activities, that one has no right to use ones freedom to abandon it
altogether (as with drug addiction) or alienate it (as with voluntary slavery), for freedom is meaningless when it becomes the
All these arguments are true but do not reach the deepest level of objection,
for all these activities arouse deep and wide spread disgust and revulsion. To be guided
by these feelings, however, is risky because many activities once thought disgusting and
horrible are now allowed and sometimes welcomed and celebrated, at least in some
democratic societies. Also, we cannot say that the feelings hostile to these activities are
instinctual; though common, such feelings are culturally deposited. I can understand the wish to say
instrument of bondage.
that these activities injure the human dignity of people who do them. It can be argued that the injury results not merely because (in
some cases) they are renouncing a right and (in other cases) using their rights in ways never contemplated by advocates of rights.
Rather, these free or consensual activities degrade people who do them below the level
of decent humanity. The practitioners forfeit respect: that is the reason they must be
controlled. I do not think, however, that I can follow this line because I do not associate
human dignity with any teleology or reason for being, or even with a more bounded
perfectionism. As I understand the theory of rights-based individualism, it disallows universal
and enforceable answers to the questions, Why do we live? What is the point of living? I
am therefore reluctant to rest a case for control on the notion of human dignity itself.
The impossibility to attain knowledge of every outcome or abuse leaves
utilitarianism as the only option for most rational decision-making
Goodin 95 Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of the Social Sciences at
the Australian National University (Robert E., Cambridge University Press,
Utilitarianism As a Public Philosophy pg 63)
Page 109 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
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
My larger argument turns on the proposition that
of utilitarianism that we would find more acceptable) than private individuals. Before proceeding with that larger argument, I must
their situations that makes 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, at 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
therefore say what it is that is so special about public officials and
they want to use it at all to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the
they cannot be sure what the payoff will

be to any given individual or on any particular occasion. Their knowledge of generalities,
aggregates and averages is just not sufficiently fine-grained for that.
utility payoffs from adopting each alternative possible general rule. But
Not knowing conditions for each individual or ramifications forces us to adopt

utilitarianism. Policy makers must use in their decision making
Goodin 95 Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of the Social Sciences at
the Australian National University (Robert E., Cambridge University Press,
Utilitarianism As a Public Philosophy pg 63)
the instruments available to public policy-makers

are relatively blunt. They can influence general tendencies, making rather more people behave in certain sorts of ways
rather more often. But perfect compliance is unrealistic. And (building on the previous point) not knowing particular
circumstances of particular individuals, rules and regulations must necessarily be
relatively general in form. They must treat more people more nearly alike than ideally
they should, had we perfect information. The combined effect of these two factors is to
preclude public policy-makers from fine-tuning policies very well at all. They must, of
necessity, deal with people in aggregate, imposing upon them rules that are general in
form. Nothing in any of this necessarily forces them to be utilitarian in their public policymaking, of course. What it does do, however, is force them- if they are inclined to be
utilitarian at all-away from direct (act) utilitarianism. The circumstances surrounding the
selection and implementation of public policies simply do not permit the more precise
calculations required by any decision rule more tailored to peculiarities of individuals or
situations.
Furthermore, the argument from necessity would continue,
True equality is only attainable under utilitarian framework.

Dworkin 77 Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University (Ronald 1977,
Taking Rights Seriously pg 274-5)
The liberal conception of equality sharply limits the extent to which ideal arguments of
policy may be used to justify any constraint on liberty . Such arguments cannot be used if the idea in
question is itself controversial within the community. Constraints cannot be defended, for example, directly on
the ground that they contribute to a culturally sophisticated community, whether the community
wants the sophistication or not, because that argument would violate the canon of the liberal
Page 110 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
conception of equality that prohibits a government from relying on the claim that certain
forms of life are inherently more valuable than others. Utilitarian argument of policy,
however, would seem secure from that objection. They do not suppose that any form of
life is inherently more valuable than any other, but instead base their claim, that constraints on
liberty are necessary to advance some collective goal of the community, just on the fact
that that goal happens to be desired more widely or more deeply than any other. Utilitarian
arguments of policy, therefore, seem not to oppose but on the contrary to embody the
fundamental right of equal concern and respect, because they treat the wishes of each
member of the community on a par with the wishes of any other, with no bonus or
discount reflecting the view that that member is more or less worthy of concern, or his
views more or less worthy of respect, than any other. This appearance of egalitarianism has, I think, been
the principal source of the great appeal that utilitarianism has had, as a general political philosophy, over the last century. In Chapter
9, however, I pointed out that the egalitarian character of a utilitarian argument is often an illusion. I will not repeat, but only
Utilitarian arguments fix on the fact that a particular constraint on

liberty will make more people happier, or satisfy more of their preferences, depending
upon whether psychological or preference utilitarianism is in play. But people's overall preference for
summarize, my argument here.
one policy rather than another may be seen to include, on further analysis, both preference that are personal, because they state a
preference for the assignment of one set of goods or opportunities to him and preferences that are external, because they state a
a utilitarian argument that assigns critical

weight to the external preferences of members of the community will not be egalitarian
in the sense under consideration. It will not respect the right of everyone to be treated
with equal concern and respect.
preference for one assignment of goods or opportunities to others. But
Page 111 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Rights / Liberty Come First**

Upholding life is the ultimate moral standard.
Uyl and Rasmussen, Prof.s Philosophy Bellarmine and St. Johns, 81
(Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Prof.s Philosophy Bellarmine and
St. Johns, 1981, 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.
(Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Prof.s Philosophy Bellarmine and St. Johns, 1981, Reading
Nozick, p. 244-245)
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.
(Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Prof.s Philosophy Bellarmine and
St. Johns, 1981, 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
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.
possible ~:notice that this is different from saying "that which makes X possible").
Utilitarianism precludes any claim of moral rights rights not quantifiable.

Rights. Pgs 121-122.
In spite of this, Bentham's clear apprehension of utilitarianism's commitment to rejecting the view that
there are certain basic natural human moral rights that hold of human beings as human beings, very many
utilitarians today seek to reconcile their utilitarianism with theories of human moral rights, with theories of
natural moral rights of persons of the kinds set out in the UN Declarations, according to which we are
claimed to possess various basic, fundamental moral rights simply by virtue of being human beings, or
human persons, and not by virtue of the utility of a belief in and action on the basis of respect for such
rights. Utilitarianism denies, and is committed to denying, that there are natural moral rights that hold of
Page 112 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
persons as persons, of human beings qua human beings. If its ethic is to be expressed in the language of
moral rights, it might be said to hold that it is the greatest good or the greatest /pleasure that has a moral
right to exist, that individual persons and animals have no moral right to a specific share in or of the
greatest good, I their roles being those of being instruments for achieving or vehicles for bringing into
being and sustaining the greatest good, they having a moral right to contribute to the common good as
vehicles or instruments thereof. Of course, strictly speaking, an abstraction such as the greatest good
cannot in any literal sense of 'moral right,' possess moral rights, whilst the rights individuals may possess
as vehicles or instruments of the greatest good would be a mixed bunch, including such rights as the rights
to live or to be killed, to be free or to be constrained, to be helped or to be harmed or used-the rights
varying from person to person, situation to situation, from time to lime. Thus, if the greatest good could be
realized by promoting the pleasure of only one or other of two distinct groups of one hundred persons,
then, in terms of utilitarianism, it would morally be indifferent which group was chosen, and no
member of either group would have a moral right to the pleasure. Similarly, if, in a war, the greatest good
could be achieved only be sending a particular platoon on a suicide mission, the officer in charge would
have the moral right to order the platoon to go on the mission, and the members of the platoon would
have the moral right to be killed for the sake of the greatest good. This is a very different way of thinking
about moral rights from that in terms of there being certain basic human moral rights.
No legitimate reason to include rights discussion under util f/w

Rights. Pg 124.
A utilitarian might seek to accommodate talk about human moral rights within the utilitarian framework by
arguing that there are good utilitarian reasons for attributing human rights to persons who do not possess
moral rights, just as there may be good utilitarian reasons for ascribing responsibility to persons who are
not morally responsible for their actions. This might be urged in terms of act-utilitarianism as a tactical
move for maximizing good. Alternatively, it could be developed as an element of a rule-utilitarianism.
Clearly it would be difficult to find plausible act-utilitarian reasons for propagating such a
falsehood. On the other hand, whilst a rule-utilitarianism that incorporated such a human moral rights
component would normatively be more attractive than many versions of rule-utilitarianism, it would remain
exposed to the basic criticisms of rule-utilitarianism set out by JJ. C. Smart, myself, and others.'
Utilitarianism is the only calculus that takes into account human response
utilitarianism is concerned with human survival and depends on
human response, its goal is necessarily fulfillment of human needs and wants. Utilitarian
choices are made by existing humans. The decisions of every human are derived from
the experience, and reflect the desires, of that human. Humans may be concerned with the
Because evolutionary
needs and wants of animals or of future generations, but that concern is inescapably a product of existing
human needs and wants.
Rights dont come first conflicting values and ideologies.

Rights. Pg 129.
Problems of a different kind are encountered by the claim that certain negative rights, for example, the
right to life interpreted as a right not to be killed, are always absolute, namely, that such a claim leads to
morally unacceptable conclusions. Different rights, for example, the rights to life and to moral autonomy
and integrity, may conflict with one another, such that we have morally to determine which to respect and
in what way; the one right, such as the right to life, may give rise to conflicts, such that we can protect,
save one life, only by sacrificing or not saving another life. And rights may conflict with other values ,
Page 113 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
such as pleasure or pain, in ways that morally oblige us to qualify our respect for the right, as in curtailing
acts directed at a persons' self-development to prevent gross cruelty to animals. Thomists have offered
partial, but only partial, replies to criticisms based on these difficulties in terms of theories such as the
Doctrine of Double Effect, the theory of the Unjust Aggressor (who may be neither unjust nor morally
responsible for what he does). However these replies themselves encounter difficulties of many kinds,
including those of involving their exponents in morally abhorrent conclusions not unlike those to which
they object when such I conclusions are shown to follow from rival theories.
Rights not absolute doesnt take into account intended good.

Rights. Pg 129.
Thus the Doctrine of Double Effect permits the knowing, unintentional killing of thousands of innocent
children for the sake of a proportional good; yet it commits its exponents to losing a just war if success can
be achieved, and millions of innocent lives be saved, only by the intentional killing of one innocent person.
Similarly objectionable conclusions follow about the permissibility of killing morally innocent 'unjust
aggressors' to save one's life. At the same time, acceptance of these supporting theories amounts to an
admission that human rights such as the right to life are not always absolute. How can it be so if we are
said to have the moral right intentionally to kill the morally innocent unjust aggressor, and knowingly,
albeit unintentionally, to kill innocent persons, when and if the intended good is proportionately good, and
cannot be achieved without bringing about the unintended, foreseen good?
No appropriate duty to satisfy rights of conscience.

Rights. Pg 123..
The view that rights and duties are correlative would, if true, lend support to the reducibility-of-rights-toduties thesis.' However, whilst duties and rights may be correlative-as when by a voluntary act a person
enters into a promise, contract, becomes a parent - commonly / rights, and more evidently, basic human
moral rights, and duties are not correlative. This is so with the examples cited above. There may be no
correlative duty to a right of conscience . With rights of recipience, rights to aids and facilities, the
duties that arise from the right are not the determinate, fixed, finite duties, correlative duties are thought
of as being. Equally, we may have important duties in respect of other persons, without those persons
necessarily having rights against us. This is often so in respect of duties of benevolence towards
determinate persons. The duty to maximize good, which dictates that we visit our lonely, ailing I aunt in
hospital, need give her no moral right to our visit.
No absolute rights competing values and rights of different groups.

Rights. Pg 129.
A similar distinction needs to be drawn and a similar terminology is required in respect of basic human
rights. They are always rights-inalienable, intrinsic rights-but they are simply prima facie rights; they are
rights that are absolute rights only if they are not overridden by more stringent moral rights or other moral
considerations. The introduction of this distinction into human moral rights theory is both right and
necessary. It does however greatly complicate the problem of determining what are the absolute, morally
operative rights of a person in any concrete situation. Yet the acknowledgment of this feature of basic
human rights is necessary for two reasons, the one because (physical resources may be inadequate to
allow all to enjoy their basic rights, and the other because, in specific situations, we may have to decide
between the rights of different persons, and between respecting rights and securing other values.
Page 114 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Priority of liberty not viable as basis of government at best it would be a

competing theory among other liberal conceptions of justice.
Project MUSE.
Is such acceptance likely? Consider the important example of the adherents of utilitarian reasonable
comprehensive doctrines. Would a utilitarian be able to endorse a Kantian conception of free persons, with
its elevation of rationality over the satisfaction of desire and its consequent implications for agent
motivation in the Original Position? It seems unlikely that any utilitarian (with the possible exception of
John Stuart Mill in his most syncretic mood) would countenance this variety of asceticism. Thus, utilitarians
would be likely to focus on another interpretation of the idea of free persons or perhaps on an entirely
different fundamental idea or set of ideas; doing so would lead them to structure the Original Position
differently and would presumably produce a political conception of justice that did not include the Priority
of Liberty. Rawls argues in Political Liberalism that classical utilitarians (such as Jeremy Bentham and Henry
Sidgwick) would be likely to endorse a political conception of justice liberal in content, but he never
suggests that they would choose the Priority of Liberty, or Justice as Fairness more generally (PL, p. 170).
We can conclude from this finding that the class of liberal political conceptions of justice constituting the
focus of a realistic overlapping consensus would include conceptions that did not endorse the Priority of
Liberty (although they would all give the basic liberties special priority). Moreover, Justice as Fairness
might not be alone among the liberal conceptions in endorsing the Priority of Liberty: a reasonable
comprehensive doctrine might, for example, support a Kantian conception of free persons but not Rawlss
particular interpretation of society as a fair system of cooperation, leading through the procedures of
political constructivism to a liberal conception of justice that endorsed the Priority of Liberty but rejected,
say, the Difference Principle. Thus, the Priority of Liberty would be one competitor idea among many in an
overlapping consensus, endorsed by both adherents of Kantian comprehensive doctrines and their fellow
travelers, but rejected by others.
No justification for violation of rights to prevent external loss - principle of intervening

actions means that government is not held responsible for death of others.
Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U Chicago. 1994.
Alan. Are There Any Absolute Rights? Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics. Joram Graf Haber.
Pgs 143.
He may be said to intend the many deaths obliquely, in that they are a foreseen but unwanted side-effect
of his refusal . But he is not responsible for that side-effect because of the terrorist s' intervening action. It
would be unjustified to violate the mother's right to life in order to protect the rights to life of the many
other residents of the city. For rights cannot be justifiably protected by violating another right
which, according to the criterion of degrees of necessity for action, is at least equally important. Hence,
the many other residents do not have a right that the mother' s right to life be violated for their sakes . To
be sure , the mother also does not have a right that their equally important rights be violated in order to
protect hers. But here too it must be emphasized that in protecting his mother's right the son does not
violate the rights of the others; for by the principle of the intervening action, it is not he who is
causally or morally responsible for their deaths . Hence too he is not treating them as mere means
to his or his mother's ends.
Government cannot act to uphold the rights of the subject on the basis of moral principle
Gewirth, professor of philosophy, 81.
Alan. Reason and Morality. Pg 65.
In the agent's statement, 'I have rights to freedom and well-being,' the subject of the rights is the agent
himself, the same person for whom freedom and well-being are necessary goods. The object of the rights
is these same necessary goods. Now in rights-judgments, the subject who is said to have rights is not
always the same as the person who makes a claim or a right-judgment attributing the rights to the
subject. Moreover, a rights-judgment need not be set forth independently; it may, instead, figure as a
subordinate clause wherein the attribution of rights to the subject is only conditional. In all cases. however,
Page 115 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
there is assumed some reason or ground that is held, at least tentatively, to justify that attribution. This
reason may, but need not, be some moral or legal code. In the present case, where what is at issue is
the justification of a moral principle, such a principle cannot, of course, be adduced as
constituting the justifying ground for the attribution of the generic rights to the agent. Rather,
in his statement making this attribution, the justifying reason of the generic rights as viewed by the agent
is the fact that freedom and well-being are the most general and proximate necessary conditions of all his
purpose- fulfilling actions, so that without his having these conditions his engaging in purposive action
would be futile or impossible. Because of this necessity, the agent who is the subject of the generic rights
is assumed to set forth or uphold the rights-judgment himself, as knowing what conditions must be fulfilled
if he is to be a purposive agent; and he upholds the judgment not merely conditionally or tentatively but in
an unqualified way.
Page 116 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Util No Rights**

Utility cant be maximized in the long term by violating rights.
Robert Goodin, fellow Philosophy, Australian National Defense U, 1990, The Utilitarian
Response, 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 peoples 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, Prof. Simon Fraser U, 1991, Utilitarianism, p. 29
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.
However
Page 117 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Freedom / Liberty Outweighs Life/Util**

Libertarianism denies emotional satisfaction outside that of freedom.
Locke, Writer for American Conservative, 05
(Robert Locke, Writer for American Conservative, Marxism of the Right, 314-2005, Marxism of the Right, The American Conservative,
http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html)
The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is
simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess,
is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free
to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoons wife.
A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable , as the emotional satisfactions of it
derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail
obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family
are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern
governments. Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good
thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming
that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by
giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by
denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing
foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its logical
conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently
good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks
has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill. Furthermore, the reduction of all
goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national
security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to
privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really
want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?
Utilitarian policy-making ensures there will be no unnecessary constrains on

liberty because each scenario is weighed.
Dworkin 77 Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University (Ronald 1977,
Taking Rights Seriously pg 275-276)
Suppose, for example, that a number of individuals in the community holds racist rather than
utilitarian political theories. They believe, not that each man is to count for one and no one for more than one in
the distribution of goods, but rather that a black man is to count for less and a white man therefore
to count for more than one. That is an external preference, but it is nevertheless a genuine
preference for one policy rather than another, the satisfaction of which will bring pleasure. Nevertheless
if this preference or pleasure is given the normal weight in a utilitarian calculation, and
blacks suffer accordingly, then their own assignment of goods and opportunities will
depend, not simply on the competition among personal preferences that abstract
statements of utilitarianism suggest, but precisely on the fact that they are thought less
worthy of concern and respect than others are. Suppose, to take a different case, that many
members of the community disapprove on moral grounds of homosexuality, or
contraception, or pornography, or expressions of adherence to the Communist party .
They prefer not only that they themselves do not indulge in these activities, but that no
one else does so either, and they believe that a community that permits rather than
prohibits these acts is inherently worse a community. These are external preferences, but, once again, they
Page 118 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
are no less genuine, nor less a source of pleasure when satisfied and displeasure when ignored, than purely personal preferences.
if these external preferences are counted, so as to justify a constraint on

liberty, then those constrained suffer, not simple because their personal preferences
have lost in a competition for scarce resources with the personal preferences of the
others, but precisely because their conception of a proper or desirable form of life is
despised by others. These arguments justify the following important conclusion. If utilitarian arguments of
policy are to be used to justify constraints on liberty, the care must be taken to insure
that the utilitarian calculations on which the argument is based fix only on personal and
ignore external preferences. That is an important conclusion for political theory because
it shows for example, why the arguments of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty are not
counter-utilitarian, but on the contrary, arguments in service of the only defensible form
of utilitarianism.
Once again, however
Page 119 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Calculations Bad**

Turn calculation is inevitable and justified every action requires calculation,
and refusing to engage in calculation means allowing the worst atrocities to
occur.
Campbell, Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle, 1998
[David, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia, p. 186-188]
"that justice exceeds law and calculation, that the unpresentable
cannot and should not serve as alibi for stay ing out of juridico-political
battles, within an institution or a state, or between institutions or states and others. "
Indeed, "incalculable justice requires us to calculate." From where do these insistences come? What is behind, what is
That undecidability resides within the decision, Derrida argues,
ex ceeds the determinable
109
animating, these imperatives? It is both the character of infinite justice as a heteronomic relationship to the other, a relationship that because of its
"left to itself, the incalculable and giving (donatrice) idea of justice is

always very close to the bad, even to the worst, for it can always be reappropriated by the
most perverse calculation." 170 The necessity of calculating the incalculable thus
responds to a duty, a duty that inhabits the instant of madness and compels the decision
to avoid "the bad," the "perverse calculation," even "the worst." This is the duty that also
dwells with deconstructive thought and makes it the starting point , the "at least necessary condition," for
the organization of resistance to totalitarianism in all its forms. And it is a duty that
responds to practical political concerns when we rec ognize that Derrida names the bad,
the perverse, and the worst as those violences "we recognize all too well without yet having thought
them through, the crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, reli gious or nationalist
fanaticism."
undecidability multiplies responsi bility, and the fact that
Furthermore, the duty within the decision, the obligation that recognizes the necessity of negotiating the possibilities provided by the impossibilities
of justice, is not content with simply avoiding, con taining, combating, or negating the worst-violence-though it could certainly begin with those strategies.
Instead, this responsibility, which is the responsibility of responsibility, commissions a "utopian" strat egy. Not, a strategy that is beyond all bounds of
possibility so as to be considered "unrealistic," but one
the necessity of calculation takes the possibility summoned by the

calculation as far as possible, "must take it as far as possible, beyond the place we find
ourselves and beyond the already identifiable zones of morality or politics or law, beyond
the distinction between national and international, public and private, and so on.""' As Derrida
which in respecting
declares, "The condition of possibility of this thing called responsibility is a certain experience and experiment of the possibility of the impossible: the
testing of the aporia from which one may invent the only possible invention, the impossible invention.""' This leads Derrida to enunciate a proposition
that many, not the least of whom are his Habermasian critics, could hardly have expected: "Nothing seems to me less outdated than the classical
emancipatory ideal. We cannot attempt to disqualify it today, whether crudely or with sophistication, at least not without treating it too lightly and forming
the worst complicities."14
Residing within-and not far below the surface-of Derrida's account of the experience of the undecidable as the context for
the decision is the duty of deconstructive thought, the responsibility for the other, and the opposition to totalitarianism it entails.
The Levinasian supplement that Critchley argues deconstruction requires with respect to politics thus draws out that which is already
present. It is, though, perhaps an element that needs to be drawn out, for Derrida has been candid about, and often criticized for, his
political hesitancy. In answer to a question about the potential for translating the "theoretical radicality of deconstruction" into a
praxis," Derrida confessed (his term) "that I have never succeeded in directly relating deconstruction to existing
political codes and programmes."
This "failure" is derived not from any apolitical sentiment
within deconstructive thought but from the "fundamentally metaphysical"
nature of the political codes within which both the right and the left presently
operate. The problem for politics that this disjuncture cre ates is, according to Derrida,
that one has "to gesture in opposite di rections at the same time: on the one
hand to preserve a distance and suspicion with regard to the official political
codes governing reality; on the other, to intervene here and now in a practical
and engaged manner whenever the necessity arises." This, Derrida laments, results in a "dual
"radical political
115
allegiance" and "perpetual uneasiness" whereby the logic of an argument structured in terms of "on the one hand" and "on the
other hand" may mean that political action, which follows from a decision between the competing hands, is in the end insufficient to the
intellectual promise of deconstructive thought 16 But in The Other Heading, Derrida's reflection on the question and politics of
European identity, the difficulty of simultaneously gesturing in different directions is posed in an affirmative political manner.
Page 120 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Multiplying probability by magnitude is the only moral option hard moral

rules result in circular preferences and horrible consequences
Yudkowsky 08 Full-time Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial
Intelligence and Cofounder (Eliezer, January 22nd 2008, Circular Altruism)
Suppose that a disease, or a monster, or a war, or something, is killing people. And suppose you only have enough resources to
implement one of the following two options:
1. Save 400 lives, with certainty.

2. Save 500 lives, with 90% probability; save no lives, 10% probability .
Most people choose option 1. Which, I think, is foolish; because if you multiply 500 lives
by 90% probability, you get an expected value of 450 lives, which exceeds the 400-life
value of option 1. (Lives saved don't diminish in marginal utility, so this is an appropriate calculation.)
"What!" you cry, incensed. "How can you gamble with human lives? How can you think about numbers when so
much is at stake? What if that 10% probability strikes, and everyone dies? So much for your damned logic! You're following your
here's the interesting thing. If you present the options this way:
1. 100 people die, with certainty.
2. 90% chance no one dies; 10% chance 500 people die.
Then a majority choose option 2. Even though it's the same gamble . You see, just as a
certainty of saving 400 lives seems to feel so much more comfortable than an unsure
gain, so too, a certain loss feels worse than an uncertain one. You can grandstand on the second
rationality off a cliff!" Ah, but
description too: "How can you condemn 100 people to certain death when there's such a good chance you can save them? We'll all
Even if it was only a 75% chance of saving everyone, it would still be worth it so long as there's a chance - everyone makes it, or no one does!" You know what? This isn't about
your feelings. A human life, with all its joys and all its pains, adding up over the course of
decades, is worth far more than your brain's feelings of comfort or discomfort with a
plan. Does computing the expected utility feel too cold-blooded for your taste? Well,
that feeling isn't even a feather in the scales, when a life is at stake. Just shut up and
multiply. Previously on Overcoming Bias, I asked what was the least bad, bad thing that could happen, and suggested that it was getting a dust speck in your eye that
share the risk!
irritated you for a fraction of a second, barely long enough to notice, before it got blinked away. And conversely, a very bad thing to happen, if not the worst thing, would be
Now, would you rather that a googolplex people got dust specks in their
eyes, or that one person was tortured for 50 years? I originally asked this question with
a vastly larger number - an incomprehensible mathematical magnitude - but a
googolplex works fine for this illustration. Most people chose the dust specks over the
torture. Many were proud of this choice, and indignant that anyone should choose
otherwise: "How dare you condone torture!" This matches research showing that there
are "sacred values", like human lives, and "unsacred values", like money. When you try
to trade off a sacred value against an unsacred value, subjects express great indignation
getting tortured for 50 years.
(sometimes they want to punish the person who made the suggestion). My favorite anecdote along these lines - though my books are
team of researchers who evaluated the

effectiveness of a certain project, calculating the cost per life saved, and recommended
to the government that the project be implemented because it was cost-effective. The
governmental agency rejected the report because, they said, you couldn't put a dollar value on human life.
After rejecting the report, the agency decided not to implement the measure. Trading off a
packed at the moment, so no citation for now - comes from a
sacred value (like refraining from torture) against an unsacred value (like dust specks) feels really awful. To merely multiply utilities
Suppose you had to

choose between one person being tortured for 50 years, and a googol people being
tortured for 49 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. You would choose
one person being tortured for 50 years, I do presume; otherwise I give up on you. And
similarly, if you had to choose between a googol people tortured for 49.9999999 years,
and a googol-squared people being tortured for 49.9999998 years, you would pick the
former. A googolplex is ten to the googolth power. That's a googol/100 factors of a googol. So we can keep doing this, gradually - very gradually - diminishing the degree
would be too cold-blooded - it would be following rationality off a cliff... But let me ask you this.
of discomfort, and multiplying by a factor of a googol each time, until we choose between a googolplex people getting a dust speck in their eye, and a googolplex/googol people
Page 121 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
If you find your preferences are circular here, that makes rather a
mockery of moral grandstanding. If you drive from San Jose to San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose, over and over
again, you may have fun driving, but you aren't going anywhere. Maybe you think it a great display of virtue
to choose for a googolplex people to get dust specks rather than one person being
tortured. But if you would also trade a googolplex people getting one dust speck for a
googolplex/googol people getting two dust specks et cetera, you sure aren't helping
anyone. Circular preferences may work for feeling noble, but not for feeding the hungry
or healing the sick. Altruism isn't the warm fuzzy feeling you get from being altruistic. If you're doing it for the spiritual
getting two dust specks in their eye.
benefit, that is nothing but selfishness. The primary thing is to help others, whatever the means. So shut up and multiply!
Page 122 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Catastrophes Low Probability**

Policy-making requires assessment of all risks despite probability
Overly detailed reassurances can also create false perceptions of safety: "X is not an
existential risk and you don't need to worry about it, because A, B, C, D, and E"; where the failure
of any one of propositions A, B, C, D, or E potentially extinguishes the human species. "We don't
need to worry about nanotechnologic war, because a UN commission will initially develop the technology and prevent its proliferation
until such time as an active shield is developed, capable of defending against all accidental and malicious outbreaks that
Vivid, specific scenarios

can inflate our probability estimates of security, as well as misdirecting defensive
investments into needlessly narrow or implausibly detailed risk scenarios . More generally,
people tend to overestimate conjunctive probabilities and underestimate disjunctive
probabilities. (Tversky and Kahneman 1974.) That is, people tend to overestimate the probability that, e.g., seven events of
contemporary nanotechnology is capable of producing, and this condition will persist indefinitely."
90% probability will all occur. Conversely, people tend to underestimate the probability that at least one of seven events of 10%
probability will occur. Someone judging whether to, e.g., incorporate a new startup, must evaluate the probability that many
individual events will all go right (there will be sufficient funding, competent employees, customers will want the product) while also
considering the likelihood that at least one critical failure will occur (the bank refuses a loan, the biggest project fails, the lead
This may help explain why only 44% of entrepreneurial ventures survive after
4 years. (Knaup 2005.) Dawes (1988) observes: 'In their summations lawyers avoid arguing from disjunctions ("either this or that
scientist dies).
or the other could have occurred, all of which would lead to the same conclusion") in favor of conjunctions. Rationally, of course,
The scenario of humanity going extinct in the

next century is a disjunctive event. It could happen as a result of any of the existential
risks discussed in this book - or some other cause which none of us fore saw. Yet for a
futurist, disjunctions make for an awkward and unpoetic-sounding prophecy .
disjunctions are much more probable than are conjunctions.'
Policy makers risk political backlash when proper action isnt taken to prevent
catastrophe
People are surprised by catastrophes lying outside their

anticipation, beyond their historical probability distributions . Then why are we so taken aback when
The lesson of history is that swan happens.
Black Swans occur? Why did LTCM borrow leverage of $125 billion against $4.72 billion of equity, almost ensuring that any Black Swan
After September 11th, the U.S.

Federal Aviation Administration prohibited box-cutters on airplanes. The hindsight bias
rendered the event too predictable in retrospect, permitting the angry victims to find it
the result of 'negligence' - such as intelligence agencies' failure to distinguish warnings
of Al Qaeda activity amid a thousand other warnings . We learned not to allow hijacked planes to overfly our
cities. We did not learn the lesson: "Black Swans occur; do what you can to prepare for the unanticipated." Taleb (2005) writes: It is
difficult to motivate people in the prevention of Black Swans... Prevention is not easily
perceived, measured, or rewarded; it is generally a silent and thankless activity. Just
consider that a costly measure is taken to stave off such an event. One can easily compute the costs
while the results are hard to determine. How can one tell its effectiveness, whether the measure was
successful or if it just coincided with no particular accident? ... Job performance assessments in these
matters are not just tricky, but may be biased in favor of the observed "acts of heroism". History books do not account
for heroic preventive measures.
would destroy them? Because of hindsight bias, we learn overly specific lessons.
Page 123 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Page 124 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**A2: Strive for Perfection (Imagination)**

Imagination fails cant change reality.
Biddle, editor and publisher of The Objective Standard, 06
(Craig Biddle, editor and publisher of The Objective Standard, The Objectivist Standard, Spring 2006, Vol.
1, No. 1, Introducing The Objective Standard, http://theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006spring/introducing-the-objective-standard.asp)
reality is an absolutethat facts are facts, regardless of anyones hopes,

fears, or desires. There is a world independent of our minds to which our thinking must
correspond if our ideas are to be true and therefore of practical use in living our lives,
pursuing our values, and protecting our rights . Thus, we reject the idea that reality is
ultimately determined by personal opinion or social convention or divine decree. An
individuals ideas or beliefs do not make reality what it is, nor can they directly change
anything about it; they either correspond to the facts of reality, or they do not. A person
might think that the Sun revolves around the Earth (as some people do); that does not make
it so.
We hold that
Page 125 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Deontology Bad**
Deontology is bad when people disagree about what is right or wrong.
Daar 03 (Judith F. Daar, professor of law at Whittier Law School, The Prospect of Human Cloning:
Improving Nature or Dooming the Species? Seton Hall Law Review, LexisNexis Academic)
A second criticism of deontology is its assumption about the moral rightness and wrongness of human
conduct. Deontologists operate from the premise that there are moral absolutes in the world; certain
conduct is morally correct and other actions are morally wrong. n121 But in our diverse and changing world,
a system that depends on moral absoluteness is destined for challenge. Who or what is to be the arbiter of
moral rightness? Actions that a large [*540] group might consider morally wrong an equally large group
could view as morally acceptable. A Gallup Poll conducted in March 2002 is a chilling illustration that one
person's sin is another person's sanctity. n122 The poll asked citizens of Kuwait, the country the United
States defended in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, if the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade
Center could be morally justified. n123 A full thirty-six percent responded that the perpetrators were morally
justified in killing nearly 3000 individuals. n124 Though the survey was not conducted on U.S. citizens, it
seems reasonable to assume that few if any Americans would find moral justification for the September
11th attacks.
While the ethical choice is normally a good idea, a threshold should be used in
the face of a catastrophe.
Alexander and Moore 07 (Larry Alexander and Michael Moore, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Deontological
Ethics, November 1, 2007 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/)
The second plausible response is for the deontologist to abandon Kantian absolutism for what is usually
called threshold deontology. A threshold deontologist holds that deontological norms govern up to a
point despite adverse consequences; but when the consequences become so dire that they cross the
stipulated threshold, consequentialism takes over (Moore 1997, ch. 17). A may not torture B to save the
lives of two others, but he may do so to save a thousand lives if the threshold is higher than two lives but
lower than a thousand.
Morality co-opts ethical behavior because the focus falls on ideology, not
action
Economic Analysis, Common-Sense Morality and Utilitarianism Author(s): J. Moreh Source: Erkenntnis
(1975-), Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jul., 1992), pp. 115-143 Published by: Springer Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20012427 Accessed: 22/07/2009 13:24
Moral rules are very stringent. Lying is allowed only in a small number of situations, e.g., in a crisis (if one's
life or that of another person is endangered by a malevolent character, it is permitted to lie to the latter to
protect the victim) or in certain market places where it is accepted that telling lies is part of the bargaining
process. In the latter case, care should be taken that deceit does not spill over into other situations (Bok,
1980, Chap. 8 and p. 131). Moral philosophers generally agree that moral rules are severe. Some argue in
favour of severity, e.g., Bok whose book (1980) is concerned mainly with lying and refers to many
authorities favouring stringency of the rule forbidding lying. Bar-Elli and Heyd (1986) uphold the stringency
of the rule against vengeance, though they grudgingly admit that it may be regarded as morally justified
by the special kind of personal relationship in the particular situation (p. 85). Some philosophers criticize
the severity of the demands made by some moral rules, because of the inconsistencies and asymmetries
or even absurdity they are thought to lead to. I shall refer to two authors: Williams and Slote. Williams
criticizes morality for attaching disproportionate importance to obligations and giving them priority over
other ethical considerations. One may not break a promise even if what was promised was in itself of minor
importance and keeping it would prevent one from furthering some important cause (Williams, 1985, pp.
118 J. MOREH 6-7, 180, 187 and 222, footnote 7). Slote (1985, Chap. 1) notes the asymmetry in the
prescriptions of moral rules and permissions allowed by them between the moral agent and others. A
moral agent is allowed to sacrifice a great deal of his3 welfare for the purpose of promoting the welfare of
others by a much smaller amount, yet he is forbidden to do the reverse (i.e., promote his welfare by a
great deal at the expense of someone else's welfare). Slote contends that if all people count equally, the
latter action should be permitted. Nor is one entitled to sacrifice the life of one person in order to save the
lives of several others. Such an exemption to the rule 'do not kill' is not allowed. Nevertheless, a person is
permitted to sacrifice his own life for the sake of saving that of others. Slote mentions these examples to
Page 126 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
show that morality is not impartial between the self and others, as it should be. I am, however, using them
to illustrate the austerity of moral rules.
Deontology is unable to distinguish between better ethics, but is logically no

longer ethical when peoples lives are at risk.
Alexander and Moore 07 (Larry Alexander and Michael Moore, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Deontological
Ethics, November 1, 2007, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/)
Fourth, there is what might be called the paradox of relative stringency. There is an aura of paradox in
asserting that all deontological duties are categorical to be done no matter the consequences and yet
asserting that some of such duties are more stringent than others. A common thought is that there
cannot be degrees of wrongness with intrinsically wrong acts, (Frey 1995, 78 n. 3). Yet relative
stringency degrees of wrongness seems forced upon the deontologist by two considerations. First,
duties of differential stringency can be weighed against one another if there is conflict between them, so
that a conflict-resolving, overall duty becomes possible if duties can be more or less stringent. Second,
when we punish for the wrongs consisting in our violation of deontological duties, we (rightly) do not
punish all violations equally. The greater the wrong, the greater the punishment deserved; and relative
stringency of duty violated (or importance of rights) seems the best way of making sense of greater versus
lesser wrongs.
Fifth, there are situations unfortunately not all of them thought experiments where compliance with
deontological norms will bring about disastrous consequences. To take a stock example of much current
discussion, suppose that unless A violates the deontological duty not to torture an innocent person (B),
ten, or a thousand, or a million other innocent people will die because of a hidden nuclear device. If A is
forbidden by deontological morality from torturing B, many would regard that as a reductio ad absurdum of
deontology.
Hatred between groups of people make human rights violations inevitable

Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the
Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer Reviewed Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf
The trouble with this response is pointed out by Richard Rorty, who offers the rejoinder, made by an
agent who wants to infringe upon the rights of another, that philosophers like Gewirth "seem
,oblivious to blatantly obvious moral distinctions, distinctions any decent person would
draw. ''8~ For Rorty, the problem cannot be solved by sitting down with a chalkboard and
diagramming how the agent and his potential victim are both PPAs. It is , he argues, a
problem that will not be solved by demonstrating that the agent violates his victim on
pain of self-contradiction because, for this agent, the victim is not properly a PPA, despite looking and
acting very much like one. The old adage about looking, swimming, and quacking like a duck
comes to mind here; no amount of quacking will convince the agent that his victim is, in
fact, a duck. As Rorty points out,
This rejoinder is not just a rhetorical device, nor is it in any way irrational. It is heartfelt. The identity of
these people, the people whom we should like to convince to join our Eurocentric human rights culture, is
bound up with their sense of who they are not . . . . What is crucial for their sense of who they are is that
they are not an infidel, not a queer, not a woman, not an untouchable .... Since the days when the term
"human being" was synonymous with "member of our tribe," we have always thought of human beings in
terms of paradigm members of the species. We have contrasted us, the real humans, with rudimentary or
perverted or deformed examples of humanity. 82
There are, I believe, two problems for Gewirth's theory here. The first is that an agent can
quite clearly sidestep rational inconsistency by believing that his victim is somehow less of an
agent (and, in the case presented by Rorty, less of a human being) than he is himself. The agent, here,
might recognize that his victim is a PPA, but other factors (being an infidel, a queer, a woman,
Page 127 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
or an untouchable) have far greater resonance and preclude her having the same rights as
the agent. He might also recognize his victim as a potential PPA, but not one in the fullest sense of that
term or one who has actually achieved that status; as Gewirth himself notes, "there are degrees of
approach to being prospective purposive agents. ''83 It seems to me that the Nazis knew quite well
that their Jewish victims could be PPAs in some sense ; the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 confirm
their awareness that Jews could plan and execute the same sorts of actions they could (voting and
working, for example). The rights of the Jews could be restricted, however, because Jews were quite
different from Germans; rather than PPAs in the fullest sense, they were, in the eyes of the Nazis, what
Rorty calls "pseudohumans. ''~4 On this point, Rorty's point is both clear and compelling: " Resentful
young Nazi toughs were quite aware that many Jews were clever and learned, but this
only added to the pleasure they took in beating such Jews . Nor does it do much good to get
such people to read Kant and agree that one should not treat rational agents simply as means. For
everything turns on who counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the only relevant sense-the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with membership in our moral community. ''s5 The
second problem for the PGC pointed out by Rorty is that it is overly academic and insufficiently
pragmatic. In other words, its fifteen steps might be logically compelling to those in a
philosophy department, but not to those who are actually making these decisions on
inclusion and exclusion. "This is not," Rorty tells us, "because they are insufficiently rational. It is,
typically, because they live in a world in which it would be just too risky-- indeed, would often be insanely
dangerous--to let one's sense of moral community stretch beyond one's family, clan, or tribe. ''86 This
second point leads to the final critique of Gewirth's argument for the PGC.
Deontology does not hold up against the threat of nuclear war

Hardin and Mearsheimer 85 [ Russell Hardin and John Mearsheimer are both
Professors of Political Science at the University of Chicago, ol. 95, No. 3,
Special Issue: Symposium on Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence JSTOR ]
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.
Deontology is a terrible system for policy- policies must use means to an end
framework and are judged by their effectiveness
Institute For Public Policy 97 [ Institute For Public Policy New Mexico June,
1997 A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics
http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf]
At the same time,
deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as
a basis for
Page 128 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical
dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies,
and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to
adequately address the problem or actually making it worse . For example, a moral
obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or any way for
that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that
claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and
others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological
principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that
most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very
utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits
of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at
cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of
regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman,
1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard
preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps
best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values typically involved in public policy
decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, thescope and
complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning
soconclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom
the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interes t (1958, p. 12). It
therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a
plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public
must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing
problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics.
Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient,though perhaps at
times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.
.
Deontology is irrelevant in policy making - intentions are impossible to know,

only the outcome matters
Hinman98
(Lawrence Hinman is a professor of Ethics Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory, p. 186)
When, for example, we want to assess the moral correctness of proposed governmental
legislation, we may well wish to set aside any question of the intentions of the
legislators. After all good laws may be passed for the most venal of political motives, and
bad legislation may be the outcome of quite good intentions. I nstead, we can concentrate
solely on the question of what effects the legislation may have on the people. When we make this shift,
we are not necessarily denying that individual intentions are important on some level,
but rather confining our attention to a level on which those intentions become largely
irrelevant. This is particularly appropriate in the case of policy decisions by governments, corporations,
or other groups. In such cases there may be a diversity of different intentions that one may
want to treat as essentially private matters hwen assessing the moral worth of the
proposed law, policy, or action. Therefore, rule utilitarianism's neglect of intentions
intuitively makes the most sense when we are assessing the moral worth of some largescale policy proposed by an entity consisting of more than one individual.
Deontology in policy making fails to uphold democracy and legitimizes
oppression.
Page 129 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Institute For Public Policy 97 [ Institute For Public Policy New Mexico June,
1997 A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics
http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf]
Regarding the policymaking role of deontological philosophy in a democracy, I am
concerned about the
same issue that concerned scholars such as Herman Finer and Victor Thompson--the
specter of
policymakers (whether elected or unelected) imposing their own perceptions of higherorder moral principles on an unwilling or uninformed society . History has shown that the
imposition of higher-order moral principles from above all too often degenerates into
instrumental oppression. Thus as Finer has--I believe correctly--pointed out, the crucial difference
between democracy and totalitarianism is the people's power to exact obedience to the
public will. In a democracy, values are not "discovered" by policy activists; instead, yhey
emerge out of the democratic process. For this reason I find very troubling the suggestion by Joel
Kassiola that environmental ethics requires that such long-standing and powerful values as national
sovereignty and property rights will have to be ethically assessed and, perhaps, redefined or subordinated
to a
more morally-weighty, environmentally-based values and policies. I cannot help but wonder just who will
be doing the refining and subordinating of these values and how this is to be done. As Kurt Baier
reminds us, in a democracy the moral rules and convictions of any group can and
should be subjected to certain tests (1958, p. 12). That test is the submission of those
moral rules and convictions
to the sovereign public. While policymakers are expected to sort out the value conflicts
that arise in light of their duty to serve the public interest, they are seldom entitled to act
solely according to some perceived a priori moral imperativ e. (Those who would act this way in
the case of environmental policy are aptly described by Bob Taylor as environmental ethicists who
discover 'truth' even though this truth can't or won't be seen by their fellow citizens.) Herein lies one
of the important moral dilemmas of democratic government. Individuals are free, within
the constraints of law, to act on perceived moral imperatives; democratic governments
are not. It is, for example, one thing for individuals to donate their property for
environmental preservation, but it is quite another thing for the government
to seize private lands (i.e., redefine property rights) for the same purpose.
Deontology fails-- no way of evaluating conflicting obligations
Rainbow 2002 [ Catherine Rainbow is a teacher at Davidson College.Descriptions of Ethical Theories
and Principles http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/Indep/carainbow/Theories.htm]
deontology contains many positive attributes, it also contains its fair number of flaws.
One weakness of this theory is that there is no rationale or logical basis for
deciding an individual's duties. For instance, businessman may decide that it is his
duty to always be on time to meetings. Although this appears to be a noble duty we do
not know why the person chose to make this his duty . Perhaps the reason that he has to be at
Although
the meeting on time is that he always has to sit in the same chair. A similar scenario unearths two other
faults of deontology including the fact that sometimes a person's duties conflict, and that deontology is
not concerned with the welfare of others . For instance, if the deontologist who must be on
time to meetings is running late, how is he supposed to drive? Is the deontologist

supposed to speed, breaking his duty to society to uphold the law, or is the deontologist
supposed to arrive at his meeting late, breaking his duty to be on time? This scenario
of conflicting obligations does not lead us to a clear ethically correct resolution
Page 130 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
nor does it protect the welfare of others from the deontologist's decision. Since
deontology is not based on the context of each situation, it does not provide any
guidance when one enters a complex situation in which there are conflicting obligations
(1,2).
The need for exceptions means deontology fails as a theory.

Treasury Board 2006 [Canadian Treasury Board Professional Ethics and
Standards for the Evaluation Community in the Government of Canada
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/eval/dev/career/pesecgc-enpcegc/pesecgcenpcegc_e.asp]
that it is difficult to get universal agreement on
what principles should be considered fundamental. It is also difficult to prioritize and to
apply
such abstract principles as truth telling and the sanctity of life to specific cases that arise
in ones
day-to-day work. In addition, the application of certain principles, without reference to
consequences, can have extremely negative resultsfor example, when telling the truth results
in penalties for well-intentioned actions. Moreover, it is often the case that one principle will
come into conflict with another. A celebrated example is truth telling versus the sanctity
of life
when one is considering whether to lie to a prospective murderer about the location of
the
intended victim. It is also argued that if exceptions are made in the application of a principle,
it
cannot be considered a fundamental one . Many deontologists, however, would
approve of
exceptions when a greater moral principle is at stake. At a less dramatic level than life and
Among the criticisms of deontological theory is
death,
one can envisage an evaluator having to choose between the publics right to know and a clients
right to privacy.
The subjectivity of what rights are important means deontology fails.

Rainbow 2002 [ Catherine Rainbow is a teacher at Davidson College.Descriptions of Ethical Theories
and Principles http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/Indep/carainbow/Theories.htm]
In the rights ethical theory the rights set forth by a society are protected and given the
highest priority. Rights are considered to be ethically correct and valid since a large or
ruling population endorses them. Individuals may also bestow rights upon others if they
have the ability and resources to do so (1). For example, a person may say that her
friend may borrow the car for the afternoon. The friend who was given the ability to
borrow the car now has a right to the car in the afternoon. A major complication of this
theory on a larger scale, however, is that one must decipher what the characteristics of a
right are in a society. The society has to determine what rights it wants to uphold and
give to its citizens. In order for a society to determine what rights it wants to enact, it
must decide what the society's goals and ethical priorities are. Therefore, in order for the
rights theory to be useful, it must be used in conjunction with another ethical theory that
will consistently explain the goals of the society (1). For example in America people have
the right to choose their religion because this right is upheld in the Constitution. One of
Page 131 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the goals of the founding fathers' of America was to uphold this right to freedom of
religion. However, under Hitler's reign in Germany, the Jews were persecuted for their
religion because Hitler decided that Jews were detrimental to Germany's future success.
The American government upholds freedom of religion while the Nazi government did
not uphold it and, instead, chose to eradicate the Jewish religion and those who practiced
it.
Deontologys absolutism prioritizes morality as a concept over moral results.
Nielsen 93 [Kai Nielsen is a Philosophy Professor at University of Calgary
Absolutism and It Consequentialist CriticsEdited by Joram Haber, p. 170-2]
Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is
still more monstrous. The consequentialist is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective moral
convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed or with certain reflective particular moral
convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral convictions. One could
even usefully and relevantly adapt here-though for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's.
Consequentialism of the kind I have been arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for
common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not
theory, is corrupt." Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism,
it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a
theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral
convictions that would be another matter indeed Anticonsequentialists often point to the
inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing of the innocent but cannot the
compliment be returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with
evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far greater misery and then
excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the death and misery but
merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems
to me to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in
normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity
he
allows. when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse. He tries to keep
his 'moral purity' and [to] avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard called
'double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does
not make it right.
Deontologys absolutism means it will inevitably fail.

Pritchett No Date [ Adrian Pritchett is a University of Georgia graduate and an attorney. Paper written
post 1998. Kai Nielsens Support of Consequentialism
http://pritchea.myweb.uga.edu/phil3200paper1.htm]
and
Rejection
of
Deontology
Throughout the article, Nielsen concurrently argues that deontology should be rejected but that
consequentialism is viable. We may reconstruct his argument as follows: Deontology, as a morally
absolute theory, makes mistakes. Likewise, an absolutist form of consequentialism also makes
mistakes. So absolutism is wrong. Unfortunately, deontology can only be formulated as some
type of moral absolutism, while consequentialism can be flexible. Therefore,

deontology should be rejected, and by rejecting deontology we are left with
consequentialism as a viable theory. Nielsen relied heavily on examples to support his first premise
that deontology makes mistakes. He discussed warfare to show how it is not the case that one is
necessarily morally corrupt if he or she knowingly kills the innocent while making moves to kill
combatants, but this point would not have been salient without having seen the movie he referred to, The
Battle of Algiers. Nielsen did present an effective example, though, with the case of the innocent fat
man. In this thought experiment, a fat man is leading a group of people out of a cave when
he gets hopelessly stuck in the opening. There is a rising tide that will cause everyone
Page 132 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
inside the cave to drown unless they can get out. The only option for removing the fat
man is to blast him out with dynamite that someone happens to have. Nielsen explains
that the deontologist would hold that the fat man must not be blasted and killed because
this would violate the prohibition against killing and it is only nature responsible for
everyone else drowning. Nielsen challenges this principle by declaring that anyone in
such a situation, including the fat man, should understand that the right thing to do is
blast the fat man out in order to save the many live s in the cave. Furthermore, the
deontologist exhibits moral evasion whenever he stands idly by and allows a greater
tragedy than is necessary to occur. Nielsen explains that this is the kind of example that
highlights the corrupt nature of deontology.
Utilitarianism is the only way to access morality. Sacrifice in the name of
preserving rights destroys any hope of future generations attaining other
values.
Is there any end that could justify a nuclear war that threatens the survival of the
species? Is not all-out nuclear war just as self contradictory in the real world as pacifism is accused of being? Some people
argue that "we are required to undergo gross injustice that will break many souls sooner
than ourselves be the authors of mass murder."73 Still others say that "when a person makes survival the
highest value, he has declared that there is nothing he will not betray. But for a civilization to sacrifice itself
makes no sense since there are not survivors to give meaning to the sacrifical [sic] act.
In that case, survival may be worth betrayal." Is it possible to avoid the "moral calamity
of a policy like unilateral disarmament that forces us to choose between being dead or
red (while increasing the chances of both)"?74 How one judges the issue of ends can be affected by how one
poses the questions. If one asks "what is worth a billion lives (or the survival of the species)," it is natural to resist
contemplating a positive answer. But suppose one asks, " is it possible to imagine any threat to our
civilization and values that would justify raising the threat to a billion lives from one in
ten thousand to one in a thousand for a specific period ?" Then there are several plausible answers,
including a democratic way of life and cherished freedoms that give meaning to life beyond mere survival. When we pursue
several values simultaneously, we face the fact that they often conflict and that we face
difficult tradeoffs. If we make one value absolute in priority, we are likely to get that
value and little else. Survival is a necessary condition for the enjoyment of other values,
but that does not make it sufficient. Logical priority does not make it an absolute value. Few people act as though
survival were an absolute value in their personal lives, or they would never enter an automobile. We can give survival of
the species a very high priority without giving it the paralyzing status of an absolute
value. Some degree of risk is unavoidable if individuals or societies are to avoid paralysis
and enhance the quality of life beyond mere survival. The degree of that risk is a
justifiable topic of both prudential and moral reasoning.
Destruction of social institutions that limit rights literally cause social chaos
and make it impossible to project right-based economies elsewhere.
Harris 94 (Owen Spring 1994; Editor of National Interest Journal of International
affairs and diplomacy; Power of Civilizations Via Questia)
Page 133 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Had the United States been as demanding on human rights and democracy towards
Taiwan and South Korea in the 1960s as it is now towards China, those countries would
never have experienced their economic miracles, and they and the region would be in much worse shape as
a result. But perhaps the most cutting riposte that these Singaporeans make is that the internal condition of the United States itself
today--the
evident consequence of pressing its own principles to extremes--deprives it of

any authority to preach to others, to insist that all must follow its ways. Listen to this, from Kishore
Mahbubani, a recent Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations and visiting fellow at Harvard: But freedom does not
only solve problems; it can also cause them. The United States has undertaken a massive
social experiment, tearing down social institution after social institution that restrained
the individual. The results have been disastrous. Since 1960 the U.S. population has
increased 41 percent while violent crime has risen by 560 percent, single-mother births
by 419 percent, divorce rates by 300 percent and the percentage of children living in
single-parent homes by 300 percent. This is massive social decay. Many a society shudders at the
prospects of this happening on its shores. But instead of traveling overseas with humility, Americans
confidently preach the virtues of unfettered individual freedom, blithely ignoring the
visible social consequences.(3) How is one to respond to all that? One might I suppose simply say, thank God
they didn't bring up Slavery and the Opium Trade, and leave it at that. But in this issue Eric Jones
takes the Singaporean case seriously, analyzes its arguments, and then speculates fascinatingly on China's possible futures. As he
says, in one sense the debate is one between those who assert the primacy of history and those who assert the primacy of
economics. But as Irwin Stelzer shows, there is room for interesting differences of opinion even among those who agree on the latter.
There is no Utopia in which we can get rid of difficult moral decisions. Political
inaction in times of risks can only be for the worst
One way is to treat rules as prima facie

moral duties and to appeal to a consequentialist critical level of moral reasoning to judge
competing moral claims. For example, in judging the moral acceptability of social institutions and policies (including
How do we reconcile rules and consideration of consequences in practice?
nuclear deterrence), a broad consequentialist might demand that the benefit they produce be not only large but also not achievable
In addition, to protect against the basic difficulties of

comparing different people's interests when making utilitarian calculations, a broad
consequentialist would require very substantial majorities; otherwise he would base his
decisions on rules and rights-based grounds . A consequentialist argument can also be
provided for giving some weight to motives as well as means. For example William Safire argues that
"the protection of acting in good faith, with no malicious intent, is what make decisionmaking possible. It applies to all of us. . . . The doctor who undertakes a risky operation, the lawyer who gambles
on an unorthodox defense to save his client, the businessman who bets the company on a new product."42 While such an
argument can be abused if good motives are treated as an automatic one-dimensional
exculpation, it can be used by broad consequentialists as a grounds for including
evaluation of motives in the overall judgment of an act. Whether one accepts the broad consequentialist
by an alternative that would respect rules. 40
approach or chooses some other, more eclectic way to include and reconcile the three dimensions of complex moral issues,43 there
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."44
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.
will often be a sense of uneasiness about the answers, not just because of the complexity of the
Page 134 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Political inaction to prevent further death is the greatest inhumanity one can
commit.
Nielsen 93 Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary (Kai, Absolutism and Its
Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber Pg 171-72)
Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such
killing of the innocent, but cannot the compliment be returned by speaking of the even
greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far
greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the death and
misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing
to prevent seems to me to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling
himself to do what in normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity, he
He tries to keep his 'moral

purity' and avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard
called 'double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally
evasive way but this does not make it right My consequentialist reasoning about such cases as the case of the
innocent fat man is very often resisted on the grounds that it starts a very dangerous precedent. People rationalize wildly
and irrationally in their own favor in such situations. To avoid such rationalization, we
must stubbornly stick to our deontological principles and recognize as well that very
frequently, if people will put their wits to work or just endure, such admittedly monstrous
actions done to prevent still greater evils will turn out to be unnecessary.
allows, when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse.
Attempts to totalize systems of morals is impossible

Green 02 (Joshua David; Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Harvard
University. November 2002 "The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About
Morality and What To Do About It", pg 288)
moral theorizing fails because our intuitions do not reflect a

coherent set of moral truths and were not designed by natural selection or anything else
to behave as if they were. And note that this is the case for a single persons intuitions. Troubles only multiply
when one must reconcile the conflicting intuitions of many different people . Thus, while
antirealism does not rule out the possibility of reinventing normative ethics as an
attempt to organize our moral intuitions and values, its not likely to work. If you want to
make sense of your moral sense, turn to biology, psychology, and sociologynot
normative ethics.
I maintain, once again, that this sort of
Construction of moral lines is counter-productive to decision making.

Morality And What To Do About It", pg 310)
Moral realists, and those anti-realists who would emulate them, have the option of dogmatism, of blindly acting by moral norms that
one takes to be authoritative. Revisionists, in contrast, have no choice but to acknowledge that all moral judgment is an imprecise
process of weighing values. The nature of moral action requires the drawing of lines : One either jumps in
and saves the drowning child, or one does not. One either votes to allow abortion or one does not. Of course, one will sometimes
To any
particular course of action one must say either yes or no. Thus, while the inputs to moral judgment
are fuzzy, fluid, and continuous considerations, the practical outputs of moral judgment are discrete actions. Deontology is
make compromises by adopting middle-ofthe- road courses of action, but, at some level, all action is discrete.
Page 135 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
intuitively appealing because it offers answers as clear and forceful as our intuitions,
drawing theoretical lines that translate into practical lines, the kinds of lines that we, like
it or not, are forced to draw by the nature of action. But, contrary to appearances, nature
contains no true moral lines. We begin with only a mush of 298 morally relevant
considerations, things we care about, and any lines that get drawn must be drawn by us.
Therefore, any attempt to settle a moral question with deontological appeals to rights,
obligations, etc. always begs the question. Such appeals are merely attempts to settle
moral issues by insisting that they have, in effect, already been settled by Mother Moral
Nature and the lines she has drawn.
Exceptions to all concrete lines of morals prove there exists no true
deontological framework.
Morality And What To Do About It", pg 312)
In the context of an openly

anti-realist dialogue, what would it mean to say that a fetus has a right to life or that a
woman has a right to choose? If all one means in saying these things is that one is against abortion, or in favor of
allowing it, then why not just say that?17 Packaging ones opinion as a claim about rights is just pointless propaganda. Perhaps,
one might argue, that an appeal to a right can be understood as an appeal to a default
assumption. To appeal to the moral right to free speech, for example, might be to appeal to the generally accepted principle
that people should be able to say what they want in almost all cases. The problem is that in any real controversy
in which rights are invoked, the question is inevitably about the limits of those rights .
Therefore, it is pointless18 for civil libertarians to defend flag-burning by appeal to the
right to free speech, regardless of how natural this feels. Everyone is generally in favor of free speech.
The debate is about whether to make an exception for this sort of speech. Pointing out
that this case would be an exception does nothing to change the minds of those who
want it to be an exception. In this case, as in others, appeals to rights are, once again,
just question-begging propaganda, useless in the face of anti-realists who know the
meta-ethical truth and arent willing to play along.
What goes for private debates about marital infidelity goes for public moral debates as well.
Alternatives to cost-benefit analyses would result in political paralyses and

crush decision-making
Green 02 Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Harvard University (Joshua,
November 2002 "The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality And
What To Do About It", pg 313)
In contrast, one can appeal to good and bad consequences without propagandizing .
pro-life conservative might say, for example, that restricting abortion rights is good (or good in certain respects) because it teaches people important lessons in personal responsibility. This claim is not empty. A young woman who gets pregnant as a result of
irresponsible choices and is forced to carry a baby to term and give it up for adoption is likely to learn some valuable life lessons that she might not learn if given the option to end her pregnancy with a pill. This sort of claim contributes to a meaningful dialogue
He can agree that there is an up side to anti-choice legislation, but

then go on to argue that these advantages are outweighed by the disadvantages, bad
things that an honest conservative can acknowledge as bad, such as harm caused by
illegal abortions. Of course, this kind of dialogue may not resolve the issue. There may remain untestable factual assumptions
because its something a pro-choice liberal can acknowledge.
on either side concerning, for example, the existence of God and the nature of His will. Likewise, there may remain brute evaluative
differences, for example, over the various weights to attach to the mutually acknowledged good and bad consequences of
But getting rid of question-begging talk of rights and establishing some

common ground about advantages and disadvantages may help focus the issue. If, for
example, the pro-choice camp could get the pro-life camp to acknowledge that its
(dis)allowing abortion.
Page 136 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
opposition to abortion is ultimately grounded in untestable religious beliefs and nothing

else, that would be a very worthwhile achievement.
Page 137 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****UTIL BAD / DEON GOOD*****

**Util Bad**
People are not a means to a result, the results of an action are never as
important as the action itself.
Schapiro 2001 [Tamar Schapiro is professor of philosophy at Stanford. Three
Conceptions of Action in Moral Theory Ous, Mar 2001, Vol. 35 Issue 1, p93,
25p Ebsco]
Kamms view of action, though less explicit and developed, shares this propositional orientation.
An action in accordance with moral constraints, Kamm claims, states that another person has or
lacks value as a matter of fact. And since there is such a fact of the matter, actions can succeed
or fail to express the truth.18 And yet on both Wollastons and Kamms accounts, the world to
which action relates us descriptively is not the utilitarians world of natural

causes and effects. The claim that youre really something is a not a claim
about a persons empirical or psychological state; rather it is a claim about his
status.19 Similarly, the examples Wollaston invokes to illustrate his theory of action all involve
claims about the status of an agent in relation to others. Thus Wollastons view, echoed by
Kamm, seems to be that action tracks certain practical factsfacts about where
we stand in relation to one another as members of a social world. Wollastons
conception of action seems to presuppose a moral psychology which is different from
Cumberlands. While Wollaston would not deny that every action involves an
exercise of efficient causality, his view suggests that our ultimate practical
concern is not for the effects we can produce. Indeed his conception implies that in
addition to a causal element, action contains a reflexive element. The exercise of
human agency, according to Wollaston, involves a reflective awareness of ourselves in
relation to others.20 Action expresses a conception of where we stand in relation
to the other constituents of the world, conceived as a realm of status
relations. Moreover, this awareness determines an ultimate end of action
which is not an effect to be brought about. That end is the faithful
representation of the interpersonal order of which we are members.
Normality bias causes us to underestimate the impact of discriminatory
outcomes. This justifies a feedback loop where we accept the established
order and treat disadvantaged populations as suitable victims necessary for
our safety.
Lu-in Wang, Professor of Law @ University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 20 06 Discrimination by Default:
How Racism Becomes Routine Pg 90-97
The Normalcy and Normalization of Discrimination Because counterfactual thinking influences our
reactions to and explanations of negative events, biases in counterfactual thinking have the potential to
distort our assessments of discriminatory outcomes at several levels. First, they can mute our reactions to
discrimination generally, leading us to tolerate and even to accept unequal outcomes. Our acceptance of
discrimination is not due solely to a general indifference or hardness toward groups that are vulnerable to
discrimination, but results in part from the specific ways in which our preference for the normal or
customary affects how we process and evaluate events and behavior. That is, the normality bias leads us
to react less strongly to (and perhaps to not even notice) misfortunes that we take for granted or that
follow an expected pattern. This bias also promotes the entrenchment of those patterns because it leads
us to accept the established order but to End jarring, and therefore to resist, challenges to those accepted
Page 138 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
ways. Furthermore, it makes it easier for us to justify the established patterns by viewing them as rational
and even fair. Second, when a case of alleged discrimination does come under scrutiny, biases in
counterfactual thinking can distort our causal explanations of the events in question and our evaluations of
the parties. Because determining whether discrimination has occurred is fundamentally an exercise in
causal attribution,"7 the relative normality or mutability of the parties' conduct can influence our
judgments of their roles in producing the outcome in a way that leads us to reduce the perpetrators
responsibility and ascribe undue responsibility to the victim. More broadly, our judgments of blame and
sympathy create a feedback loop that reinforces the norms, expectations, and practices that contributed
to our biased judgments and perpetuate discriminatory reactions and behavior. Immutable Wrongs and
Suitable Victims The more easily we can imagine the victim of a tragic fate avoiding it, the more badly we
will feel that be has suffered, so that the level of sympathy we feel and the amount of compensation we
dole out may turn on trivial differences in the circumstances of a tragedy. In the burglary study discussed
earlier, for example, subjects expressed greater sympathy for victims if their homes were burglarized the
night before they returned from vacation than if the burglary occurred several weeks before their return.
Similarly, subjects in another study recommended significantly higher compensatory awards for a
convenience store customer who was shot during a robbery at a store he rarely patronized than for a
customer who was shot at his regular store. They also awarded significantly higher amounts to a plane
crash victim who managed to walk miles through a remote area only to die one-quarter of a mile from the
nearest town than to one who traveled just as far but died seventy-five miles from the nearest town. In
none of the studies did the victims losses or suffering differ based on the circumstances of their
misfortunes. Nevertheless, the fate of the more highly compensated victims seemed more poignant and
the victims themselves more deserving of sympathy, because subjects could more easily imagine positive
outcomes for them. A positive counterfactual also may come more easily to mind, as Delgados examples
suggest, when it is not normal for a person to suffer a particular fate. Recall the bursting of the dot-com E
bubble, when unemployment figures began to reflect not just the usual losses of blue-collar and lowerskilled service jobs but also substantial losses of high-paying, white-collar jobs. Numerous news articles
highlighted and analyzed the trend, labeling the ` downturn a "white-collar recession and sympathetically
profiling the newly idle (and mostly White) college educated professionals for whom unemployment was
both a hardship and a shock. Although white collar professionals during that period did A indeed suffer
higher rates of unemployment than were typical for that group, they were not, as many assumed, the
hardest hit: the groups that usually get clobbered by unemploymentblue- collar workers, lower-skilled
workers, people of colorcontinued to bear disproportionately higher job losses. The misfortunes of
unemployed professionals drew more attention and greater sympathy in part because, as one economist
put it, They are not the people who come right to mind when you think about the jobless.* Similarly,
our attention and sympathy for crime victims varies according to how accustomed we are to seeing them
or, to be more precise, people like themsuffer crime and violence. Even the same, equally appalling
forms of victimization can elicit different degrees of concern depending on race and class. A couple of highprofile cases from recent years illustrate this point. Many readers will likely recall the highly publicized
1989 case of the Central Park joggera case so famous that this reference to its victim generally suffices
to identify it. As Kimberle Crenshaw has noted, this case, which was believed at the time to have involved
the gang rape and brutal beating of a White investment banker by as many as twelve Black youths, drew
massive, sensationalized media Coverage, provoked widespread public outrage, and even prompted
Donald Trump to take out a full page ad in four New York newspapers demanding that New York Bring
Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police." While she does not suggest that the Central Park joggers
ease did not merit great concern, Crenshaw does point out the dramatic disparity between the level of
concern that case evoked and the virtual silence of the media with regard to the twenty-eight other cases
of first-degree rape or attempted rape" that were reported in New York that same weekmany of which
were as horrific as the rape in Central Park," but most of which included victims who were women of
color. Similarly, the great attention paid to a more recent and perhaps equally famous casethe June 2002
abduction of Elizabeth Smart, a White teenager from an affluent Utah familycontrasted sharply with the
relative lack of coverage given a similar case that same spring: the disappearance of Alexis Patterson, a
seven-year-old African American girl, in April 2002. By one account, the Smart story received ten times the
media coverage given Patter- sons case: one thousand newspaper articles and television reports on Smart
versus one hundred on Patterson.34 Reporters, editors, and producers denied that the victims race played
any role in the amount of attention their cases received, pointing out that a number of factors
distinguished them: Smart was abducted from her own bedroom in the middle of the night while Patterson
disappeared during her walk to school, the police departments may have worked differently in sharing
information with the media, and the Smart parents, with their "perfect" family, may have been perceived
more sympathetically than the Pattersons. Aside from these circumstantial differences, however, a number
of journalists and commentators noted that race probably did make a differencenot because the media
Page 139 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
consciously resist reporting stories with Black victims, but because of their sense of "what makes a
compelling national story."3 What makes a compelling story, however, often correlates with race and
class. As one veteran Black journalist put it bluntly, "whatever happens in a black neighborhood doesnt
really surprise anybody. The public is conditioned to expect that. "37 In other words, the explanation may
be simply that crime and violence are an accepted part of Black peoples "rough road in life."38 Their
suffering is normal and therefore unremarkable. Furthermore, we take for granted not just who suffers but
also how their suffering plays out. That is, we become inured to misfortunes that a story line with which we
are familiar, because the victims experiences are hard to imagine otherwise. The more muted reactions to
deaths from enemy versus friendly illustrate this point. Familiarity accustoms us to racial and other groupbased discrimination as well, because that kind of misfortune often follows standard scripts. In their
analysis of reactions to the bombing of a synagogue in France that injured several people, social
psychologists Dale T Miller and William Turnbull pointed out that one need not embrace a discriminatory
viewpoint in order to assimilate the expectation that certain harms are normal for some people but not for
others: Frances then Prime Minister publicly denounced the attack and expressed his sympathy for both
the jews who were inside the synagogue and the "innocent passersby." The Prime Ministers differentiation
of the victims and innocent passersby provoked considerabl[e] outrage because many interpreted it as
implying that he did not consider the jews to be as innocent as the passersby. Certainly the term innocent
has a strong moral connotation, but should we assume that the Prime Ministers remarks reflect antiSemitism? Not necessarily. His failure to apply the term innocent to the jews inside the synagogue may
reflect the fact that his mental representation of a synagogue enabled him to mentally remove passersby
from the vicinity more easily than the attending jews. That the passersby were not the intended victims of
the attack also makes their injuries less taken-for-granted and thus easier to undo mentally (although no
more or less deserved) than those of the jews. What need not have been, ought not to have been.3 As
this incident suggests, the more readily we recognize the patterns that discrimination follows, the harder it
is for us to undo mentally the routine discrimination we expect and witness, the more congruous and less
remarkable we find its victims losses, and the more acceptable they become. As a result, even extreme
acts of discrimination such as bias-motivated violence can play a role in normalizing discrimination to the
extent that they define the expected targets for aggression and ill treatment. Observers of bias, crimes
understand immediately and viscerally why the victim was singled out because they recognize the pattern
that such crime follows. As Iris Marion Young has explained, the social environment surrounding acts of
violence, harassment, intimidation, and ridicule of particular groups makes those acts "possible and even
acceptable. This pattern of acceptance also characterizes the less dramatic, more mundane types of
discrimination that members of some groups experience routinely. Dorothy E. Roberts has pointed out, for
example, that habitual racial profiling in law enforcement contributes to an environment in which both
the imposition of physical suffering on members of certain groups and the infringement of their
constitutional rights are expected and minimized. First, discriminatory targeting by law enforcement
officers reinforces the perception that some groups are "second-class citizens" for whom police
surveillance and even arrest are "perfectly natural." In turn, this belief promotes the view that those
groups are entitled to fewer liberties and that their rights are "mere amenities that may be sacrificed to
protect law-a biding people." Acceptance of this view results in an environment in which a pattern of
discriminatory targeting seems benign, for "when social understandings are so uncontested that they
become invisible, the social meanings that arise from them appear natural. Similarly, Deseriee A. Kennedy
has explained that consumer discriminationthe commercial version of racial profiling in which retail
establishments single out Black and Brown shoppers for heightened surveillance and other ill treatment
also insinuates itself into our expectations of how people of color should be treated: "Everyday racism
perpetuates itselfit becomes integrated into everyday situations and becomes part of the expected, of
the unquestionable, and of what is seen as normal by the dominant group.""2 And as we shall see, a
history of inferior care has led to the view that minorities inevitably will suffer worse health outcomes
because those people" generally dont do well.43 In addition to being familiar and therefore normal, our
scripts, schemas, and prototypes for discrimination incorporate other factors that make discriminatory
outcomes seem inevitable and lead us to take them for granted. The standard discrimination schema
includes a perpetrator who intentionally targets a member of a disfavored group for ill treatment and
whose intentional wrong- doing is triggered by his "taste for discrimination"a force both irrational and
outside his control. Both the assumptions that discrimination is intended and that its perpetrators are
driven to it tend to make discrimination seem ineluctable, with all the implications that the appearance of
immutability carries. As Miller and Turnbull suggested with reference to the synagogue bombing, when a
victim is seen as an intended target, the victims fate is harder to undo mentally. As they also have
explained, victims losses are more easily taken for granted when the harm they suffer was required in
order for the perpetrator to achieve his goals"even when [those] goals [are] reprehensible.4 This
tendency was confirmed in yet another victim compensation study, in which subjects showed less
Page 140 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
sympathy toward and recommended less compensation for a victim whose dog was killed by a burglar
when the dogs barking "threatened the burglars mission" than when the dog was killed when no one was
nearby to hear the barking. It is also harder to imagine a different outcome if an actors behavior is viewed
as out of his control than when it is controllable. For example, to the extent that people accept the
stereotype of a rapist as being "sex-starved, insane, or both," they have a hard time imagining him
behaving differently and refraining from his attack on the victim."6 Taken as a whole--and as unrealistic
and inaccurate as they may sometimes beour scripts, schemas, and prototypes of discrimination lead us
to take for granted and thus to accept in- equitable outcomes. And by incorporating the assumptions
implicit in these conceptions of discrimination, the legal model of intentional discrimination reinforces and
institutionalizes this effect. We come, in other words, to view members of certain groups as appropriate or
acceptable targets for the kinds of mistreatment that we are used to seeing them suffer. Even those of us
who are vulnerable to common forms of discrimination may adopt this perspective to some degree, as we
shall see below. Those who do not see themselves as likely targets of discrimination, on the other hand
that is, members of typically dominant groupsmay even find comfort in these patterns. One of the less
noble tendencies of human beings is to gauge our own vulnerability to negative events by comparison to
othersand to prefer to compare "downward, to less fortunate others. Downward social comparison
gives us a favorable, self-enhancing view of ourselves, thereby reducing anxiety and improving our sense
of well-being.47 Accordingly, individuals who can distinguish themselves from potential targets are able to
reap psychological benefits from drawing that distinction. To the extent that racially discriminatory
patterns of mistreatment provide nontarget individuals with more vulnerable, less fortunate groups with
which to compare themselves, these patterns also provide nontarget persons with a means of enhancing
their positive views of themselves and the worldto see the world as safe and just and themselves as
invulnerable and worthy. To the extent that viewing some groups as expected, even accepted, targets for
mistreatment provides a nontarget individual with a way of differentiating herself from that victim, she
may feel even more insulated from or immune to such treatment because her group identity protects her.
The comfort that comes from seeing others as more vulnerable than ourselves in turn serves to reinforce
the designation of those others as suitable victims.48
Extend Wang, 02 utilitarianism perpetuates the exclusion of the

marginalized. This reinforces systematic bias based on race, class, and gender
for the benefit of a privileged class. The normality of discrimination produces a
feedback loop where our reaction to suffering is muted and our biased
judgments reinforce the norms that contributed to discrimination in the first
place. These biases distort perceptions of cause and effect and our evaluation
of the events in question. Once we are accustomed to the systematic harm of
disadvantaged individuals it makes it possible to ignore their suffering while
overestimating the impact of events that threaten to change the social order.
Risk assessment is distorted by poverty trading on capital reserves exclude
the poor
Tim Hope, Professor of Criminology @ Keele University, 2000, Crime, disorder, and community safety
Pg 193-194
We live in both a risk society (Beck 1992) and an exclusive society (Young 1999). At the same time as we
orient to ourselves around the risks and dangers which we see surrounding us in our everyday lives, so
also do our social and political arrangements lend themselves to the magnification of inequalities in access
to those goods which reassure, protect or expose ourselves to risk. As our perception of the bads
increases, so do we seek to gamer the goods which would keep them at bay, trading on our capital
reserves and capacities across the various spheres of economy, community and culture. The ontological
insecurity which the condition of late modernity inspires in us (Giddens 1990; Young 1999) fuses with the
apprehension of mundane insecurities, pressuring us to invest in the means of risk avoidance (Hope and
Sparks 2000). As we feel increasingly that the public sphere alone can no longer guarantee sufficiently the
public goods of everyday safety (see Garland 1996), so we are thrown upon our own individual and
collective resources and strategies to acquire the private goods which would remedy our perceived
security deficit. And our incapacity to protect ourselves from risk leads to frustration with government - still
seen as the primary g provider of safety in modem society and with ourselves, as a reflection of our own
Page 141 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
powerlessness in the face of the risks and harms that surround us. Yet, access to capital in one sphere - for
instance. through income and of such a process is at work in contemporary society we might expect to
see consequences in observed structure of outcomes both of risk and of risk avoidance. Even if we have
little access to the decision making processes of individuals, and little chance of observing their pursuit of
strategies of risk avoidance in their everyday lives, we may still be able to infer their operation from the
observed structural patterns of risk. In this vein, this chapter essays an actuarial analysis of the
distribution of the risk to private citizens of household property crime victimization in England and Wales,
as measured by the British Crime Survey.
Judge must recognize their complicity in reinforcing beliefs which justify a

continuation of racism.
Wendy Brown Scott 99, professor of @ Tulane Law School in New Orleans Transformative
desegregation: liberating hearts and minds, 315
Judges and college and university faculty members, the majority of whom are white and male, must be
willing to cross borders and divest their hearts and minds of the belief in the superiority of Western culture.
As Arthur Schlesinger put it, judges must "face the shameful fact: historically America has been a racist
nation."" Judges must see that they are steeped in the very traditions and values inculcated by
Eurocentric curriculum, and that the incantation of neutrality is not sufficient to overcome their inherent
biases." Then they can weigh their own traditions and values, which have historically denigrated or
denounced difference, against traditionally subordinated concepts (such as multiculturalism and
Afrocentrism) in order to determine whether the failure to include these perspectives in curricula violates
the Constitution. In this same vein, bell hooks argues that not only must the black life experience be
"decolonized," but that whites must be "decolonized" themselves.216 hooks describes the problem which
requires decolonization: During that time of my life when racial apartheid forbid possibilities of intimacy
and closeness with whites, I was most able to forget about the pain of racism----Close to white folks, I am
forced to witness firsthand their willful ignorance about the impact of race and racism. The harsh
absolutism of their denial. Their refusal to acknowledge accountability for racist conditions past and
present217 She defines decolonization as the process of whites "unlearning white supremacy by divesting
of white privilege" and blacks divesting of the "vestiges of internalized racism."211 Those vestiges include:
the belief among white Americans, which perpetuates the exercise of white privilege, that they are not
responsible for racism; their belief that black people should be feared and dreaded; the belief among black
and white people that racism is intractable and permanent, and that no meaningful bonds of intimacy can
be formed between blacks and whites and therefore, white supremacy should not be resisted; and the
economic necessity of the repression of black rage directed toward whites.219 She states that "[t]he
political process of decolonization is. . . a way for us to learn to see [one another more] clearly. It is the way
to freedom for both colonized and colonizer."220
Apocalyptic predictions are constructed by alarmists to advance personal

interests
Kurasawa, Associate Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Social and Political Thought at York
University in Toronto, 2004 (Fuyuki Karasawa, Cautionary Tales: The Global Culture of Prevention and The
Work of Foresight, NM, http://www.yorku.ca/kurasawa/Kurasawa%20Articles/Constellations%20Article.pdf)
Up to this point, I have tried to demonstrate that transnational socio-political relations are nurturing a
thriving culture and infrastructure of prevention from below, which challenges presumptions about the
inscrutability of the future (II) and a stance of indifference toward it (III). Nonetheless, unless and until it is
substantively filled in, the argument is vulnerable to misappropriation since farsightedness does not in
and of itself ensure emancipatory outcomes. Therefore, this section proposes to specify normative criteria
and participatory procedures through which citizens can determine the reasonableness, legitimacy, and
effectiveness of competing dystopian visions in order to arrive at a socially self-instituting future. Foremost
among the possible distortions of farsightedness is alarmism, the manufacturing of unwarranted and
unfounded doomsday scenarios. State and market institutions may seek to produce a culture of fear by
deliberately stretching interpretations of reality beyond the limits of the plausible so as to exaggerate the
prospects of impending catastrophes, or yet again, by intentionally promoting certain prognoses over
others for instrumental purposes. Accordingly, regressive dystopias can operate as Trojan horses
Page 142 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
advancing political agendas or commercial interests that would otherwise be susceptible to public scrutiny
and opposition. Instances of this kind of manipulation of the dystopian imaginary are plentiful: the invasion
of Iraq in the name of fighting terrorism and an imminent threat of use of weapons of mass destruction;
the severe curtailing of American civil liberties amidst fears of a collapse of homeland security; the
neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state as the only remedy for an ideologically constructed fiscal crisis;
the conservative expansion of policing and incarceration due to supposedly spiraling crime waves; and so
forth. Alarmism constructs and codes the future in particular ways, producing or reinforcing certain crisis
narratives, belief structures, and rhetorical conventions. As much as alarmist ideas beget a culture of fear,
the reverse is no less true.
Predictions out of debate may be good, but in debate they should be held to a
very low standard. The probability of one small political change from the
status quo causing nuclear war or extinction is not only infinitesimal, its also
ridiculous.
Moral conscience precedes rational decision making decisions are based off a
moral backdrop
Bauman, Emeritus Prof of Sociology at the University of Leeds, 1993
(Zygmunt, Postmodern Ethics, 246-250)
the moral crisis of the postmodern habitat requires first and foremost that politics whether the politics of the politicians or the policentric, scattered politics which matters
all the more for being so elusive and beyond control _ be an extension and
institutionalization of moral responsibility . Genuine moral issues of the high-tech world are by and large beyond
But
the reach of individuals (who, at best, may singly or severally purchase the right not to worry about them, or buy a temporary
reprieve from suffering the effects of neglect). The effects of technology are long-distance, and so must be the preventive and
remedial action. Hans Jonas's 'long-range ethics' makes sense, if at all, only as a political programme - though given the nature of the
postmodern habitat, there is little hope that any political party competing for state power would be willing, suicidally, to endorse this
truth and act upon it. Commenting on Edgar Allan Poe's story of three fishermen caught in the maelstrom, of whom two died
paralysed with fear and doing nothing, but the third survived, having noticed that round objects are sucked into the abyss less
quickly, and promptly jumping into a barrel - Norbert Elias sketched the way in which the exit from a nonexit situation may be plotted.
The survivor, Elias suggests, began to think more coolly; and by standing back, by controlling his own fear, by seeing himself as it
were from a distance, like a chessman forming a pattern with others -on a board, he managed to turn his thoughts away from himself
to the situation in which he found himself... Symbolically representing in his mind the structure and direction of the flow of events, he
discovered a way of escape. In that situation, the level of self-control and the level of process-control were ... interdependent and
complemen tary.'s Let us note that Poe's cool and clever fisherman escaped alone. We do not know how many barrels there were left
in the boat. And barrels, after all, have been known since Diogenes to be the ultimate individual retreats. The question is - and to this
question private cunning offers no answer -- to what extent the techniques of individual survival (techniques by the way, amply
provided for all present and future, genuine and putative maelstroms, by eager-tooblige-and-profit merchants of goods and counsels)
can be stretched to-embrace the-collective survival.--The-maelstrom-of the kind we are in - all of us together, and most of us
individually - is so frightening because of its tendency to break down the issue of common survival into a sackful of individual survival
issues, and then to take the issue so pulverized off the political agenda. Can the process be retraced? Can that which has been
broken be made whole again? And where to find an adhesive strong enough to keep it whole? If the successive chapters of this book
suggest anything, it is that moral issues cannot be 'resolved', nor the moral life of humanity guaranteed, by the calculating and
Morality is not safe in the hands of reason, though this is exactly what
spokesmen of reason promise. Reason cannot help the moral self without depriving the
self of what makes the self moral: that unfounded, non-rational, un-arguable, noexcuses-given and noncalculable urge to stretch towards the other, to caress, to be for,
to live for, happen what may. Reason is about making correct decisions, while moral responsibility
precedes all thinking about decisions as it does not, and cannot care about any logic
which would allow the approval of an action as correct. Thus, morality can be
`rationalized' only at the cost of self-denial and self attrition. From that reason assisted self-denial, the
legislative efforts of reason.
self emerges morally disarmed, unable (and unwilling) to face up to the multitude of moral challenges and cacophony of ethical
prescriptions. At the far end of the long march of reason, moral nihilism waits: that moral nihilism which in its deepest essence means
not the denial of binding ethical code, and not the blunders of relativistic theory - but the loss of ability to be moral. As far as the
doubts in the ability of reason to legislate the morality of human cohabitation are concerned, the blame cannot be laid at the
doorstep of the postmodern tendency to dismiss the orthodox philosophical programme. The most pronounced manifestations of
programmatic or resigned - moral relativism can be found in the writings of thinkers who reject and resent postmodern verdicts and
voice doubts as to the very existence of a postmodern perspective, let alone the validity of judgements allegedly passed from its
Page 143 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
vantage point. Apart from value-signs added (often as an afterthought), there is little to choose between ostensibly 'anti-postmodern,
scientific recordings of the ways and means of `embedded selves', and the enough space and enough time. There is little
disagreement between them as to the assumption - authenticated by the long managerial efforts of modern times and the realities of
the social habitat these efforts managed to produce - that in order to act morally the person must first be disowned of autonomy,
whether by coercive or purchasable expertise; and as to another assumption (which also reflects the realities of the contemporary
modee of life), that the roots of action are likely to be assessed as moral, and the criteria to assess the morality of acts, must be
extrinsic to the actor. There is little difference between two ostensibly opposite standpoints in the way they disallow or neglect the
possibility that it may be precisely the expropriation of moral prerogatives and the usurpation of moral competence by agencies
extrinsic to the moral self (multiple agencies, contestant and combative, yet equally vociferous in their claims to ethical infallibility)
which stand behind the stubborn unassailability of ethical relativism and moral nihilism. There is little reason to trust the assurances
of the expropriating/ usurping agencies that the fate of morality is safe with them; there is little evidence that this has been the case
thus far, and little encouragment can be derived from the scrutiny of their present work for the hope that this will be more of the case
in the future. At the end of the ambitious modern project of universal moral certainty, of legislating the morality of and for human
selves, of replacing the erratic and unreliable moral impulses with a socially underwritten ethical code - the bewildered and
disoriented self finds itself alone in the face of moral dilemmas without good (let alone obvious) choices, unresolved moral conflicts
Fortunately for humanity (though not always for the moral

self) .and despite all the expert efforts to the contrary, the moral conscience - that
ultimate prompt of moral impulse and root of moral responsibility ---has.only been
anaesthesized not amputated, It is still there, dormant perhaps, often stunned,
sometimes shamed into silence - but capable of being awoken, of that Levinas's feat of sobering up
and the excruciating difficulty of being moral.
from inebriated torpor. The moral conscience commands obedience without proof that the command should be obeyed; conscience
can neither convince nor coerce. Conscience wields none of the weapons recognized by the modern world as insignia of authority. By
the standards which support the modern world, conscience is weak. The proposition that conscience of the moral self is humanity's
only warrant and hope may strike the modern mind as preposterous; if not presposterous, then portentous: what chance_ for a
morality having conscience (already dismissed by the authority-conscious mind as fickle, `merely subjective', a freak) for its sole
foundation? And yet.. . Summing up the moral lessons of the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt demanded that
human beings be
capable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own
judgment, which, moreover, happens to be completely at odds with what they must
regard as the unanimous opinion of all these around them... These few who were still
able to tell right from wrong went really only by their own judgments, and they did so
freely; there were no rules to be abided by... because no rules existed for the
unprecedented." What we know for sure is that curing ostensible feebleness of moral conscience left the moral self, as a rule,
disarmed in the face of the `unanimous opinion of all these around them', and their elected or self-appointed spokesmen; while the
power which that unanimous opinion wielded was in no way a guarantee of its ethical value. Knowing this, we have little choice but to
place our bet on that conscience which, however wan, alone can instil the responsibility for disobeying the command to do evil.
there is no contradiction between the

rejection of (or scepticism towards) the ethics of socially conventionalized and rationally
`founded' norms, and the insistence that it does matter, and matter morally, what we do
and from what we desist. Far from excluding each other, the two can be accepted or
rejected only together. If in doubt - consult your conscience.
Contrary to one of the most uncritically accepted philosophical axioms,
The quest for survival destroys all human values

Callahan, director of The Hastings Institute, 73
Daniel Callahan, Co-founder and former director of The Hastings Institute, PhD in philosophy from Harvard
University, The Tyranny of Survival 1973, p 91-93
There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on another for the 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 of survival as a 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 lifethen 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
Page 144 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
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 Yet it would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly
manage their need to survive, they succeeded in not doing so.
Utilitarianism inherently only favors a privileged few

Liu PHD University of Pennsylvania 2000 (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of Pennsylvania, writes
2000 [Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods and practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])
However, its strengths are also its weaknesses. Its quantifications techniques are far from being
simple, straightforward, and objective . Indeed, they are often too complicated to be practical. They
are also to flexible and subject to manipulation. They are impersonal and lack compassion. More
importantly, they fail to deal the issue of equity and distributive justice. Seemingly, you cannot
get fairer than this. In calculating benefits and costs, each person is counted as one and only one. IN other
words, people are treated equally. For Mill, justice arises from the principle of utility. Utilitarianism in
concerted only the aggregate effect, no matter how the aggregate is distributed. For
almost all policies, there is an uneven distribution of benefits and costs. Some people
win, while others lose. The Pareto optimality would is almost nonexistent. A policys outcome is Pareto
optimal if nobody loses and at least one person gains.
Calculation reduces life to zero

Dillon 99 (Michael, Professor of IR @ Lancaster, Another Justice Political Theory, Vol. 27, No. 2. April,
pp. 165)
Economies of evaluation necessarily require calculability.3s Thus no valuation without mensuration and no
mensuration without indexation. Once rendered calculable, however, units of account are necessarily
submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to
the point of counting as nothing. Hence, no mensuration without demensuration either. There is nothing
abstract about this: the declension of economies of value leads to the zero point of holocaust. However
liberating and emancipating systems of value-rights-may claim to be, for example, they run the risk of
counting out the invaluable. Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Herewith, then,
the necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must never forget that, "we are dealing always
with whatever exceeds measure."
Utilitarianism causes species extinction

Weber 93 [Darren Weber, post-doctoral fellow at UCSF, Environmental Ethics and
Species "To be or not to be?" November 1993 http://dnl.ucsf.edu/users
/dweber/essays/env_tp2.pdf
A problem with utilitarian ethics is that the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number could
entail that some species are disadvantaged or actively exterminated . Firstly, the utilitarian calculus of the
greatest good for the greatest number is very difficult when it is restricted to humanit y. The present satisfaction of a
portion of humanity, let alone all of humanity, is very difficult to evaluate and the different degrees of satisfaction
to be had by various people from various sources of satisfaction is very difficult to predict, so the determination of
the greatest good for the greatest number after the distribution of limited resources is very, very difficult to evaluate. As applied to all sentient species,
it is virtually impossible to evaluate, since it is very difficult to know the feelings of sentient animals other than people. Secondly,
utilitarianism can lead to significant inequalities in the distribution of limited resources . For example, among a
group of people with 50 units of satisfaction there could be a small group with about 80 units of satisfaction and another larger group with about 40 units
of satisfaction, since the small group have exclusive control of some equipment. According to utilitarianism, another 10 units of satisfaction should be
distributed to the small group when it can use its equipment to transform 10 units of simple satisfaction into 20 units of added value satisfaction.
Assuming that it is possible to know the feelings of sentient animals, a sentient species (e.g., a predator) that
inflicts pain on another sentient species should be disadvantaged or extinguished when the satisfaction of
that species is less than the satisfaction of the species that suffer pai n. Thus, although the utilitarian principle
may apply to all sentient species, the difficulties of utilitarianism are insurmountable or the inequalities
implied by utilitarianism are likely to promote the extinction of species .
Page 145 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Utilitarianism is unsustainableadvocates ultimately revert back to morals to

make decisions
Not only does Utilitarianism lack a device for reducing the infringement of its rules, but because its rules
are very demanding, many utilitarian writers go in the opposite direction and accord moral agents some
freedom in the implementation of its rules. According to Harsanyi (1985, p. 46) supererogation may be
accommodated into Rule Utilitarianism by permitting the moral agent free choice between two acts A and
B. The moral agent may carry out the act with the lower total utility as long as the difference between the
ensuing utilities does not exceed a given amount (Cf. Scheffler's idea referred to below).10 Some utilitarian
writers have advocated permissiveness following Williams's incisive criticism of Utilitarianism. According to
Williams (1973) Utilitarianism is too demanding in that it fails to give adequate recognition to a person's
own projects which give meaning to his life, and impose upon him responsibility for maximizing the good.
Because of the need to make Utilitarianism more permissive, it would be contradictory to require that at
the same time it be made more severe.
Prediction destroys human agency

Bleiker 2K
(Roland, Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland. Popular Dissent, Human
Agency and Global Politics. 2000. Pub. Cambridge University Press)
The very notion of prediction does, by its own logic, annihilate human agency. To assert that international
relations is a domain of political dynamics whose future should be predictable through a convincing set of
theoretical propositions is to assume that the source of global politics is to a certain extent predetermined.
From such a vantage-point, there is no more room for interference and human agency, no more possibility
for politics to overtake theory. A predictive app roach thus runs the risk of ending up in a form of inquiry
that imposes a static image upon a far more complex set of transversal political practices. The point of a
theoretical inquiry, however, is not to ignore the constantly changing domain of internationals relations.
Rather, the main objective must consists of facilitating and hindering of transversal struggles that can
grapple with those moment when people walk through walls precisely when nobody expects them to do so.
Prediction is a problematic assessment tool even if a theory is able to anticipate future events. Important
theories, such as realist interpretations of international politics, may well predict certain events only
because their theoretical premises have become so objectivised that they have started to shape decision
makers and political dynamics. Dissent, in this case, is the process that reshapes these entrenched
perceptions and the ensuing political practices. Describing, explaining and prescribing may be less
unproblematic processes of evaluation, but only at first sight. If one abandons the notion of Truth, the idea
that an event can be apprehended as part of a natural order, authentically and scientifically, as something
that exists independently of the meaning we have given it if one abandons this separation of object and
subject, then the process of judging a particular approach to describing and explaining an event becomes
a very muddles affair. There is no longer an objective measuring device that can set the standard to
evaluate whether or not a particular insight into an event, such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, is true or
false. The very nature of a past event becomes indeterminate insofar as its identification is dependent
upon ever-changing forms of linguistic expression that imbue the event with meaning. 56
Page 146 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Utilitarianism = Killing
Saving lives isnt enough of a justification for actionsUtilitarianism justifies
the killing of the minority in order to save the majority
Page 147 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
The calculation of utilitarianism is the foundation of totalitarianism

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 ruthless-ness 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. No, an advocate of rights cannot take utilitarianism seriously as a competing general
theory of political morality, nor any other competing general theory. Rather, particular principles or
considerations must be given a place. A theory of rights may simply leave many decisions undetermined
or have to admit that rights may have to be overridden (but never for the sake of Social well-being or mere
policy preference). Also, kinds of rights may sometimes conflict, and it is not always possible to end that
conflict either by an elaboration of the theory of rights or by an appeal to some other
Every alternative to rights leads to tyranny
At the same time, there are other theories that seem to affirm human dignity yet give rights only a lesser
or probationary or instrumental role. Examples are utilitarianism, recent communitarianism, recent
republicanism, and radical egalitarianism. The first and last 1 will return to shortly; my response to the
others appears here and there in this volume. (All I wish to say now is that unless rights come first they are
not rights. They will tend to be sacrificed to some purpose deemed higher than the equal dignity of every
individual. There will be little if any concept of the integrity or inviolability of each individual. The group or
the majority or the good or the sacred or the vague future will be preferred. The beneficiaries will be
victimized along with the victims because no one is being treated as a person who is irreplaceable and
beyond value. To make rights anything but primary, even though in the name of human dignity, is to injure
human dignity.
Government coercion must be morally rejected
Dr. Edward Younkins, business professor, Wheeling Jesuit, CIVIL SOCIETY: THE REALM OF FREEDOM,
June 10, 2000, p. http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000610-11.htm
Recently (and ironically), government projects and programs have been started to restore civil society
through state subsidization or coercive mandates. Such coercion cannot create true voluntary associations.
Statists who support such projects believe only in the power of political society they don't realize that the
subsidized or mandated activity can be performed voluntarily through the private interaction of individuals
and associations. They also don't understand that to propose that an activity not be performed coercively,
is not to oppose the activity, but simply its coercion. If civil society is to be revived, we must substitute
voluntary cooperation for coercion and replace mandates with the rule of law. According to the Cato
Handbook for Congress, Congress should: before trying to institute a government program to solve a
problem, investigate whether there is some other government program that is causing the problem ... and,
if such a program is identified, begin to reform or eliminate it; ask by what legal authority in the
Constitution Congress undertakes an action ...; recognize that when government undertakes a program, it
displaces the voluntary efforts of others and makes voluntary association in civil society appear redundant,
with significant negative effects; and begin systematically to abolish or phase out those government
programs that do what could be accomplished by voluntary associations in civil society ... recognizing that
accomplishment through free association is morally superior to coercive mandates, and almost always
generates more efficient outcomes. Every time taxes are raised, another regulation is passed, or another
government program is adopted, we are acknowledging the inability of individuals to govern themselves. It
follows that there is a moral imperative for us to reclaim our right to live in a civil society, rather than to
have bureaucrats and politicians solve our problems and run our lives.
Page 148 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Consequentialism, by very nature, will fail in public policy to improve the wellbeing of others
Scheffler, prof philosophy, Princeton, 94
(Samuel Scheffler, prof philosophy, Princeton, 11/24/94, The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 14-16,
http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=M95w6e9pzZsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA14&dq=reject+consequentialism&ots=hbQFBohbTL&sig=V
gDh7pP6sAhJ1IKGaBA3BW7hi1Y)
I will maintain shortly that a hybrid theory which departed from consequentialism only to the extent of
incorporating an agent-centred prerogative could accommodate the objection dealing with personal
integrity. But first it is necessary to give fuller characterization of a plausible prerogative of this kind. To
avoid confusion, it is important to make a sharp distinction at the outset between an agent-centred
prerogative and a consequentialist dispensation to devote more attention to ones own
happiness and well-being than to the happiness and well-being of others .
Consequentialists often argue that a differential attention to ones own concerns will in
most actual circumstances have the best overall results, and that such differential
treatment of oneself is therefore required on consequentialist grounds. Two sorts of considerations
are typically appealed to in support of this view. First, it is said that one is in a better position to promote
ones own welfare and the welfare of those one is closest to than to promote the welfare of other people.
So an agent produces maximum good per unit of activity by focusing his efforts on those
he is closest to, including himself. Second, it is said that human nature being what it is, people
cannot function effectively at all unless they devote somewhat more energy to promoting their own wellbeing than to promoting the well-being of other people. Here the appeal is no longer to the immediate
consequantialist advantages of promoting ones own well-being, but rather to the long-term advantages of
having psychologically healthy agents who are efficient producers of the good. We find an example of the
first type of argument in Sidgwicks remark that each man is better able to provide for his own happiness
than for that of other persons, from his more intimate knowledge of his own desires and needs, and his
greater opportunities of gratifying them. Mill, in the same vein, writes that the occasions on which any
person (except one in a thousand) has it in his powerto be a public benefactor are but exceptional; and
on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every other case, private utility, the
interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to. Sidgwick suggests an argument of
the second type when he says that because it is under the stimulus of self-interest that the active
energies of most men are most easily and thoroughly drawn out, it would not under actual circumstances
promote the universal happiness if each man were to concern himself with the happiness of others as
much as with his own.
Consequentialism is based on the greater good, not on self-interests

Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, 84
(Philosophy and Public Affairs, Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1984),
pp. 239-254 http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2265413.pdf)
Consequentialism claims that an act is morally permissible if and only if it has better
consequences than those of any available alternative act. This means that agents are morally
required to make their largest possible contribution to the overall good- no matter what the sacrifice
to themselves might involve (remembering only that their own well-being counts too). There is no limit
to the sacrifices that morality can require; and agents are never permitted to favor their
own interests at the expense of the greater good.
There is a limit to what morality can require for us, which consequentialism
fails to incorporate
Our ordinary moral intuitions rebel at this picture. We want to claim that there is a limit to what
morality can require of us. Some sacrifices for the sake of others are meritorious, but not
Page 149 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
required; they are supererogatory . Common morality grants the agent some room to pursue his
own projects, even though other actions might have better consequences: we are permitted to promote
the good, but we are not required to do so. The objection that consequentialism demands too much is
accepted uncritically by almost all of us; most moral philosophers introduce permission to perform
nonoptimal acts without even a word in its defense. But the mere fact that our intuitions support some
moral feature hardly constitutes in itself adequate philosophical justification. If we are to go beyond
mere intuition mongering, we must search for deeper foundations. We must display the
reasons for limiting the requirement to pursue the good.
Consequentialism can result in sacrifices on some for the sake of others

Furthermore, discussions of the claim that consequentialism demands too much are often undermined by
failure to distinguish this claim from the widely discussed objection that consequentialism permits
too much- improperly permitting sacrifices to be imposed on some for the sake of others.
Some theories include deontological restrictions, forbidding certain kinds of acts even
when the consequences would be good. I will not consider here the merits of such restrictions. It is
important to note, however, that even a theory which included such restrictions might still lack more
general permission to act nonoptimally-requiring agents to promote the good within the pennissible
means. It is only the grounds for rejecting such a general requirement to promote the overall good that we
will examine here.
Utilitarianism cant address the issues of equity and distributive justice

Liu PHD University of Pennsylvania 2000 (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of
Pennsylvania, writes 2000 [Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods
and practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])
However, its strengths are also its weaknesses. Its quantifications techniques are far from being
simple, straightforward, and objective . Indeed, they are often too complicated to be practical. They
are also to flexible and subject to manipulation. They are impersonal and lack compassion. More
importantly, they fail to deal the issue of equity and distributive justice. Seemingly, you cannot
get fairer than this. In calculating benefits and costs, each person is counted as one and only one. IN other
words, people are treated equally. For Mill, justice arises from the principle of utility. Utilitarianism in
concerted only the aggregate effect, no matter how the aggregate is distributed. For
almost all policies, there is an uneven distribution of benefits and costs. Some people
win, while others lose. The Pareto optimality would is almost nonexistent. A policys outcome is Pareto
optimal if nobody loses and at least one person gains.
Utilitarianism policies result in inequality

Liu PHD University of Pennsylvania 2000 (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of
Pennsylvania, writes 2000 [Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods
and practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])
Besides these ridiculous policy implications in the United States and in the world, the logic underlying
Summers proposal represents cultural imperialism, the capitalist mode of production and consumption,
and a particular kind of political-economic power and its discriminatory practices (Harvey 1996:368).
Except for its beautiful guise of economic logic, the proposal is nothing new to those familiar with the
history. The capitalistic powerhouses in Europe practiced material and cultural imperialism against
countries in Africa, America, and Asia for years. They did it by raising the banner of trade and welfare
enhancement. They did it through guns and powder. Of course, they had their logic for exporting opium to
Canton (Guangzhou) in China through force. Now, we see a new logic. This time, it is economic logic and
globalization. This time, the end is the same, but the means is not through guns and powder. Instead, it is
Page 150 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
political-economic power. This example illustrates clearly the danger of using the utilitarian perspective as
the only means for policy analysis. Fundamentally, the utilitarian disregards the distributive
justice issue altogether and espouses the current mode of production and consumption
and the political-economic structure, without any attention to the inequity and inequality
in the current system. Even worse and more subtly, it delivers the philosophy of it
exists, therefore its good. However, just because it sells, doesnt mean we have to worship it
(Peirce 1991).
Utilitarian thinking results in mass murder

Cleveland Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002 (Cleveland
2002 Paul A., Professor of Business Administration and Economics at Birmingham-Southern College, The
Failure of Utilitarian Ethics in Political Economy, The Journal of Private Enterprise,
http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1602)
A final problem with utilitarianism that ought to be mentioned is that it is subject to being criticized
because of a potential fallacy of composition. The common good is not necessarily the sum of the interests
of individuals. In their book, A History of Economic Theory and Method, Ekelund and Hebert provide a wellconceived example to demonstrate this problem. They write: It is presumably in the general interest of
American society to have every automobile in the United States equipped with all possible safety devices.
However, a majority of individual car buyers may not be willing to pay the cost of such equipment in the
form of higher auto prices. In this case, the collective interest does not coincide with the sum
of the individual interests. The result is a legislative and economic dilemma. Indeed,
individuals prone to political action, and held under the sway of utilitarian ethics, will
likely be willing to decide in favor of the supposed collective interest over and against
that of the individual. But then, what happens to individual human rights? Are they not
sacrificed and set aside as unimportant? In fact, this is precisely what has happened. In
democratic countries the destruction of human liberty that has taken place in the past hundred years has
occurred primarily for this reason. In addition, such thinking largely served as the justification for
the mass murders of millions of innocent people in communist countries where the
leaders sought to establish the workers paradise. To put the matter simply,
utilitarianism offers no cohesive way to discern between the various factions competing
against one another in political debates and thus fails to provide an adequate guide for
ethical human action. The failure of utilitarianism at this point is extremely important for a whole host
of policy issues. Among them, the issue of the governments provision of public goods is worth our
consideration.
Utilitarianism is used to justify mass murder by governments

Cleveland, Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002 (Cleveland
Indeed, the widespread confusion over this point is one of the primary reasons why western market economies have continued to drift
towards the ready acceptance of socialist policies. Edmund Opitz has rightly observed that utilitarianism with its greatest happiness
principle completely neglects the spiritual dimension of human life. Rather, it simply asserts that men are bound together in
societies solely on the basis of a rational calculation of the private advantage to be gained by social cooperation under the division of
the
utilitarian principle will tend to lead to the collective use of government power so as to
redistribute income in order to gain the greatest happiness in society. Regrettably, the
rent seeking behavior that is spawned as a result of this mind set will prove detrimental
to the economy. Nevertheless, this kind of action will be justified as that which is most socially
expedient in order to reach the assumed ethical end. Utilitarianism, in short, has no logical
stopping place short of collectivism.[3] If morality is ultimately had by making the
individuals happiness subservient to the organic whole of society , which is what Benthams
labor.[2] But, as Opitz shows, this perspective gives rise to a serious problem. Since theft is the first labor saving device ,
Page 151 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
utilitarianism asserts, then the human rights of the individual may be violated . That means
property rights may be violated if it is assumed to promote the utilitarian end. However, property rights are
essential in securing a free market order. As a result , utilitarianism can then be used to justify
some heinous government actions. For instance, the murder of millions of human beings
can be justified in the minds of reformers if it is thought to move us closer to paradise on
earth. This is precisely the view that was taken by communist revolutionaries as they
implemented their grand schemes of remaking society . All of this is not to say that matters of
utility are unimportant in policy decisions, but merely to assert that utilitarian ethics will have the tendency
of promoting collectivist policies.
Medical utilitarian calculus ensures human dehumanization and annihilation

Smith 2002 (Michael G Smith 2002, Leadership University, The Public Policy of
Casey V. Planned Parenthood
http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/casey/ch3.html)
Furthermore, abandoning the principle of human equality could lead to eugenics because
eugenics is founded on the same philosophy that some people are of lesser value than others. Eugenics
is founded on the utilitarian philosophy of German philosopher Hegel. Utilitarianism, also known
as pragmatism, holds that "the end justifies the means." If a means provides a solution to a
practical problem, it is morally justifiable.{86} The Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany

saw a problem in the existence of Jews, Gypsies, and mentally and physically
handicapped people, was founded on Hegels pragmatic philosophy .{87} C.G. Campbell,
{88} President of the American Eugenics Society Inc. in 1931{89} has written:
"Adolf Hitler ... guided
by the nation's anthropologists, eugenicists and social philosophers, has been able to construct a
comprehensive racial policy of population development and improvement ... it sets a pattern ... these ideas
have met stout opposition in the Rousseauian social philosophy ... which bases ... its whole social and
political theory upon the patent fallacy of human equality ... racial consanguinity occurs only through
endogamous mating or interbreeding within racial stock ... conditions under which racial groups of
distinctly superior hereditary qualities ... have emerged." (Emphasis added).{90} Mr. Campbell, a leader
in the eugenics movement,{91} has clearly rejected the idea of human equality. This
rejection helped pave the way toward intellectual acceptance of Nazi Germanys "Final
Solution." and has helped pave the way toward Americas final solution to problem pregnancy. "Nazi
Germany used the findings of eugenicists as the basis for the killing of people of inferior genetic
stock."{92} Another leader in the eugenics movement, Madison Grant,{93} connected the purported
inequality of the unborn to the goals of the eugenics movement. "...Indiscriminate efforts to preserve
babies among the lower classes often results in serious injury to the race ... Mistaken regard for what are
believed to be divine laws and sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the
elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the
community" (Emphasis added).{94} As recently as six years ago, two medical ethicists, Kuhse and Singer,
have argued that no human being has any right to life.{95} Using a utilitarian approach, they have
concluded that "mentally defective" people, unborn people, and even children before
their first birthday, have no right to life because these people are not in full possession of
their faculties.{96} These utilitarian authors are fully consistent with other utilitarians in
that they first reject the principle that are humans have equal moral status, then, using
subjective criteria that appeals to themselves personally, they identify certain humans
they find expendable. While Kuhse and Singer may be personally comfortable with their conclusions,
this approach leaves all of us less than secure from being dehumanized. If newborn infants can be found to
lack equal moral status, then surely there are other innocent and vulnerable member of society who can
be similarly found to lack equal moral status. The Nazis left few people in Germany safe from the gas
chambers, and any other society that uses utilitarianism in medical ethics also leaves great portions of
society at risk of death at the convenience of society at large. Clearly, the equal moral status of all humans
must be recognized by the law.
Page 152 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Utilitarianism takes away all value to live

Cleveland Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002 (Cleveland
utilitarianism is that it has a very narrow conception of what it means to

be a human being. Within Benthams view, human beings are essentially understood to be
passive creatures who respond to the environment in a purely mechanical fashion . As
such, there are no bad motives, only bad calculations. In these terms, no person is responsible
for his or her own behavior. In effect, the idea being promoted is that human action is
essentially the same as that of a machine in operation. This notion reduces a human thought to
nothing more than a series of bio-chemical reactions. Yet, if this is true, then there is no meaning
to human thought or human action and all human reason is reduced to the point of being
meaningless.[6]
Another problem with
Rights incompatible with utilitarianism.

196.
The first thing to notice is that utilitarianism is a general normative theory either about what is desirable,
or about what conduct is morally right, but in the first instance not a theory of rights at all, except by
implication. A philosopher can be a utilitarian without offering any definition of "a right" and indeed
without having thought about the matter. It is true that some definitions of "a right" are so manifestly
incompatible with the normative theses of utilitarianism that it is clear that a utilitarian could not admit
that there are rights in that sense. For instance, if someone says that to have a right (life, liberty) is for
some sort of thing to be secured to one absolutely, though the heavens fall, and that this is a self-evident
truth, then it is pretty clear that a utilitarian will have no place for rights in his sense. Again, if one follows
Hobbes and says, "Neither by the word right is anything else signified, than that liberty which every man
hath to make use of his natural faculties according to right reason," one is not going to be able to accept a
utilitarian normative theory , for a utilitarian is not going to underwrite a man's absolute liberty to pursue
his own good according to his own judgment.
Util ignores fundamental rights and creates a slippery slope until rights lose
all significance
Bentley 2k [ Kristina A. Bentley graduate of the Department of government at the University of

Manchester. Suggesting A Separate Approach To Utility and Rights: Deontological Specification and
Teleogical Enforcement of Human Rights, September.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf]
Utilitarian theories usually present the view that they are capable of accommodating the idea of legal
rights, as well as providing a normative theory about such rights, which Lyons calls the legal rights
inclusion thesis (Lyons, 1994: 150). On the other hand however, utilitarian theorists are sceptical of the
idea of moral rights unsupported by legal institutions, as such rights would then in certain circumstances
preclude the pursuit of the most utile course of action owing to their moral force, or normative force
(Lyons, 1994: 150). Conversely, legal rights are seen as being compatible with utilitarian goals as they are
normatively neutral, being morally defensible (which entails the idea of a moral presumption in favour
of respecting them) only in so a far as they contribute to overall utility (Lyons, 1994: 150). The problem
then, as conceived by Lyons, is whether or not utilitarians can account for the moral force of legal rights
(which people are commonly regarded as having by rights theorists and utilitarians alike), as: although
Page 153 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
there are often utilitarian reasons for respecting justified legal rights, these reasons are not equivalent to
the moral force of such rights, because they do not exclude direct utilitarian arguments against exercising
such rights or for interfering with them (Lyons, 1994: 150). This being the case, the utilitarian finds herself
in the uncomfortable position of having to explain why rights ought to be bothered with at all, as if they
may be violated on an ad hoc basis to satisfy the demands of maximal utility, then they seem as confusing
on this scheme as natural or moral rights are claimed to be. This then raises the question as to whether or
not utilitarianism can accommodate any rights at all, even legal rights as its exponents claim it is able to
do, in its rule formulation at least. However, leaving this debate aside as it exceeds the scope of this
paper, an alternative approach, that of government house utilitarianism (see Goodin, 1995: 27) is worth
considering as a possible means to a solution.
Morality is complex Blanket claims that we need to save people in poverty

prevent us from making rational choices
Stubbs, 81
(Anne, @ the U of Combridge, "The Pros and Cons of Consequentialism," Oct, Philosophy, Vol. 56, No. 218
(Oct., 1981), pp. 497-516, jstor, AD: 6/30/09) jl
There is a common criticism of absolutism which, if sound, could be taken to demonstrate its irrationality. It
is that the absolutist refuses to consider the details of particular cases and insists instead on the automatic
application of a blanket rule; he thus fails, it is said, to 'take each case on its merits'. Now there may be
absolutist positions which are vulnerable to this kind of objection; for example, the position that one is
never justified in taking a human life, whatever the circumstances. Someone might reasonably object that
there are moral distinctions to be made over which this view simply rides rough-shod. Someone may kill a
fellow human being in many different circumstances and for many different reasons; for personal gain of
some kind; to put a loved one out of his misery; in self-defence; in just war or revolution; as retribution;
and so on. Surely it would be irrational, if not absurd, to insist on making the same moral judgment about
all these cases. However, even if this is correct, it is a count against only some absolutist positions, not
against all. It is commonly assumed that the absolutist must operate with some highly general,
exceptionless rules; but this is not an accurate picture of the kind of absolutism of which I have been
speaking throughout this paper. I have spoken, not so much of moral rules, but of specific moral notions,
concepts, or categories-murder, courage, cowardice, honesty, loyalty, etc.; and I have maintained that
these operate as fundamental in moral assessment, in the sense that their applicability to a particular
action will often be morally decisive, and, for some of them, will always be so.14 Let us consider the
example of murder, which is a notion the applicability of which to an action is always morally decisive. My
absolutist claims, not that killing can never be justified, but that murder can never be justified; and he will
not classify all cases of killing as cases of murder. Thus it is simply not true that he does not have to
investigate the details of a particular case; indeed it is only through such an investigation that he can be in
a position to decide whether or not the action in question is properly classifiable as 'murder'. Further-more,
he will take into account many features of the situation not con-sidered relevant by the consequentialist,
for example, the agent's motive for the killing. Indeed, it could be maintained that the consequentialist's
claim to consider each case 'on its merits' is vitiated by his extremely restricted conception of where these
merits must lie. I maintain that it is he, with his exclusive concentration upon consequences, who abstracts
from morally relevant features of particular cases. Again, this is a point to which I will return. Thus, if
readiness to pay attention to the details of individual cases be a test of rationality, my absolutist passes it
with his colours flying rather more conspicuously than those of the supporters of consequentialism; they,
after all, have theformula.
Page 154 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
The utilitarian viewpoint is flawed. It is impossible for society to be viewed as

a single
entity without sacrificing the human dignity of the individual.
Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queens U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3.,
pp. 172-190, Rawls on Technology and Deontology JSTOR)
According to Rawls, then, the debate over distribution is essentially a debate over whether we should or should not define the right as
maximizing the good. But is this an accurate characterization of the debate? Utilitarians do, of course, believe that the right act
maximizes happiness, under some description of that good. And that requirement does have potentially abhorrent consequences.
But do utilitarians believe that it is right because it maximizes happiness? Do they hold that the maximization of the good defines the
right, as teleological theories are said to do? Let us see why Rawls believes they do. Rawls says that utilitarianism is teleological (that
is, defines the right as the maximization of the good) because it generalizes from what is rational in the one-person case to what is
rational in many-person cases. Since it is rational for me to sacrifice my present happiness to increase my later happiness if doing so
will maximize my happiness overall, it is rational for society to sacrifice my current happiness to increase someone else's happiness if
doing so maximizes social welfare overall. For utilitarians, utility-maximizing acts are right because they are maximizing. It is because
they are maximizing that they are rational. Rawls objects to this generalization from the one-person to the many person case because
he believes that it ignores the separateness of persons.? Although it is right and proper that I sacrifice my
present happiness for my later happiness if doing so will increase my overall happiness, it is
wrong to demand that I sacrifice my present happiness to increase someone else's happiness.
In the first case, the trade-off occurs within one person's life, and the later happiness
compensates for my current sacrifice. In the second case, the trade-off occurs across lives, and
I am not compensated for my sacrifice by the fact that someone else benefits. My good has
simply been sacrificed, and I have been used as a means to someone else's 2. John Rawls, A
Theory ofJz~stice(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, rg71), p. 31 3. Ibid., p. 27. Philosophy G Public
Affairs happiness. Trade-offs that make sense within a life are wrong and unfair across lives. Utilitarians
obscure this point by ignoring the fact that separate people are involved. They treat society as though
it were an individual, as a single organism, with its own interests, so that trade-offs between
one person and another appear as legitimate trade-offs within the social organism.
Utilitarians view society as a single entity, which devalues the rights and
human dignity of
the individual.
Scott Gordon echoes this interpretation of utilitarianism when he says that utilitarians adopt the view "that
'society' is an organic entity and contend that its utility is the proper objective of social policy." This view,
he says, "permits flirtation with the grossest form of anti-individualistic social philosophy."4 This, then, is
Rawls's major example of a "teleological" theory which gives priority to the good over the right. His
rejection of the priority of the good, in this context, is just the corollary of his affirmation of the
separateness of persons: promoting the well-being of the social organism cannot be the goal from which
people's rightful claims are derived, since there is no socialorganism. Since individuals are distinct, they
are ends in themselves, not merely agents or representatives of the well-being of the social organism. This
is why Rawls believes that utilitarianism is teleological, and why he believes that we should reject it in
favor of a deontological doctrine.
Utilitarianism views people as locations of utilities, whose purpose is to bring

good to the
whole, even if that entails the lower standard or life for the individual.
There is, however, another interpretation of utilitarianism, one that seems more in line with Rawls's
characterization of the debate. On this second interpretation, maximizing the good is primary, and we
count individuals equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty is not to treat people
as equals, but to bring about valuable states of affairs. Rawls on Teleology and Deontology As
Bernard Williams puts it, people are viewed merely as locations of utilities, or as causal levers for
the "utility network": "the basic bearer of value for Utilitarianism is the state of affairs. . . . as a
Utilitarian agent, I am just the representative of the satisfaction system who happens to be near certain causal levers at a certain
time."Io Utilitarianism, on this view, is primarily concerned not with persons, but with states of affairs. This second interpretation is
Page 155 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
not merely a matter of emphasizing a different facet of the same theoretical structure. Its distinctiveness becomes clear if we look at
some utilitarian discussions of population policy, like those of Jonathan Glover and Derek Parfit. They ask whether we morally ought to
double the population, even if it means reducing each person's welfare by almost half (since that will still increase overall utility).
They think that a policy of doubling the population is a genuine, if somewhat repugnant, conclusion of utilitarianism. But it need not
be if we view utilitarianism as a theory of treating people as equals. Nonexistent people have no claims-we have no moral duty to
them to bring them into the world. As John Broome says, "one cannot owe anyone a duty to bring her into existence, because failing
in such a duty would not be failing anyone."" So what is the duty here, on the second interpretation? The duty is
to maximize value, to bring about valuable states of affairs, even if the effect is to make all
existing persons worse off than they otherwise would have been. To put the difference another way, if I fail
to bring about the best state of affairs, by failing to consider the interests of some group of people, for example, then I can be
criticized, on both interpretations, for failing to live up to my moral duty as a utilitarian. But, on the second interpretation, those
whose interests are neglected have no special grievance against me.
Adapting the consequentialist viewpoint justifies the deaths of millions of

innocents in
order to bring about an ends.
Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs,
International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg. 147-154)
The supposed unrealism of deontology also seems to lie behind Hardins concerns over nuclear deterrence. After noting that
Kantians typically have condemned the indiscriminate destruction implicit in a policy of deterrence, he adds that it therefore seemed
[to Kantians] profoundly immoral to destroy cities full of children merely for the sake of the theory of deterrence. The word seemed
is surprising. Shouldnt most people, not only Kantians, be appalled by the prospect of destroying cities full of children? To not be
appalled, I submit, is the result of either having been swept away by the morality of consequences or having studied too much
political science. It is noteworthy that the reason we are appalled relies on a Kantian-style explanation . If we were to adopt
an exclusive consequentialist view, if the ends were always capable of justifying the means,
then the death of millions of innocents should be trivialmere fluff in the face of moral truth.
The idea that there are some things that should not be done is precisely a deontological notion. The idea
that, no matter how powerful a deterrent it may be, the strapping of babies to the front of
tanks is nonetheless wrong, cannot be understood entirely in consequentialist terms. It does not
follow that the policy of nuclear deterrence is wrong from the viewpoint of deontology. Some deontologists accept nuclear deterrence
while others do not. But deontologists insist correctly that not only the assessment of the consequences, but an assessment of the
means used to achieve consequences, must be factored into the moral evaluation of nuclear deterrence.
Utilitarianism taken alone allows unjustified war; full weight must be given to
deontological analysis in order to achieve the best policy option.
Eric Heinze in 99 (assistant prof. of polisci @ University of Oklahoma, Human Rights & Human Welfare,
Waging War for Human Rights: Towards a Moral-Legal Theory of Humanitarian Intervention,
http://www.du.edu/gsis/hrhw/volumes/2003/heinze-2003.pdf, p. 5)
By itself, this utilitarianism of rights test has serious problems when employed as a threshold level of
human suffering that triggers a humanitarian intervention. This is because it suggests that aggregate
human suffering is the only moral concern that should be addressed (Montaldi 1985: 135). If we
are to accept the general presumption against war as enshrined in Article 2 of the UN Charter, we do so
because of wars inherent destructiveness and its detrimental effect on international security. The use of
force, including humanitarian intervention, will always result in at least some loss of life. The principle of
utility ameliorates this effect of intervention, but once an intervention is employed to halt such
widespread suffering, a pure utilitarian ethos would sanction the pursuit of this primary end
(achieving the military and/or humanitarian objective) without exception, so long as fewer people are
killed than are rescued in an intervention. Not only does this reduce the moral relevance of the
individual, it opens up the door for aggression disguised as humanitarian intervention, as long
as there are individuals who are suffering and dying within a stateeven if their suffering is
entirely accidental. Taken as part and parcel of the utilitarian framework, therefore, military intervention
must only be sanctioned when it is in response to violations that are intentionally perpetrated Thus, as
Fernando Tesn eloquently explains in his chapter, The Liberal Case for Humanitarian Intervention, the
best case for humanitarian intervention contains a deontological elementthat is, a principled
concern for the respectful treatment of individuals (not intentionally or maliciously mistreating them)as
well as a consequentialist onethe utilitarian requirement that interventions cause more good than harm
(Holzgrefe and Keohane: 114). Consider NATOs intervention in Kosovo, where a significant
number of Serbian civilians were killed by NATO bombs in the process of coercing the Milosevic
regime to stop its ethnic cleansing of Kosovars. Regardless of whether more lives were saved than
lost, in accidentally killing noncombatants, NATO was in essence accepting the notion that
Page 156 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
human rights are not absolute. This is despite the fact that such killing was done in order to
save the lives of other innocent civilians.
Policy decisions directed at maintaining human survival through whatever

means will encourage genocide, war, and the destruction of moral values
Callahan 73 Co-Founder and former director of The Hastings Institute, PhD in
philosophy from Harvard University (Daniel, The Tyranny of Survival, p 91-93)
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
The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. But abused it has been. In
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 seen 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 surviva l. 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
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.
policies. For all these reasons it
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 single-mindedness 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 lifethen 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. Yet it would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly manage their need to
survive, they succeeded in not doing so.
Utilitarianism disregards respect for the individual and perpetuates societal

inequality by evaluating utility as a whole
Freeman 94 Avalon Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania,
Ph.D. Harvard University, J.D. University of North Carolina (Samuel, Utilitarianism,
Deontology, and the Priority of Right, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4,
Autumn, pp. 313-349, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265463)
The inclusion of all sentient beings in the calculation of interests severely undermines
the force of any claim that utilitarianism is an "egalitarian" doctrine, based in some
notion of equal concern and respect for persons. But let us assume Kymlicka can restore his thesis by insisting
Page 157 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
that it concerns, not utilitarianism as a general moral doctrine, but as a more limited thesis about political morality. (Here I pass over
the fact that none of the utilitarians he relies on to support his egalitarian interpretation construe the doctrine as purely political. The
utilitarianism is not seen as a political doctrine, to be

appealed to by legislators and citizens, but a nonpublic criterion of right that is indirectly
applied [by whom is a separate issue] to assess the nonutilitarian public political conception of
justice.) Still, let us assume it is as a doctrine of political morality that utilitarianism treats persons, and only persons, as equals.
Even in this form it cannot be that maximizing utility is "not a goal" but a "by-product,"
"entirely derived from the prior requirement to treat people with equal consideration" (CPP,
drift of modern utilitarian theory is just the other way:
p. 31) Kymlicka says, "If utilitarianism is best seen as an egalitarian doctrine, then there is no independent commitment to the idea of
maximizing welfare" (CPP, p. 35, emphases added). But how can this be? (i) What is there about the formal principle of equal
consideration (or for that matter occupying a universal point of view) which would imply that we maximize the aggregate of
individuals' welfare? Why not assume, for example, that equal consideration requires maximizing the division of welfare (strict
equality, or however equal division is to be construed); or, at least maximize the multiple (which would result in more equitable
distributions than the aggregate)? Or, why not suppose equal consideration requires equal proportionate satisfaction of each person's
interests (by for example, determining our resources and then satisfying some set percentage of each person's desires) . Or finally we
might rely on some Paretian principle: equal consideration means adopting measures making no one worse off. For reasons I shall
the utilitarian
aggregative method, which in effect collapses distinctions among persons. (2) Moreover, rather than
soon discuss, each of these rules is a better explication of equal consideration of each person's interests than is
construing individuals' "interests" as their actual (or rational) desires, and then putting them all on a par and measuring according to
intensity, why not construe their interests lexically, in terms of a hierarchy of wants, where certain interests are, to use Scanlon's
terms, more "urgent" than others, insofar as they are more basic needs? Equal consideration would then rule out satisfying less
urgent interests of the majority of people until all means have been taken to satisfy everyone's more basic needs. (3) Finally, what is
there about equal consideration, by itself, that requires maximizing anything? Why does it not require, as in David Gauthier's view,
optimizing constraints on individual utility maximization? Or why does it not require sharing a distribution? The point is just that,
to
say we ought to give equal consideration to everyone's interests does not, by itself,
imply much of anything about how we ought to proceed or what we ought to do. It is a
purely formal principle, which requires certain added, independent assumptions, to yield any substantive conclusions. That
(i) utilitarian procedures maximize is not a "by-product" of equal consideration . It stems from a
particular conception of rationality that is explicitly incorporated into the procedure. That (2) individuals' interests are
construed in terms of their (rational) desires or preferences, all of which are put on a par,
stems from a conception of individual welfare or the human good: a person's good is
defined subjectively, as what he wants or would want after due reflection. Finally (3), aggregation stems from the fact that,
on the classical view, a single individual takes up everyone's desires as if they were his
own, sympathetically identifies with them, and chooses to maximize his "individual"
utility. Hare, for one, explicitly makes this move. Just as Rawls says of the classical view, Hare "extend[s] to society the principle of
choice for one man, and then, to make this extension work, conflat[es] all persons into one through the imaginative acts of the
impartial sympathetic spectator" (TJ, p. 27). If these are independent premises incorporated into the justification of utilitarianism and
maximizing aggregate utility cannot be a "by-product" of a procedure

that gives equal consideration to everyone's interests. Instead, it defines what that
procedure is. If anything is a by-product here, it is the appeal to equal consideration .
its decision procedure, then
Utilitarians appeal to impartiality in order to extend a method of individual practical rationality so that it may be applied to society as
a whole (cf. TJ, pp. 26-27). Impartiality, combined with sympathetic identification, allows a hypothetical observer to experience the
desires of others as if they were his own, and compare alternative courses of action according to their conduciveness to a single
The significant fact is that, in this procedure,

appeals to equal consideration have nothing to do with impartiality between persons.
What is really being given equal consideration are desires or experiences of the same
magnitude. That these are the desires or experiences of separate persons (or, for that matter, of
some other sentient being) is simply an incidental fact that has no substantive effect on utilitarian
calculations. This becomes apparent from the fact that we can more accurately describe the utilitarian principle in terms of
maximand, made possible by equal consideration and sympathy.
giving, not equal consideration to each person's interests, but instead equal consideration to equally intense interests, no matter
persons enter
into utilitarian calculations only incidentally. Any mention of them can be dropped
without loss of the crucial information one needs to learn how to apply utilitarian
procedures. This indicates what is wrong with the common claim that utilitarians
emphasize procedural equality and fairness among persons, not substantive equality and
fairness in results. On the contrary, utilitarianism, rightly construed, emphasizes neither procedural nor substantive equality
where they occur. Nothing is lost in this redescription, and a great deal of clarity is gained. It is in this sense that
among persons. Desires and experiences, not persons, are the proper objects of equal concern in utilitarian procedures. Having in
Page 158 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
effect read persons out of the picture at the procedural end, before decisions on distributions even get underway,
it is little
wonder that utilitarianism can result in such substantive inequalities . What follows is that
utilitarian appeals to democracy and the democratic value of equality are misleading . In no
sense do utilitarians seek to give persons equal concern and respect.
Although utilitarianism claims to result in equality, its nature to only regard

people as one entity rather than a group of individuals inherently contradicts
the principle of equality
To sum up, though utilitarianism incorporates equality as a property of the justification of

the principle of utility, and of the decision process through which that principle gets applied, it does not leave
any place for equality in the content of that principle . On its face, this standard of right conduct directs that
we maximize an aggregate. As a result neither equality or any other distributive value is assigned
independent significance in resulting distributions of goods. Kymlicka claims that, because Rawls sees utilitarianism as
teleological, he misdescribes the debate over distribution by ignoring that utilitarians allow for equality of distribution too. But the
distribution debate Rawls is concerned with is a (level 2) debate over how what is deemed
good (welfare, rights, resources, etc.) within a moral theory is to be divided among
individuals. It is not a (level 3) debate over the distribution of consideration in a procedure which decides the distribution of these
goods. Nor is it a (level 1) debate over the principles of practical reasoning that are invoked to justify the fundamental standard of
distribution.
Owning oneself is a moral imperative utilitarianism imposes interpersonal

obligations to society, which destroys morality
According to Rawls's
teleological interpretation, the "fundamental goal" (LCC, p. 33) of utilitarianism is not
persons, but the goodness of states of affairs. Duty is defined by what best brings about these states of affairs.
" [M] aximizing the good is primary, and we count individuals equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty
isn't to treat people as equals, but to bring about valuable states of affairs" (LCC, p. 27). It is
difficult to see, Kymlicka says, how this reading of utilitarianism can be viewed as a moral
theory. Morality, in our everyday view at least, is a matter of interpersonal obligationsthe obligations we owe to each other. But to whom do we owe the duty of maximizing
utility? Surely not to the impersonal ideal spectator . . . for he doesn't exist. Nor to the maximally
Kymlicka distinguishes two interpretations of utilitarianism: teleological and egalitarian.
valuable state of affairs itself, for states of affairs don't have moral claims." (LCC, p. 28-29) Kymlicka says, "This form of utilitarianism
does not merit serious consideration as a political morality" (LCC, p. 29). Suppose we see utilitarianism differently, as a theory whose
"fundamental principle" is "to treat people as equals" (LCC, p. 29). On this egalitarian reading, utilitarianism is a procedure for
aggregating individual interests and desires, a procedure for making social choices, specifying which trade-offs are acceptable. It's a
moral theory which purports to treat people as equals, with equal concern and respect. It does so by counting everyone for one, and
no one for more than one. (LCC, p. 25)
Page 159 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Aims to maximize overall utility despite competing interests in the public is

utilitarianism destroys individualism
Schroeder 86 Professor of Law at Duke (Christopher H., Prof of Law at Duke, Rights
Against Risks, April, Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562,
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1122636)
any proposal to compare

or balance competing interests can be criticized as leading ineluctably back to
some form of utilitarianism (perhaps a "utilitarianism of rights").72 If the adverse consequences of a right
At first glance, this structure may seem vulnerable to two different objections. First,
must be weighed in some manner against the benefits of the right, how can any barriers against loss of autonomy
There will always be some concatenation of consequences that those bent

on overcoming the right will assert outweighs the claim of the individual. Does not
survive?
this kind of relativism ultimately degenerate into some reconstituted version of utilitarianism, effectively leveling the moral
landscape into continual balancing exercises?
Utility maximization destroys individualism

Against Risks,, April, Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562,
autonomous individual
require protection from consideration of utility maximization. The rights in the system
constrain the behavior of others that might harm these aspects of the individua l.
One might begin with the idea of preservation. Securing the moral significance of the individual
should at least center on preserving that individual's life. Preservation ought then to be extended
In defining those rights, it seems natural to begin by stating clearly which aspects of an
to include the broader concept of physical or bodily integrity, because many physical assaults short of death can so damage or
injure an individual as to reduce dramatically the quality of that individual's life.
Rights should at least prevent
substantial invasions of bodily integrity.

Utilitarianism forces individuals to sacrifice their own goals in order to
increase utility
Odell 04 Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois (Jack, On
Consequentialist Ethics, Wadsworth, Thomson Learning, Inc., pp. 98-103)
This objection can, as Samuel Scheffler has pointed out, be integrated with objection . Remember that Rawls claimed that
utilitarianism fails to ''take seriously the distinction between persons." One person can
be forced by utilitarianism to give up far too much, including the life plan that he or she has formulated for
himself or herself. Rational agents who are fully aware of what they would be putting on the line if they were to agree to a utilitarian
such a society could require them to

sacrifice their individual projects, their freedom, and even their lives for the sake of the aggregate or total satisfaction
society would never adopt utilitarianism. They would perceive that
of the group. To agree to such a collective approach would be to degrade their autonomy, and this is a matter of integrity. As Scheffler
observes regarding the integration of (H) and (J), "the two objections focus on two different ways of making the same supposed
mistake: two different ways of failing to take sufficient account of the separateness and nature of persons."
Risks taken by the government to increase overall utility will severely

compromise the individual which will result in fatality
Page 160 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Equity has provided a limited answer to the question of acceptable risk. The traditional doctrine of
injunctions against tortious behavior holds that courts may enjoin behavior that is virtually certain to
harm an identifiable individual in the near future.'2 This body of law, however, focuses more on avoidance of
harm to specific persons than on regulation of risk.'3 It is thus inapposite to the questions of modern technological risk, risk that is
quite unlikely to injure any identifiable individual in the short-term, but that carries
severe consequences that are certain to occur to someone in the medium to distant
future. Consider the paradigm of the Acme Chemical Company: Acme Chemical Company is discovered to be storing chemical
wastes on its land in such a way that seepage containing traces of those wastes are entering an underground water system that
serves as the sole drinking water supply for a town several miles away. One of the chemicals has been classified as a carcinogen in
laboratory experiments on mice. Although extrapolating from these results to predictions of human carcinogencity is somewhat
controversial, federal agencies routinely do so. Under one of a number of plausible sets of assumptions, a concentration of ten parts
per billion (ppb) in drinking water is estimated to increase a human's chance of contracting cancer by one in one hundred thousand if
the human is assumed to consume a normal intake over the course of twenty years. Analyses show that the current concentration in
the underground aquifer near Acme's plant is ten ppb. This case exhibits the typical features of risky actions associated with modern
The probability of risk to any individual is relatively small while its severity is
substantial, perhaps fatal. Risk is being imposed on individuals who have not consented
to it in any meaningful sense. Finally, risk is unintentional in the sense that imposing risk on others is not an objective
technology.
of Acme's plan.'4 We may assume its executives in fact would be tremendously relieved if they could avoid the risk.
Government coercion threatens individual freedom and renders morality

meaningless
Gauthier 2K (Candace, PhD Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and
Religion at the University of North Carolina, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal)
Coercion and
constraint, as used here, should be understood as the imposition of some external force
that compels or precludes a particular choice or a particular action itself . Certainly there are
Instances of coercion and constraint also may exempt agents from judgments of moral responsibility.
degrees of coercion and constraint, and consideration of the form and degree of external force imposed can affect the extent to which
The greater the threat imposed by some external

force, the more it eliminates or controls choice. Some external threats are so great as to totally bypass choice,
leading directly to action, while others may control choice to the extent that a particular action is virtually ensured. Finally,
some threats reduce the voluntariness of an action by making any other choice
extremely difficult for an individual to make in the face of the relevant threat. Thus, the
greater the coercion or constraint, the less likely we will be to consider the action
voluntary and the less moral responsibility we will assign to the agent. [End Page 343] When the
one considers an action to have been less than voluntary.
autonomy of those who have the capacity for rational agency is respected, they are permitted to make choices and act according to
In the
absence of overwhelming coercive factors or controlling constraints, we hold these autonomous
individuals morally responsible for their choices and actions. This does not mean that those beliefs and
their beliefs and values, to the extent that their actions pose no risk of harm to individuals or to the community.
values are themselves totally chosen. Certainly, moral responsibility can be and is assigned with the understanding that the person
who has voluntarily chosen and acted is the product of a family, a community, and all of the other societal influences that make
individuals who they are. The assignment of moral responsibility is part of an important method of social control through which the
community furthers common ends and interests (Smiley 1992, pp. 238-54). Although moral responsibility in the first sense discussed
here is a neutral judgment, recognizing both causality and moral agency, it is the basis for praise and blame, reward and punishment.
These are essential ways in which communities may effect personal change in their members toward behavior that is more in concert
with communal values and ends. For example, if judgments of praise and blame are internalized, they create the "social emotions" of
guilt, shame, and pride that contribute to the development of conscience (Gaylin and Jennings 1996, pp. 137-49). As part of the
social control provided by praise and blame, the assignment of moral responsibility operates within a pluralistic democratic society by
permitting areas of life in which the individual may choose and act, free of coercion and constraint, but with the understanding that
communitarians
sometimes appear to go even farther, to seek even more social control based on a
shared vision of the good life that is determined either by the majority or by the elites.
these choices and actions are subject to judgment and criticism by others in the community. However,
Page 161 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
This tendency is an "excess" of the communitarian movement that may lead to a "tyranny of the majority."
Pushing the laudable communitarian concern with shared values and the common good
to this extreme would destroy the individual, create persons "constituted by the group's shared aims," and
"leave little or no room for criticism of the group will" (Kuczewski 1997, pp. 106-8). Moreover, without individuals who
are free to make choices based on their traditions, histories, and a variety of communal influences as well as their own
consideration of all of these factors, moral responsibility has no meaning. Once the force of law is
behind shared values and how they are to be honored in individual lives and decisions,
we would have a level of control through legal coercion that would leave little room for
moral responsibility based on the voluntarily chosen actions of moral agents. Thus, the imposition of communal values, in
all areas of life, would jeopardize the social practice of assigning moral responsibility for individual action.
Utilitarianism promotes inequity and inherently discriminates against minority

like slavery
Odell, 04 University of Illinois is an Associate Professor of Philosophy (Jack, Ph.D.,
On Consequentialist Ethics, Wadsworth, Thomson Learning, Inc., pp. 98-103)
A classic objection to both act and rule utilitarianism has to do with inequity, and is related to
the kind of objection raised by Rawls, which I will consider shortly. Suppose we have two fathers-Andy and Bob. Suppose further that
they are alike in all relevant respects, both have three children, make the same salary, have the same living expenses, put aside the
same amount in savings, and have left over each week fifteen dollars. Suppose that every week Andy and Bob ask themselves what
they are going to do with this extra money, and Andy decides anew each week (AU) to divide it equally among his three children, or
he makes a decision to always follow the rule (RU) that each child should receive an equal percentage of the total allowance money.
Suppose further that each of his children receive five degrees of pleasure from this and no pain. Suppose on the other hand, that Bob,
who strongly favors his oldest son, Bobby, decides anew each week (AU) to give all of the allowance money to Bobby, and nothing to
the other two, and that he instructs Bobby not to tell the others, or he makes a decision to follow the rule (RU) to always give the
total sum to Bobby. Suppose also that Bobby gets IS units of pleasure from his allowance and that his unsuspecting siblings feel no
pain. The end result of the actions of both fathers is the same-IS units of pleasure. Most, if not all, of us would agree that although
Andy's conduct is exemplary, Bob's is culpable. Nevertheless, according to both AU and RU the fathers in question are morally equal.
Neither father is more or less exemplary or culpable than the other. I will refer to the objection implicit in this kind of example as (H)
Both act and rule utilitarianism violate the principle of just distribution.
What Rawls does is to elaborate objection (H). Utilitarianism, according to Rawls, fails to
appreciate the importance of distributive justice, and that by doing so it makes a
mockery of the concept of "justice." As I pointed out when I discussed Russell's views regarding partial goods,
satisfying the interests of a majority of a given population while at the same time
thwarting the interests of the minority segment of that same population (as occurs in
societies that allow slavery) can maximize the general good, and do so even though the
minority group may have to suffer great cruelties. Rawls argues that the utilitarian commitment to maximize
the good in the world is due to its failure to ''take seriously the distinction between persons." One person can be forced
to give up far too much to insure the maximization of the good, or the total aggregate satisfaction, as
and state it as: ' (H)
was the case for those young Aztec women chosen by their society each year to be sacrificed to the Gods for the welfare of the
group.
Utilitarianism destroys value to life by forcing the individual to take risks on a

cost-benefit basis in an effort to increase overall utility of an entity, while
demoralizing the individuals own system of values
From the individual's point of view, the balancing of costs and benefits that
utilitarianism endorses renders the status of any individual risk bearer profoundly
insecure. A risk bearer cannot determine from the kind of risk being imposed on
Page 162 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
him whether it is impermissible or not.
The identical risk may be justified if necessary to avoid a
nature and extent of the

underlying benefits of the risky action are fre quently unknown to the risk bearer
so that he cannot know whether or not he is being wronged. Furthermore, even
when the gain that lies behind the risk is well-known, the status of a risk bearer is insecure
because individuals can justifiably be inflicted with ever greater levels of risk in
conjunction with increasing gains. Certainly, individual risk bearers may be entitled to more protection if
calamity and unjustified if the product of an act of profitless carelessness, but the
the risky action exposes many others to the same risk, since the likelihood that technological risks will cause greater harm
increases as more and more people experience that risk. This makes the risky action less likely to be justifiable. Once again,
that insight seems scant comfort to an individual, for it reinforces the

realization that, standing alone, he does not count for much. A strategy of weighing
however,
gains
against risks thus renders the status of any specific risk victim substantially contingent upon the claims of others, both
those who may share his victim status and those who stand to gain from the risky activity. The anxiety to preserve some
fundamental place for the individual that cannot be overrun by larger social considerations underlies what H.L.A. Hart has
despite its famous

slogan, "everyone [is] to count for one,"59 utilitarianism ultimately denies each
individual a primary place in its system of values. Various versions of utilitarian ism evaluate
aptly termed the "distinctively modern criticism of utilitarianism,"58 the criticism that,
actions by the consequences of those actions to maximize happiness, the net of pleasure over pain, or the satisfaction of
goal of maximizing some mea sure of utility

obscures and diminishes the status of each individual . It reduces the individual to a conduit,
desires.60 Whatever the specific formulation, the
reference point that registers the appropriate "utiles," but does not count for anything independent of his monitoring
It also produces moral requirements that can trample an individual, if

to maximize utility, since once the net effects of a proposal on the
maximand have been taken into account, the individual is expendable. Counting
function.61
necessary,
pleasure and pain equally across individuals is a laudable proposal, but counting only plea sure and pain permits the
grossest inequities among individuals and the trampling of the few in furtherance of the utility of the many.
In sum,
utilitarianism makes the status of any individual radically contingent .
The individual's
status will be preserved only so long as that status con tributes to increasing total utility. Otherwise, the individual can be
discarded.
The only way to preserve individualism is to allow all persons to have the right
to own themselves regardless of any negative consequentialist impacts
second group of theories avoids the modern criticism of

utilitarianism by making the individual central. Contemporary theorists as diverse as John Rawls, Robert
2. Liberal Theories in the "Rights" Tradition. A
Nozick, Richard Epstein, Charles Fried, and Ronald Dworkin continue a tradition variously described as the Kantian, natural rights, or
"rights" tradition.62 They all define the requirements of justice in terms of recognizing and
preserving the essential characteristics of individuals as free and autonomous moral
agents.63 In this approach, the individual is defined prior to articulating the terms under
which that individual can be acted upon or interacted with, and those terms are
consequently specified so as to protect and preserve what is essential to the individual . In
this context, rights have been called "trumps" since they constrain what society can do to the
individual.64 These theories all aspire to make the individual more secure than he is
under utilitarianism. In the rights tradition, the crucial criteria for assessing risks derive from the impact of those risks on
risk victims, and the criteria are defined independently of the benefits flowing from risk creation. To be plausible, such a program
cannot totally prohibit risk creation, but the ostensible advantage of this program over utilitarianism is that risk creation is
circumscribed by criteria exclusively derived from considerations of the integrity of the individual, not from any balancing or weighing
process.65 The root idea is that nonconsensual risks are violations of "individual entitlements to personal security and autonomy."66
This idea seems highly congruent with the ideology of environmentalism expressed in our national legislation regulating technological
risk. Indeed, two scholars have recently suggested a modern rendering of Kant's categorical imperative: " All
rational
Page 163 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
persons have a right not to be used without their consent even for the benefit of
others."67 If imposing risk amounts to using another, this tradition seems to be the place to look to secure the status of
the individual.
Utilitarianism allows larger powers like the government to control the
individual as long a greater utility is achieved. It is immoral to violate the
sanctity of human life.
Against Risks, April, Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562,
In modern society, the overwhelming power of centralized authority, whether of the state
or of other large institutions, looms over every individual. Utilitarianism is a philosophy
that legitimizes that power and countenances the anxiety that comes with it so long as
total utility is increased. In the process of that legitimization, utilitarianism fails to accommodate
society's deeply held moral ideals concerning the special sanctity of human life. "[W]e prefer
to think of [lives] as beyond price. . . . To the extent that our lives and institutions depend on the notion that life is beyond price . . . a
refusal to save lives is horribly costly."68
Cost-benefit analysis flaunts the legitimacy of placing a price
on life. The depth of hostile reactions to the utilitarian tradition that has been displayed in the environmental era cannot fully be
comprehended until the antipathy to this aspect of that tradition is understood.
Utilitarianism suppresses individual choice-making freedom gives value to

life
Schroeder 86 Professor of Law at Duke (Christopher H., Rights Against Risks, April,
Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1122636)
Under this concept of rules,
rules may intervene to preclude or limit the consideration of
consequences, and thus such consideration will not inevitably collapse all issues of moral choice into a case-by-case costbenefit analysis. Any theory intent on maintaining individual integrity and autonomy will likely generate some rules that protect
moral space within which

an individual can make choices even if those choices do not maximize utility. "Rights" in
individuals from the radical contingency associated with utilitarianism. Autonomy implies some
theories emphasizing individual autonomy function as rules providing individuals with moral space. They eliminate from consideration
of the justness of an action some arguments and factual aspects that might otherwise bear on that judgment. Notice that this idea of
rights is consistent with taking consequences into account. Consequences can be taken into account at the rule formulation stage. If a
rule then makes certain consequences irrelevant to its subsequent application, these "rights regardless of consequences" ignore
consequences only because the consequences of granting those rights had been taken into account when the rights were formulated.
Within a nonutilitarian theory, then, there is a valid distinction between weighing the
consequences of a risky action and weighing the consequences of a rule regulating risky
actions. One point this section makes is that this distinction cannot plausibly result in a rule that risks should be regulated
regardless of consequences, but that fact alone does not demonstrate that either the structure of the arguments supporting this
conclusion or the norms of behavior derived from them are simply reformulations of utilitarianism.76 Even if the proposal to take
consequences into account does not reproduce a form of utilitarianism, a second objection may be voiced. It might be thought that
the proposal embodies the same fundamental mistake that has resulted in criticism of utilitarianism. Once again an individual's
security will become contingent upon the consequential value to others of actions affecting that individual's vital interests. Although
the problem of contingency is real, the criticism of utilitarianism outlined above cannot be leveled against the manner in which
contingency has been reintroduced. This is because, notwithstanding the current fashion of equating "consequentialism" with
"utilitarianism,"77 utilitarianism is a unique subset of consequentialism, and arguments aimed at it cannot simply be appropriated to
Utilitarianism's special use of consequences

isolates a single consequential aspect of actions contribution to the maximand-and
assesses the propriety of action exclusively by that measure. It is this feature of
utilitarianism, not the simple ingredient of considering consequences, that makes it
vulnerable to the charge of ignoring individuals.78 It is perfectly feasible to construct
moral theories that employ consequences in their evaluation of the rightness of actions
indict all theories that consider consequences to be relevant.
Page 164 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
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.
Governments have a responsibility to maintain human rights and individualism

utilitarianism undermines human rights
Kateb 92 Professor of Politics at Princeton University (George, The Inner Ocean:
Individualism and Democratic Culture, p. 5)
To tie dignity to rights is therefore to say that governments have the absolute duty to
treat people (by actions and abstentions) in certain ways, and in certain ways only. The states characteristic
domination and insolence are to be curbed for the sake of rights. Public and formal respect for rights registers and strengthens
every person is a creature capable of feeling pain,

and is a free agent capable of having a free being, of living a life that is ones own and
not somebody elses idea of how a life should be lived, and is a moral agent capable of
acknowledging that what one claims for oneself as a right one can claim only as an equal to
everyone else (and relatedly that what one wants done to oneself one should do to others). Respect for rights recognizes these
awareness of three constitutive facts of being human:
capacities and thus honors human dignity. I know that adequate recognition of these human capabilities does not entail respect for
rights as the sole and necessary conclusion. This respect is not a matter of logical inference. Rather, given initial sentiments say,
fellow feeling or special sensitivity to pain or dislike of power recognition can lead to or add up to a theoretical affirmation of rights.
every individual is equally a world, an infinity, a

being who is irreplaceable. At the same time, there are other theories that seem to affirm
human dignity yet give rights only a lesser or probationary or instrumental role.
Examples are utilitarianism, recent communitarianism, recent republicanism, and radical egalitarianism. The first and
last I will return to shortly; my response to the others appears her and there in this volume. All I wish to say now is that
unless rights come first, they are not rights. They will tend to be sacrificed to some purpose deemed higher than
The most important sentiment by far is for the idea that
the equal dignity of every individual. The group or the majority or the good or the sacred or the vague future will be preferred. The
beneficiaries will be victimized along with the victims because no one is being treated as a person who is irreplaceable and beyond
value. To make rights anything but primary, even though in the name of human dignity, is to injure human dignity.
Theories of right preserve value to life government politics with the intention
of increasing overall utility through environmentalism destroy morality and
deceives the individual
Theories in the rights tradition resonate with ideals regarding life and its sanctity. These
theories, however, can provide a reliable guide to risk regulation only if they can fit their
analysis of rights against risk with other legitimate values to comprise a coherent theory of
government. It is the thesis of this Article that the notion of a right against risk that trumps all considerations of countervailing values
the
countervailing benefits of risky actions persistently return and demand consideration.
This is so at the level of practical politics, where the years after passage of our major
environmental statutes have witnessed creative maneuvers by courts, agencies, and
Congress to avoid actually implementing absolute rights against risk whenever the
substantial costs of achieving extremely low levels of risk become undeniable .69 It is also true
at the level of theory. Once one looks beyond the glitter of catchphrases to examine their accounts, seemingly absolutist
nonutilitarian theories do not support absolute rights against risk. Any defensible theory of risk regulation
cannot be so validated by any theory in the rights tradition. Despite the appealing absolutist language of nonutilitarian theories,
must acknowledge the relevance of countervailing interests and values. Given the modern attack on utilitarianism,70 a proposed
theory must also avoid comparing benefits and risks in a way that collapses the theory into utilitarianism. Unfortunately,
"absolutist" rhetoric applied to risk regulation
is so obsessed with avoiding the error of utilitarianism

that it commits an opposite mistake by obscuring the interests of risk creators.
Page 165 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Environmentalists, as well as others concerned about risk regulation, ought to divorce themselves from
much of the popular language of rights as absolutes because the terminology evokes a
misleading expectation of a theoretical justification for risk rules that cannot in fact be supplied. An attempted justification
fails if it ignores the legitimate interests of risk creators and others who benefit from the creation of risk. Still, a nonabsolutist
understanding of risk must preserve the essential moral insight of the rights tradition
that individuals matter as autonomous moral agents worthy of respect. This Article moves in the
direction of such an understanding by examining the nature of the conflict between the interests of risk creator and risk bearer, and
how modern rights theories deal with that conflict. lth Care
Utilitarianism inevitable even in deontological frameworks

Green, 02 Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Harvard University (Joshua,
November 2002 "The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality And
What To Do About It", 314)
Some people who talk of balancing rights may think there is an algorithm for deciding which rights take priority over which. If thats
Attempting to solve moral

problems using a complex deontological algorithm is dogmatism at its most esoteric, but
dogmatism all the same. However, its likely that when some people talk about
balancing competing rights and obligations they are already thinking like
consequentialists in spite of their use of deontological language. Once again, what deontological
what we mean by 302 balancing rights, then we are wise to shun this sort of talk.
language does best is express the thoughts of people struck by strong, emotional moral intuitions: It doesnt matter that you can
That is why angry

protesters say things like, Animals Have Rights, Too! rather than, Animal Testing: The
Harms Outweigh the Benefits! Once again, rights talk captures the apparent clarity of
the issue and absoluteness of the answer. But sometimes rights talk persists long after the sense of clarity and
save five people by pushing him to his death. To do this would be a violation of his rights!19
absoluteness has faded. One thinks, for example, of the thousands of children whose lives are saved by drugs that were tested on
One finds oneself balancing the rights on both sides by

asking how many rabbit lives one is willing to sacrifice in order to save one human life,
and so on, and at the end of the day ones underlying thought is as thoroughly
consequentialist as can be, despite the deontological gloss. And whats wrong with that? Nothing,
except for the fact that the deontological gloss adds nothing and furthers the myth that there really are rights, etc. Best to
drop it. When deontological talk gets sophisticated, the thought it represents is either
dogmatic in an esoteric sort of way or covertly consequentialist.
animals and the rights of those children.
Compromising moral values and trading off for other injustices proves
deontology is impossible
Spragens 2K Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Harvard University
(Thomas A., Political Theory and Partisan Politics- "Rationality in Liberal Politics" pg
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
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
deficiencies of the modus vivendi approach. In the first place, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere,
Page 166 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
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.
Age of nuclear deterrence makes preventative measures necessary. Its too
late to consider otherwise.
Antinuclear consequentialists often object to the whole approach to deterrence in terms

of probability. For example, the sociologist Todd Gitlin argues that "since deterrence works only if it works forever, it is an all-ornothing proposition, so applying the language of probability to it is misleading. "112 But his argument is not
compelling. Gitlin seems to assume that failures of deterrence or inevitable accidents
must lead to all-out nuclear war, but that is far from self-evident. Indeed, a case can be made that an
accident or partial failure of deterrence may be the prelude to substantial changes that reduce risks or reliance on nuclear deterrence
in the long term. But even if he were right about catastrophe, it is odd for Gitlin to discount "microscopic probability" by asking, " Do
we feel secure playing Russian roulette if the revolver has a hundred chambers?"
Perhaps not, but if we had to play, I doubt that we really would not care if a revolver had
one hundred chambers rather than six! And if he readmits probabilistic reasoning, then it can also be
applied to the question of relative risks between unilateral disarmament ("refusing to
play") and trying to increase the number of chambers in a world where the game of
nuclear deterrence already exists.
Page 167 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Deon Good**
Consequences can only be evaluated AFTER morals Rights come first
Kamm 2003 Deontology by Stephen Darwall, page 164, 2003, Published By Wiley-Blackwell , Harming
Some to Save Others, Frances Myrna Kamm, http://books.google.com/books?
id=tzrrwH5HzwQC&pg=PA116&dq=deontology+vs.+consequentialism&client=firefox-a
Deontology InevitableIt is grounded in human behavior

Common-sense morality is grounded in the consciousness of ordinary human beings and the stringency of
moral rules is a device based on psychological grounds meant to prevent the erosion of moral rules. In
other words, the tendency for self-deception in order to reduce cognitive dissonance gives rise to high
information costs and causes Conscience to set up a fence around moral rules. By contrast, Utilitarianism
has been thought out by moral philosophers as an ethical system which people are advised to adopt.
Because of the intellectual character of Utilitarianism, it has evolved no processes for hedging around its
rules. One therefore understands Harsanyi (1985, p. 49) when he describes utilitarian rules as 'conditional
imperatives', that is, people should fol? low them because in this way they will maximize expected social
utility. Of course, he expects all rational people to have an interest in promot? ing the common good and
therefore to be utilitarians. (By contrast, many people regard moral rules as unconditionally binding or
'categori cal imperatives').
Deontology precludes util- the values of deontology come first

Mcnaughton and Rawling 98 [David McNaughton and Piers Rawling are professors of philosophy
at Keele University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ratio, On Defending Deontology, issue 11, p.
48-49 Ebsco]
Nagel effectively accepts the consequentialist view that a system of moral rules can only
be defended by showing that their adoption brings about some good that could not
otherwise be realized, and then seeks to show that deontology is such a system. The claim
is not, of course, that agent-relative reasons rest directly on considerations of value in a manner obviously
susceptible to the CVC; rather, the grounding is indirect the notion is that worlds in which there are
Page 168 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
agent-relative reasons are better than worlds in which there are not. Nagel argues that an agent
relative morality, qua moral system, is intrinsically valuable. Thus we concur with Hooker
(1994), then, pace Howard-Snyder (1993), that rule consequentialism is not a 'rubber duck'. Thus rights
(the obverse of constraints) have value, and are, therefore, part of the basic structure of
moral theory. A right is an agent-relative, not an agent-neutral, value, says Nagel (1995, p.88). This is
precisely because it is supposed to resist the CVC (one is forbidden to violate a right
even to minimize the total number of such violations). So Nagel faces the Scheffler
problem: How could it be wrong to harm one person to prevent greater harm to others?
How are we to understand the value that rights assign to certain kinds of human inviolability, which makes
this consequence morally intelligible? (p.89, our emphasis note the presumption inherent in the
question). The answer focuses on the status conferred on all human beings by the design
of a morality which includes agent-relative constraints (p.89). That status is one of being
inviolable (which is not, of course, to say that one will not be violated, but that one may not be
violated even to minimize the total number of such violations). A system of morality
that includes inviolability encapsulates a good that its rivals cannot capture . For, not only
is it an evil for a person to be harmed in certain ways, but for it to be permissible to harm
the person in those ways is an additional and independent evil (p.91). So there is a sense in
which we are better off if there are rights (they are a kind of generally disseminated intrinsic good (p.93)).
Hence there are rights. In short, we are inviolable because
Deontology comes first, the means must justify themselves utilitarianism

justifies the Holocaust.
Anderson, 2004 (Kerby Anderson is the National Director of Probe Ministries
International, , Probe Ministries Utilitarianism:
The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number http://www.probe.org/theologyand-philosophy/worldview--philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-forthegreatest-number.html)
One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means" mentality .
If any worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical foundation is lost.
But we all know that the end does not justify the means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the
Holocaust because the end was to purify the human race. Stalin could justify his
slaughter of millions because he was trying to achieve a communist utopia. The end
never justifies the means. The means must justify themselves. A particular act cannot be
judged as good simply because it may lead to a good consequence. The means must be judged by
some objective and consistent standard of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect
the rights of minorities if the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number.
Americans in the eighteenth century could justify slavery on the basis that it provided a
good consequence for a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority benefited from cheap slave
labor even though the lives of black slaves were much worse. A third problem with utilitarianism is
predicting the consequences. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have
omniscience in order to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at best we
can only guess at the future, and often these educated guesses are wrong. A fourth
problem with utilitarianism is that consequences themselves must be judge d. When
results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad results. Utilitarianism
provides no objective and consistent foundation to judge results because results are the
mechanism used to judge the action itself.inviolability is intrinsically valuable.
Deontology precludes util- the values of deontology come first
Page 169 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Mcnaughton and Rawling 98 [David McNaughton and Piers Rawling are professors of philosophy
at Keele University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ratio, On Defending Deontology, issue 11, p.
48-49 Ebsco]
Nagel effectively accepts the consequentialist view that a system of moral rules can only
be defended by showing that their adoption brings about some good that could not
otherwise be realized, and then seeks to show that deontology is such a system. The claim
is not, of course, that agent-relative reasons rest directly on considerations of value in a manner obviously
susceptible to the CVC; rather, the grounding is indirect the notion is that worlds in which there are
agent-relative reasons are better than worlds in which there are not. Nagel argues that an agent
relative morality, qua moral system, is intrinsically valuable. Thus we concur with Hooker
(1994), then, pace Howard-Snyder (1993), that rule consequentialism is not a 'rubber duck'. Thus rights
(the obverse of constraints) have value, and are, therefore, part of the basic structure of
moral theory. A right is an agent-relative, not an agent-neutral, value, says Nagel (1995, p.88). This is
precisely because it is supposed to resist the CVC (one is forbidden to violate a right
even to minimize the total number of such violations). So Nagel faces the Scheffler
problem: How could it be wrong to harm one person to prevent greater harm to others?
How are we to understand the value that rights assign to certain kinds of human inviolability, which makes
this consequence morally intelligible? (p.89, our emphasis note the presumption inherent in the
question). The answer focuses on the status conferred on all human beings by the design
of a morality which includes agent-relative constraints (p.89). That status is one of being
inviolable (which is not, of course, to say that one will not be violated, but that one may not be
violated even to minimize the total number of such violations). A system of morality
that includes inviolability encapsulates a good that its rivals cannot capture . For, not only
is it an evil for a person to be harmed in certain ways, but for it to be permissible to harm
the person in those ways is an additional and independent evil (p.91). So there is a sense in
which we are better off if there are rights (they are a kind of generally disseminated intrinsic good (p.93)).
Hence there are rights. In short, we are inviolable because
Deontology comes before util- utilitarianism can be a last resort to preserve

fundamental rights
Kateb 1992 [George Kateb is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics,
Emeritus, at Princeton University The Inner Ocean
http://books.google.com/books?id=MtGJdmzqLZoC&dq=kateb+
%22what+does+a+theory%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s]
What does a theory of rights leave undecided? Many issues of public policy do not affect individual rights,
despite frequent ingeniuous efforts to claim that they do. Such issues pertain to the promotion of a better
life, whether for the disadvantaged or for everyone, or involve the clash of interests. So long as rights are
not in play, advocates of rights can rightly allow a loose utilitarianism as the proper guide to public policy,
though they should always be eager to keep the states energy under suspicion. One can even think,
against utilitarianism, that any substantive outcome acheived by morally proper

procedure is morally right and hence acceptable (so long as rights are not in play ). The
main point, however, is that utilitarianism has a necessary place in any democratic countrys
normal political deliberations. But its advocates must know its place, which ordinarily is
only to help to decide what theory of rights leave alone . When may rights be overridden by the
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 states 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-that is, sacrifice- a right of some so theat others may
Page 170 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
keep it, the situations must be desperate. I havein 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 be killed), if the only alternative is
letting everyone 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 ones own life to saving that of another when both cannot be saved, so a third party-let us say, the
statecan (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. To accept
utilitarianism (in some loose sense) as a necessary supplement. It thus should function
innocently, or when all hope of innocence is gone . I emphasize, above all, however, that every
care must be taken to ensure that the precept that numbers of lives count does not
become a license for vaguely conjectural decisions about inflicting death and saving life
and that desperation be as strictly and narrowly understood as possible. (But total
numbers killed do not count if members of one group have to kill members of another
group to save themselves from threatened massacre of enslavement or utter
degradation or misery; they may kill their attackers in an attempt to end the threat.)
Deontology preserves fundamental rights and still accesses the ultimate good,
accessing the same things as util
Bentley No Date [ Kristina A. Bentley graduate of the Department of government at the University of
Manchester. Suggesting A Separate Approach To Utility and Rights: Deontological Specification and
Teleogical Enforcement of Human Rights
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf]
The second area of departure between utilitarianism and rights-based theories is that
utilitarians advocate a simple maximising strategy as the aim is to maximise social utility and
a society is justified in doing whatever enhances its aggregate utility (Jones, 1994: 52).
Conversely, the opponents of this view hold that rights constitute an area which is beyond the
reach of such calculations, as it would be pointless if rights could be set aside in a mere calculus
of competing preferences (Jones, 1994: 53). This is because rights are regarded as being
considerations which are special in the sense that they protect individuals from the potential
excesses of such calculations. Consequently, to refer back to Gewirths example, according to
the rights-based account, it would always be morally wrong to torture an innocent person, even if
this would result in a large increase in aggregate utility in such a society, while a utilitarian
approach would weigh up the evidence, such that if thousands of lives would be saved by the
torture, then it ought to be done. This roughly reflects Dworkins notion of Rights as Trumps
which override, or supersede ordinary notions of well-being. The difference however is that
Dworkins theory occupies some middle ground, as it does not rule out rights being overridden by
such considerations when other fundamental rights are threatened (Jones, 1994: 53). So while
Dworkin would probably argue that to torture someone to give others in society pleasure at the
sight would be trumped by the right not to be tortured, he would perhaps concede that to torture
an individual to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb, as is the case in Gewirths example,
may be justified, as the right to life of all others in society may, in this instance, trump the right
of an individual not to be tortured. Dworkins formulation again places the domain of rights
beyond the reach of ordinary considerations of utility, but he does make provision for rights to be
balanced against one another (to trump one another) in cases of extreme gravity for rights
themselves. Consequently, theories of rights quite simply consider respect for rights to be the
primary consideration in the course of social deliberation, while utilitarians consider the ultimate
good or utility on the balance to be the correct goal to pursue, even if this potentially
infringes on individual rights. However, assertions that these conceptions of justice are
incompatible are not always acknowledged by exponents of consequentialism. As Richard B.
Page 171 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Brandt states: There is a fundamental incompatibility between utilitarianism and human rights.
Most utilitarians of course have not thought there is such an incompatibility (Brandt, 1992: 196).
Evaluating the deontological aspects of a policy is critical to policy making

Pinstrup-Andersen, 2005. [Ethics and economic policy for the food system. General Sessions, 01DEC-05, American Journal of Agricultural Economics Ebsco Host.]
Economists seldom address ethical questions as they infringe on economic theory or economic
behavior. They (and I) find this subject complex and elusive in comparison with the relative precision and
objectivity of economic analysis. However, if ethics is influencing our analyses but ignored, is the precision
and objectivity just an illusion? Are we in fact being normative when we claim to be positive or are we, as
suggested by Gilbert
(p. xvi), ignoring social ethics and, as a consequence, contributing to a situation in which we know "the
price of everything and the value of nothing?" The economists' focus on efficiency and the Pareto
Principle has made us less relevant to policy makers, whose main concerns are who
gains, who
loses, by how much, and can or should the losers be compensated. By focusing on the
distribution of gains and losses and replacing the Pareto Principle with estimates of
whether a big
enough economic surplus could be generated so that gainers could compensate losers,
the socalled
new welfare economics (which is no longer new) was a step toward more relevancy for
policy
makers (Just, Hueth, and Schmitz). Another major step toward relevancy was made by the more recent
emphasis on political economy and institutional economics. But are we trading off scientific validity for
relevancy? Robbins (p. 9) seems to think so, when he states that "claims of welfare economics to be
scientific are highly dubious." But if Aristotle saw economics as a branch of ethics and Adam Smith was a
moral philosopher, when did we, as implied by Stigler, replace ethics with precision and objectivity? Or,
when did we as economists move away from philosophy toward statistics and engineering and are we on
our way back to a more
comprehensive political economy approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative variables are taken
into account? I believe we are. Does that make us less scientific, as argued by Robbins?
I am not questioning whether the quantification of economic relationships is important. It

is. In the case of food policy analysis, it is critically important that the causal relationship
between policy options and expected impact on the population groups of interest is
quantitatively estimated. But not at the expense of reality, context, and ethical
considerations, much of which can be described only in qualitative terms. Economic
analyses that ignore everything that cannot be quantified and included in our models are
not likely to advance our understanding of economic and policy relationships . Neither
will they be relevant for solving real world problems. The predictive ability is likely to be
low and,
if the results are used by policy makers, the outcome may be different from what was
expecte.
Deontology key to giving human life value
Kamm 92 [ FM Kamm is Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Kennedy School Nonconsequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the significance of status., Philosophy and Public
Affairs, p. 390 JSTOR]
If we are inviolable in a certain way, we are more important creatures than violable ones;
such a
Page 172 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
higher status is itself a benefit to us . Indeed, we are creatures whose interests as

recipients of such
ordinary benefits as welfare are more worth serving. The world is, in a sense, a better
place, as it has more important creatures in it .3' In this sense the inviolable status (against being
harmed in a certain way) of any potential victim can be taken to be an agent-neutral value. This is a
nonconsequential value. It does not follow (causally or noncausally) upon any act, but is
already present in the status that persons have. Ensuring it provides the background
against which we may then seek their welfare or pursue other values. It is not our duty to
bring about the agent-neutral value, but only to respect the constraints that express its
presence. Kagan claims that the only sense in which we can show disrespect for
people is by using them in an unjustified way. Hence, if it is justified to kill one to
save five, we will not be showing disrespect for the one if we so use him . But there is
another sense of disrespect tied to the fact that we owe people more respect than animals, even though
we also should not treat animals in an unjustified way. And this other sense of disrespect is, I believe, tied
to the failure to heed the greater inviolability of persons.
Deontology does not dismiss consequences, categorical imperative means

deont still maximizes happiness
Donaldson 95 (Thomas Donaldson is Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and
International Affairs,International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg. 147-154)
When discussing nuclear deterrence or intervention it is common to exaggerate the nonconsequential
nature
of Kantianism. It is a false but all-too common myth that Kant believed that consequences
were
irrelevant to the evaluation of moral action . In his practical writings Kant explicitly states that
each of us
has a duty to maximize the happiness of other individuals, a statement that echoes Mills famous principle
of
utility. But Kants duty to promote beneficial consequences is understood to be derived
from an even
higher order principle, namely, the categorical imperative that requires all of us to act in
a way that
respects the intrinsic value of other rational beings. Kant does not dismiss consequences.
He simply wants them in their proper place.
Callahan embraces reason and says it must be used in combination with a
moral obligation to make decisions
Callahan, fmr. Director of the Hastings Institute, 75
DANIEL CALLAHAN, Fmr. Director of the Hastings Institute, author of The
Tyranny of Survival & Senior Fellow at Yale, February 1975,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3560956
correspondent, after praising the position I took in opposition to Garrett Hardin's "Life-boat
Ethic" ("Doing Good by Doing Well," Dec. 1974), ended her letter with a complaint. I had, she implied,
fallen into a fatal trap by trying to argue with Hardins thesis on "rationalistic rounds. The issue at stake is
"humanitarianism" and the future of altruism, neither of which will be saved if they must be defended on
the narrow base of reason and logic. Indeed, she seemed to be saying, there is an inherent conflict
between humanitarianism and rationalism. As an unreconstructed rationalist, I balk at admitting
such a dualism, just as I rebel at the general black-balling of reason and logic which seems to many
A RECENT
to offer the only antidote to the generally insane, depressing state of the world. One can well understand how rationality has come to
have a bad name. We have in the twentieth century been subjected to endless wars, ills and disasters carried out in the name of
somebody or other's impeccable logic and assertedly rational deliberations. One can also understand the sense of distaste any feel in
the face of articulate proponents of "triage" in our dealings with poor countries and a "lifeboat ethic" in deter-mining our own moral
responsibilities toward the starving, particularly when such positions are advanced in the name of no-nonsense rational calculation.
Page 173 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
For all that,
I am far more fearful of a deliberate abandonment of reason than of the evils which
can be done in its name. The fault with the latter form of attacking "reason" is that it takes
those arguing in its name too much at their own word. Poke around a bit under the facade of
carefully-honed rationality and precise logical moves and what does one usually discover?
Pure mush. Those vast, intricate edifices rest on a bowl of porridge, made up of irrational selfinterest, the worst forms of sentimentality (or pure cruelty), utterly unanalyzed assumptions
about politics, or ethics, or human nature, tribalism, and god knows what else. None of that has
much if anything to do with reason. A recent article by Robert L. Heilbroner, author of the muchacclaimed book, An Inquiry Into the Human Prospect, is indicative of the muddle created when one
calls for an abandonment of rationality in favor of something more Illuminating . In "What has
Posterity Ever Done for Me?" (New York Times Magazine, January 19, 1975), Prof. Heilbroner tries to make the case that contemporary
human beings will never learn to take responsibility for the future of mankind until they give up trying to find a compelling reason
why they should. Only some fundamental revelatory experience-to wit, famine, war and the like-will bring people back to what is an
essentially "religious" insight, that of "the transcendent importance of posterity for them." It is intriguing to see the way Heilbroner
develops his case. "Why," he asks, "should I lift a finger to affect events that will have no more meaning for me 75 years after my
death than those that happened 75 years before I was born? There is no rational answer to that terrible question. No argument based
on reason will lead me to care for posterity or to lift a finger in its behalf. Indeed, by every rational consideration, precisely the
opposite answer is thrust upon us with irresistible force." Going on, Heilbroner quotes an anonymous "Distinguished Younger
Economist" who has concluded that he really doesn't "care" whether mankind survives or not. "Is this," Heilbroner queries, "an
outrageous position? I must confess it outrages me. But this is not because the economist's arguments are 'wrong'-indeed, within
their rational framework they are indisputably right. It is because their position reveals the limitations-worse, the suicidal dangers-of
what we call 'rational argument' when we con-front questions that can only be decided by an appeal to an entirely different faculty
from that of cool reason. " I find Heilbroner's despair at finding a rational basis to care about posterity,
or the distant past, simply startling. Surely, to begin with the past, he can hardly believe (to stick to his own field of
economics) that Adam Smith and the other "worldly philosophers" have no significance whatever any more, despite the fact that they
had a critical place in shaping the world in which we live today. And surely, as an American, he must find some slight trace of present
and personal meaning in the historical fact that some distant people once upon a time signed a "declaration of independence." My
beginning with the past is no accident. If a case is to be made for caring about the fate of posterity, it will arise out of the highly
rational recognition that (for better or worse) we are where we are because it seemed to our ancestors only sensible to worry about
the fate of their descendants, just as (also for better or worse) still earlier generations had worried about their descendants. More
deeply, unless one has decided that human life is, regardless of its condition, meaningless and terrible-in which case, what the hellone will also recognize the moral interdependence of generations as one of the conditions for extracting whatever possibilities there
are for human happiness. To love and believe in life at all is not just to love one's own life; it is to love both the fact and idea of life
itself, including the life of those yet to be born. My point here, however, is not to make the rational case for obligations toward
posterity. It is only to indicate there are rational ways of going about it (and if you don't like the reasons I've given, I can think of still
others), just as there are rational ways of establishing a variety of other moral duties. The truly
hazardous part of despairing of reason, and longing for a return to something more primitive,
can readily be seen in the texture of some of Heilbroner's other arguments. He is looking for what he
calls the "survivalist" principle, by which he seems to mean some deep sense of obligation toward the future, powerful
enough to give us the courage and the toughness to take those immediate steps necessary to discharge our obligation. "Of course,"
he writes, "there are moral dilemmas to be faced even if one takes one's stand on the 'survivalist' principle.... [But] this essential
commitment to life's continuance gives us the moral authority to take measures, per-haps very harsh measures, whose justification
cannot be found in the precepts of rationality, but must be sought in the unbearable anguish we feel if we imagine ourselves as the
executioner of mankind." Of course we may have to act harshly. But, to bring the circle full turn, how are we to act harshly, to whom
and under what circumstances? Are we also meant to abandon reason in trying to answer that question? Are we supposed to
solve the evident "moral dilemmas" to which Heilbroner refers by a dependence, not on reason,
but on a sense of "unbearable anguish "?I see no reason to hope that even a fully shared sense of anguish would tell
us how to resolve moral dilemmas. Moreover, Heilbroner himself cites at least one person who does not share his feelings, and unless
we are to suppose that person to represent a class of one, the pillar to the center of the earth Heilbroner offers us begins to look like
a piece of balsa wood. The amusing side of all this is that the two principal "survivalists" of our day, Garrett Hardin and Robert
Heilbroner, seem to come out at opposite poles in the place they give to reason. Hardin appears the very paradigm of that cool
rationality which Heilbroner believes to be our greatest threat to survival. And Heilbroner's quest for some deeper affective,
"religious" motivation for survival seems the very model of that soft-hearted and woolly-headed humanitarianism which Hardin
identifies as the villain. Neither is likely to carry the day, and for very healthy reasons. Heilbroner is correct when he
discerns that the appeal to reason has its limitations. It takes more than mere logic to move
people deeply, especially to move them to act. More than that, the frequently indignant reaction which greeted
Hardin's "lifeboat ethic" indicates that many are not about to adopt a policy of calculating callousness, "logical" though that may
seem. Hardin is correct when he says that we must think very hard about the question of survival, however much such thought may
end by posing hard, even revolting, choices. But he seems not to have realized that, unless the drive for survival has a moral basis
and a saving reference to some-thing deeper than rational calculation, some and perhaps many people will decide that survival at
any price is not a moral good . Nothing I have said here solves the vexing problem of the right
relationship between reason and feeling in the moral life. But it seems to me at least clear
that the worst possible solution is to choose one at the expense of the other, or to think that
we can make a flat choice between them. There is enough evidence from recent psychological
research to indicate that our feelings and emotions are vigorously tutored by our perceptions and
cognition; reason has its say even in the way we feel. A no less important insight is that there is all the difference in the world
between being "rational and being "logical."Almost anyone can work through a simple syllogism, presuming he is spared the ordeal
of worrying about whether the premises are correct. It is a far more difficult matter to be rational, particularly where ethics is
Page 174 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
concerned
Policy makers cannot depend solely on economics, but need to apply ethics to
make efficient policies
Pinstrup-Andersen, Per. 2005. (Ethics and economic policy for the food system. General Sessions, 01DEC-05, American Journal of Agricultural Economics.)
Economists seldom address ethical questions as they infringe on economic theory or economic
behavior. They (and I) find this subject complex and elusive in comparison with the relative precision and
objectivity of economic analysis. However, if ethics is influencing our analyses but ignored, is the
precision and objectivity just an illusion? Are we in fact being normative when we claim to be positive
or are we, as suggested by Gilbert (p. xvi), ignoring social ethics and, as a consequence, contributing to a
situation in which we know "the price of everything and the value of nothing?" The economists' focus on
efficiency and the Pareto Principle has made us less relevant to policy makers, whose main
concerns are who gains, who loses, by how much, and can or should the losers be
compensated. By focusing on the distribution of gains and losses and replacing the Pareto
Principle with estimates of whether a big enough economic surplus could be generated so that
gainers could compensate losers, the socalled new welfare economics (which is no longer new)
was a step toward more relevancy for policy makers (Just, Hueth, and Schmitz). Another major step toward
relevancy was made by the more recent emphasis on political economy and institutional economics. But are we trading off scientific
validity for relevancy? Robbins (p. 9) seems to think so, when he states that "claims of welfare economics to be scientific are highly
dubious." But if Aristotle saw economics as a branch of ethics and Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, when did we, as implied by
Stigler, replace ethics with precision and objectivity? Or, when did we as economists move away from philosophy toward statistics
and engineering and are we on our way back to a more comprehensive political economy approach, in which both quantitative and
qualitative variables are taken into account? I believe we are. Does that make us less scientific, as argued by Robbins? I am not
questioning whether the quantification of economic relationships is important. It is. In the case of food policy analysis,
it is critically important that the causal relationship between policy options and expected
impact on the population groups of interest is quantitatively estimated. But not at the expense of
reality, context, and ethical considerations, much of which can be described only in qualitative terms.
Economic analyses that ignore everything that cannot be quantified and included in our
models are not likely to advance our understanding of economic and policy relationships.
Neither will they be relevant for solving real world problems. The predictive ability is likely to
be low and, if the results are used by policy makers, the outcome may be different from what
was expected.
Deontology is essential for the maintenance of international human rights

because it restricts the practice of justifying the actions of the government by
the ends achieved, creating what is essentially a humane international order.
Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs,
International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg. 147-154)
It may appear that I am defending Kantian deontology as a comprehensive moral language to use in
interpreting international events. But I mean not to assert that Kantian deontology is sufficient, only that
it is necessary. Such a perspective contributes fundamental, often neglected, insights. First it provides a
moral grounding for any rights-based approach to international affairs. This includes not only the
general interpretation of international policy through broad notions of human rights, but also the
application of specific rights such as those found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Indeed, most contemporary rights-based theories are deontological theories. Rights are principles
that assign claims or entitlements to someone against someone and are usually interpreted as trumping or taking precedence over
consequential claims made in the name of collective welfare.4 Hence, both in their similarity of form (as a principle universally
applicable to relevantly similar situations) and in their similarity of function (as taking precedence over collective, consequential
considerations), rights satisfy two key Kantian-deontological criteria. Second , Kantianism entails clear restrictions on
the general behavior of states. Of greatest importance is the fact that these restrictions alert
us to the danger of letting the ends justify the means. Whatever the flaws of the Kantian
deontological tradition, and no matter what verdict we finally reach on the comprehensiveness
of deontological moral logic, the insistence on principle over mere calculation of future
consequences stands as deontologys practical raison detre. Deontology may not be
sufficient, but it is necessary for a humane international order.
Page 175 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Certain premises have an intrinsic moral value that comes before

consequences of actions. Evaluating consequences first puts our fate and the
fate of the masses in the hands of
belligerent others.
Igor Primoratz in 05 (Principal Research Fellow @ Center for Applied Philosophy amd Public Ethics, The
Philosophical Forum, Volume 36, No. 1, Civilian Immunity in War, Spring, p. 44-46)
Consequentialist thinkers usually present their view on civilian immunity against the background of a
critique of attempts of philosophers and legal thinkers to account for civilian immunity in deontological
terms. Having satisfied themselves that those attempts have been unsuccessful, they put forward the
claim that civilian immunity has nothing to do with civilians acts or omissions, guilt or
innocence, responsibility or lack of it, but is merely a useful convention. It is useful since it rules
out targeting a large group of human beings, and thus helps reduce greatly the overall killing, mayhem,
and destruction in war. The consequentialist view of civilian immunity is exposed to two
objections: the protection it offers to civilians is too weak, and the ground provided for it
indicates a misunderstanding of the moral issue involved. The protection is too weak because
civilian immunity is understood as but a useful convention. This makes it doubly weak. First, if it is
merely a useful convention, if all its moral force is due to its utility, then it will have no such
force in cases where it has no utility. This is a familiar flaw of consequentialism. It denies that moral
rules have any intrinsic moral significance, and explains their binding force solely in terms of the good
consequences of acting in accordance with them. Therefore it cannot give us any good
consequentialist reason to adhere to a moral rule in cases where adhering to it will not have
the good consequences it usually has, and where better consequences will be attained by
going against the rule.6 This means that we should respect civilian immunity when, and only when, doing so will have the
good consequences adduced as its ground: when it will indeed reduce the overall killing, maiming, and destruction. On the other
hand, whenever we have good reasons to believe that, by targeting civilians, we shall make a significant contribution to our war
effort, thus shortening the war and reducing the overall killing and mayhem, that is what we may and indeed ought to do. Civilian
immunity is thus made hostage to the vagaries of war, instead of providing civilians with ironclad protection against them. This is not a purely theoretical concern. As Kai Nielsen has pointed
out, systematic attacks on civilians in the course of a war of national liberation can make an indispensable
contribution to the successful prosecution of such a war. That was indeed the case in Algeria and South
Vietnam, and may well have been the case in Angola and Mozambique as well. Then again, if civilian
immunity is merely a useful convention, that weakens it by making it hostage to the stance
taken by enemy political and military leadership. They may or may not choose to respect the
immunity of our civilians. If they do not, on the consequentialist view of this immunity, we are
not bound to respect the immunity of their civilians. Being a convention, it binds only if, or as long as, it is
accepted by both parties to the conflict. As an important statement of this view puts it, for convention-dependent obligations, what
ones opponent does, what everyone is doing, etc., are facts of great moral importance. Such facts help to determine within what
convention, if any, one is operating, and thus they help one discover what his moral duties are.8 To be sure, even if no such
convention is in place, but we have reason to believe we can help bring about its acceptance by unilaterally acting in accordance with
it and thereby encouraging the enemy to do the same, we should do that. But if we have no good reason to believe that, or if we have
tried that approach and it has failed, our military are free to kill and maim enemy civilians whenever they feel they need to do that.
Thus our moral choice is determined, be it directly or ultimately, by the moral (or immoral)
choice of enemy political and military leaders. So is the fate of enemy civilians. The fact that
they are civilians, in itself, counts for nothing. This brings me to the second objection: The
consequentialist misses what anyone else, and in particular any civilian in wartime, would consider
the crux of the matter. Faced with the prospect of being killed or maimed by enemy fire, a civilian
would not make her case in terms of disutility of killing or maiming civilians in war in general,
or of killing or maiming her then and there. She would rather point out that she is a civilian, not
a soldier; a bystander, not a participant; an innocent, not a guilty party. She would point out that she has
done nothing to deserve, or become liable to, such a fate. She would present these personal
facts as considerations whose moral significance is intrinsic and decisive, rather than instrumental and
fortuitous, mediated by a useful convention (which, in different circumstances, might enjoin limiting war
by targeting only civilians). And her argument, couched in personal terms, would seem to be more
to the point than the impersonal calculation of good and bad consequences by means of which
the consequentialist would settle the matter.
Recognizing rights and putting them before a utilitarian calculus is the only
rational and
moral option.
Page 176 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
H. L. A. Hart in 79 (former principal of Oxford University, Tulane Law Review, The Shell Foundation
Lectures,
1978-1979: Utilitarianism and Natural Rights, April, 53 Tul. L. Rev. 663, l/n)
Accordingly, the contemporary modern philosophers of whom I have spoken, and preeminently Rawls in his
Theory of Justice, have argued that any morally adequate political philosophy must recognise that
there must be, in any morally tolerable form of social life, certain protections for the freedom
and basic interests of individuals which constitute an essential framework of individual rights. Though
the pursuit of the general welfare is indeed a legitimate and indeed necessary concern of
governments, it is something to be pursued only within certain constraints imposed by
recognition of such rights. The modern philosophical defence put forward for the recognition of basic human rights does
not wear the same metaphysical or conceptual dress as the earlier doctrines of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Rights of
Man, which men were said to have in a state of nature or to be endowed with by their creator. Nonetheless, the most complete and
articulate version of this modern critique of Utilitarianism has many affinities with the theories of social contract which in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accompanied the doctrine of natural rights. Thus Rawls has argued in A Theory of Justice that
though any rational person must know that in order to live even a minimally tolerable life he
must live within a political society with an ordered government, no rational person bargaining
with others on a footing of [*679] equality could agree to regard himself as bound to obey the
laws of any government if his freedom and basic interests, what Mill called "the groundwork of
human existence," were not given protection and treated as having priority over mere increases
in aggregate welfare even if the protection cannot be absolute.
Page 177 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Deontological principles of rights should be considered first other

interpretations are assigned no moral value if conflicting with the principles of
rights because viewing the debate from a deontological perspective is the only
way to guarantee freedom
The priority of right asserts then that the reasons supplied by moral motives-principles of
right and their institutional requirements-have absolute precedence over all other
considerations. As such, moral motives must occupy a separate dimension in practical reasoning. Suppose then a
supplementary stage of practical reasoning, where the interests and pursuits that figure into ordinary
deliberation and which define our conception of the good are checked against principles of
right and justice. At this stage of reasoning, any ends that directly conflict with these
moral principles (e.g., racist ends or the wish to dominate others), or whose pursuit would undermine
the efficacy of principles of right (e.g., desires for unlimited accumulation of wealth whatever the consequences for others), are
assigned no moral value, no matter how intensely felt or important they may otherwise
be. Being without moral value, they count for nothing in deliberation. Consequently, their pursuit is prohibited
or curtailed by the priority given to principles of right. The priority of right then describes the hierarchical
subordination in practical deliberation of the desires, interests, and plans that define a person's rational good, to the substantive
demands of principles of right.32 Purposes and pursuits that are incompatible with these principles must be abandoned or revised.
The same idea carries through to social and political deliberations on the general good. In political deliberative procedures, the
priority of right means that desires and interests of individuals or groups that conflict with the institutional requirements of principles
of right and justice have no legitimate claim to satisfaction, no matter how intense peoples' feelings or how large the majority sharing
these aims. Constitutional restrictions on majority rule exhibit the priority of right. In democratic procedures, majorities cannot violate
constitutional rights and procedures to promote, say, the Christian religion, or any other aspect of their good that undermines others'
basic rights and opportunities. Similarly, the institutional requirements of Rawls's difference principle limit, for example, property
owners' desires for tax exemptions for capital gains, and the just savings principle limits current majorities' wishes to deplete natural
resources. These desires are curtailed in political contexts, no matter how intense or widely held, because of the priority of principles
of right over individual and general good.33 The priority of right enables Rawls to define a notion of admissible conceptions of the
Only admissible
conceptions of the good establish a basis for legitimate claims in political procedures (cf. TJ,
p. 449). That certain desires and pursuits are permissible, and political claims based on
them are legitimate, while others are not, presupposes antecedently established
principles of right and justice. Racist conceptions of the good are not politically admissible; actions done in their pursuit
good: of those desires, interests and plans of life that may legitimately be pursued for political purposes.
are either prohibited or discouraged by a just social scheme, and they provide no basis for legitimate claims in political procedures.
Excellences such as knowledge, creativity, and aesthetic contemplation are permissible ends for individuals so long as they are
pursued in accordance with the constraints of principles of right. Suppose these perfectionist principles state intrinsic values that it is
Still, they cannot supply a basis for

legitimate political claims and expectations; they cannot be appealed to in political
contexts to justify limiting others' freedom, or even the coercive redistribution of income
and wealth (cf. TJ, pp. 331-32). This is because of the priority of right over the good. Now return to Kymlicka's argument.
the duty of everyone to pursue. (Rawls leaves this question open. cf. TJ, p. 328.)
Kymlicka says both Rawls and utilitarians agree on the premise of giving equal consideration to everyone's interests, and that
because utilitarians afford equal consideration, "they must recognize, rather than deny, that individuals are distinct persons with their
own rightful claims. That is, in Rawls's classification, a position that affirms the priority of the right over the good" (LCC, p. 26). Since
"Rawls treats the right as a spelling-out of the requirement that each person's good be given equal consideration," there is no debate
between Rawls and utilitarians over the priority of the right or the good (LCC, p. 40). Deontology Good Comparative
By guiding social choice, deontology ultimately achieves the same result as

utilitarianism without compromising the individual
Schroeder 86 Professor of Law at Duke (Christopher H., Rights Against Risks,, April,
Columbia Law Review, pp. 495-562, http://www.jstor.org/pss/1122636)
Page 178 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
The rights tradition and utilitarianism, the two grand opponents in American jurisprudence, clash on many different issues and
fronts.235 There are, however, many ways to classify ethical theories, and in one crucial respect these two belong together. They
seek the same kind of answer to the question of conflicting values. For its part, utilitarianism aspires to clear and unique answers for
every question of public choice. If only we can determine the various utility functions of individuals affected by those decisions-a
Utilitarianism employs a method for producing

that absolute answer that threatens to obliterate the individual, and hence rights
theories reject that method. In affirming the primacy of the individual, however, those
theories do not abandon utilitarianism's ultimate objective to identify absolutes-clear and
definite answers-to guide social choice or to determine the constraints of justice. In this
heroic assumption-the absolutely correct action will be known.
respect, such theories still live in utilitarianism's shadow.
An action taken to maximize utility by a powerful entity like the government is

illegitimate and immoral. Deontological moral law guides the individual to
realize obligations he has to society and will ultimately solve for societys
problems
Gauthier 2K PhD Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at
the University of North Carolina, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (Candace P)
Mill is especially helpful in responding to the communitarian critique of respect for autonomy because he is careful to emphasize that
conception of liberty is neither selfish nor indifferent to the self-regarding behavior of

others. Mill (1978 [1859], pp. 74-75) identifies a number of ways in which members of the
community should influence each other toward the "self-regarding virtues," which
include education, conviction, persuasion, encouragement, and advice. However, he
rejects the coercion of the law and the overwhelming power of public opinion as illegitimate forms of
control over self-regarding conduct (Mill 1978 [1859], p. 9). The practical application of these principles from Kant
and Mill does not require a concept of the self as unencumbered or isolated in its decision making. Kant's concept of the
person, with the capacity for rational [End Page 340] agency, is based on human freedom from natural
forces, not our freedom from attachments and commitments to other persons or the
influence our histories, traditions, and families have on our values, choices, and actions. Kant is pointing out that we
his
are neither like chairs, without the capacity for choice or action, nor like nonrational animals, whose actions are determined by
instinct and the forces of nature. As persons, we are the products of our families, traditions, and communities. Yet, because we are
persons, our actions may be the result of more than these influences. They may also be the result of our rational capacities.
our choices and actions are not supposed to be based simply on our
own goals and ends. Rather, Kant believes that the moral law will lead us to recognize
duties and obligations we have to others, for example, to respect and further their ends. Such
obligations could certainly be directed toward the shared goals of the community as a
whole. For Mill, even self-regarding choices and actions are properly subject to influence from others, for example through their
natural reactions to an individual's self-destructive behavior. In fact, he advocates our responsibility to help each
other ". . . distinguish the better from the worse . . ." through conviction, encouragement, persuasion, and education (Mill 1978
Moreover, according to Kant,
[1859], pp. 74-76). Furthermore, in the category of other-regarding behavior Mill includes the risk of damage not only to specific
others, but to the society, as well (p. 80).
The utility of a society only has value when its individuals are treated with
dignity. A free society that sacrifices some of its own individuals to prevent
human extinction is morally corrupt.
Shue 89 Professor of Ethics and Public Life, Princeton University (Henry, Nuclear
Deterrence and Moral Restraint, pp. 141-2)
Given the philosophical obstacles to resolving moral disputes, there are at least two
approaches one can take in dealing with the issue of the morality of nuclear strategy . One
Page 179 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
approach is to stick doggedly with one of the established moral theories constructed by philosophers to rationalize or make sense
of everyday moral intuitions, and to accept the verdict of the theory, whatever it might be, on the morality of nuclear weapons use.
A more pragmatic alternative approach assumes that trade-offs in moral values and
principles are inevitable in response to constantly changing threats, and that the emergence of
novel, unforeseen challenges may impel citizens of Western societies to adjust the way
they rank their values and principles to ensure that the moral order survives. Nuclear weapons
are putting just such a strain on our moral beliefs. Before the emergence of a nuclear-armed communist state capable of threatening
the existence of Western civilization, the slaughter of millions of innocent human beings to preserve Western values may have
Today, however, it may be that Western

democracies, if they are to survive as guardians of individual freedom, can no longer
afford to provide innocent life the full protection demanded by Just War morality . It might be
objected that the freedoms of Western society have value only on the assumption that human
beings are treated with the full dignity and respect assumed by Just War theory. Innocent human life is not
appeared wholly unjustifiable under any possible circumstances.
just another value to be balanced side by side with others in moral calculations. It is the raison detre of Western political, economic,
A free society based on individual rights that sanctioned mass slaughter

of innocent human beings to save itself from extinction would be morally corrupt, no
better than soviet society, and not worth defending. The only morally right and respectable policy for such
a society would be to accept destruction at the hands of tyranny, if need be. This objection is partly
and social institutions.
right in that a society based on individual rights that casually sacrifices innocent human lives for the sake of common social goods is
a contradiction in terms. On the other hand, even Just War doctrine allows for the unintentional sacrifice of some innocent human life
under certain hard-pressing circumstances. It is essentially a consequentialist moral doctrine that ascribes extremely high but not
absolute value to innocent human life. The problem for any nonabsolute moral theory, of course, is where to draw the line.
Maintaining proper moral values is the only way to obtain a free society, which
outweighs nuclear extinction
Shue 89 (Henry, Professor of Ethics and Public Life, Princeton University, Nuclear
Deterrence and Moral Restraint, pp. 134-5)
But is it realistic to suppose that American citizens would risk not just their own lives but their families and their nation in using
nuclear weapons to save Western Europe and other free societies from Soviet domination, especially if the United States allies are
not willing to risk nuclear destruction themselves? According to one 1984 poll, 74 percent of Americans queried believe the U.S.
should not use nuclear weapons if the Russians invade Western Europe. Nuclear Protectionists, however, would reply that further
If the United States is

determined to deter a Soviet attack on Europe, it must have a moral nuclear strategy
that it is willing to implement. Without effective population defenses, such a strategy could require
that the United States accept an unequal risk of nuclear destruction to ensure the
survival of free society. In the extreme, this could mean that the United States must be willing to
sacrifice itself for values higher than its own national survival. Thus, Nuclear Protectionism views both
public debate might convince more Americans that deterrence cannot be had on the moral cheap.
Just War morality and national self-centered as unworkable foundations for U.S. security policy.
Living without freedom transcends nuclear war

Mohan 93 Professor at LSU (Brij, Eclipse Of Freedom, p. 3-4)
The ordeal of existence transcends the thermonuclear fever because the latter does not
directly impact the day-to-day operations of the common people. The fear of crime,
accidents, loss of job, and health care on the one hand; and the scourges of racism,
sexism, and agism on the other hand have created a counterculture of denial and
disbelief that has shattered the faade of civility. Civilization loses its significance when
its social institutions have become counterproductive. It is the aspect of the mega-crisis that we are
concerned about. The ordeal of existence, as I see it, has three relevant facets: Crisis of modernity, Contradictions of paradigms,
Complexity of social phenomenon. Reinventing civility calls for an exposition of these elements without a vituperative intent. Each of
these aspects has normative and structural dimension involving a host of theories. The politics, metaphors, and rhetoric, however,
Page 180 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
color the shape and substance of each analytical output. Therefore ,
a value-neutral assessment cannot be a

politically correct statement on the human condition.
A deontological framing maximizes the good by emphasizing rights and acting
on an individualist basis
Many moral views can admit that right acts in some sense promote the good. In Kant, for example, all have a duty to promote the
Realm of Ends; each person's doing so is, we might say, instrumental to realizing this ideal community. But here the goodness of this
good is just defined as the state of affairs in

which conscientious moral agents all freely act on and from the moral law. By acting and
willing according to this principle, all treat the humanity of others as an end in itself.
Moreover, to say this good is "maximized" when everyone does his or her duty really
adds nothing; and it misleads us as to the structure and content of Kant's principle of
right. By contrast teleological views (1) define the good independent of any moral concepts;
and then (2) define the right purely in instrumental terms of principles of expedience , i.e.,
as what most effectively and probably realizes the greatest amount of good.
end is not an independent variable that is being promoted; this
Both utilitarians and non-utilitarians respect the moral principle of equality

and freedom. However, only deontology can meet this principle because it
allows for individual decisions
Freeman 94 (Samuel, Avalon Professor in the Humanities at the University of
Pennsylvania, Ph.D. Harvard University, J.D. University of North Carolina,
Utilitarianism, Deontology, and the Priority of Right, Philosophy and Public Affairs,
Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn, pp. 313-349, , http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265463)
Phillipa Foot has said that what makes consequentialism so compeling is "the rather simple thought that it can never be right to
prefer a worse state of affairs to a better."5 But deontological theories, suitably construed, can account for this "simple thought" just
as well (for reasons I discuss in Section VI). The force of consequentialism must then ie elsewhere: it embodies a powerful conception
of practical reason. If we assume that rationality consists in maximizing an aggregate, and that in ethics it involves maximizing
overall good, then we are able to say that there is a rational choice between any two alternative actions, laws, or institutions.
under all conceivable conditions, there is a uniquely rational, hence right, thing to
do. Granted, it may not be knowable by us, but the idea of maximizing the good provides a way to
assign a truth value to any statement about what persons or groups ought to do. No
other conception of rationality offers such practical completeness. Sidgwick, well aware of the
Therefore
force of the idea of maximizing an aggregate, used it quite effectively to argue that hedonism must be true, and that
rational egoism and utilitarianism were the only two "rational methods" in ethics.6 He could not decide which of the two was more
rational, but assuming that egoism is not a moral conception at all, then, given Sidgwick's premises, utilitarianism prevails without
opposition. These introductory remarks supply background I later refer to. My aim is to elucidate the teleology/deontology distinction.
I begin with the contention that teleological theories are not moral theories at all. Will Kymlicka argues that the
teleological/deontological distinction relied on by Rawls and others is misleading. Not only does the morally right act not maximize
the good; any view which defines the right in this way is not a moral conception.7 Right actions, Kymlicka says, concern our duties,
and duties must be owed to someone. But if moral duty is defined as maximizing overall good, "Whom is it a duty to?" (LCC, p. 28).
Kymlicka argues for the (Kantian) claim that morality concerns respect for persons, not the good impersonally construed. And the
most credible moral conceptions, the only ones worth attending to, hold that "each person matters equally," and deserves equal
concern and respect (LCC, p. 40). Kymlicka's aim here is not to attack teleological views, but to show that Rawls's
teleological/deontological distinction cannot do the work Rawls wants; indeed it is "based on a serious confusion" (LCC, p. 21). For
utilitarians, Kymlicka claims, are just as committed to equality, equal respect for persons, and fair distributions as everyone else. The
difference is they interpret these abstract concepts differently. Here Kymlicka follows Ronald Dworkin's suggestion: "that Rawls and
his critics all share the same 'egalitarian plateau': they agree that 'the interests of the members of the community matter, and matter
equally"' (LCC, p. 21). Utilitarians like Hare and Harsanyi, non-utilitarians like Rawls, Nozick, and Dworkin, and even many
Perfectionists (Kymlicka mentions Marx),
all accept that equal concern and respect is the fundamental

Page 181 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
moral principle. "All these theories are deontological in that they spell out an ideal of
fairness or equality for distinct individuals" (LCC, p. 26). If so, Kymlicka argues, the dispute between utilitarians
and their critics cannot be depicted in terms of Rawls's misleading distinction, or in terms of the priority of the right or the good. At
issue in these debates are different conceptions of the political value of equality. I shall argue (in Sections II and III) that Kymlicka, not
confuses deontology-a claim about the content of

principles of right-with the principles that are invoked in justifying and applying the
content of a moral view. Moreover, he confuses deontology with a related idea, the priority of right. The priority of right
Rawls, is culpable of "serious confusion." He
has received a great deal of attention from Rawls's communitarian critics. This is surprising in view of the fact that Rawls has so little
to say about it in Theory ofJustice.8
Deontology morality maximizes good to its fullest extent while utilitarianism is

indifferent to distribution of good
It is perhaps a moral truism to say that people ought to do what they can to make the
world as good a place as possible. But construed in a certain way, this becomes a highly controversial thesis about
morality: that the right act in any circumstance is one most conducive to the best overall outcome (as ascertained, say, from an
impersonal point of view that gives equal weight to the good of everyone). This is Consequentialism.' More simply, it holds Right
conduct maximizes the Good. G. E. Moore held this thesis self-evident. Non-consequentialists argue nothing could be further from the
So far as they do, it appears (to consequentialists at least) they are committed to the
indefensible idea that morality requires us to do less good than we are able to. John Rawls's
teleological/ deontological distinction is different . Teleo logical views affirm the consequentialist thesis that the
truth.
Right maximizes the Good. But they hold an additional thesis: "the good is defined independently from the right" (TJ, p. 24), or,
as Rawls often says, independ ent of any moral concepts or principles.2 To see how this view differs from consequentialism,
consider a thesis once proposed by T. M. Scanlon. 3
A standard objection to consequentialist views like

utilitarian ism is that they are indifferent to the distribution of the good; this is
purportedly a necessary feature of such views, since they define right and justice as
what maximizes overall, or aggregate, good. Scanlon argued there should be a way to incorporate distributive
concerns into a two-level consequentialist view. If we treat fairness or distributive equality as a good in itself, then it must be
considered along with other goods like net aggregate satisfaction in determining the value of overall outcomes that are to be
maximized. Rights could then be introduced at the level of casuistry, to promote the good of equitable states of affairs. The twolevel consequentialist view Scanlon suggests would not be teleological on Rawls's account; it would be deontological. As Rawls
says: If the distribution of goods is also counted as a good, perhaps a higher-order one, and the theory directs us to produce
the most good (including the good of distribution among others) we no longer have a teleological view in the classical sense. The
problem of distribution falls under the concept of right as one intuitively understands it, and so the theory lacks an independent
definition of the good. (TJ, 27)
Evaluating morality through rights and justice is intrinsically good while

utilitarianism denies humans of their basic rights
Rawls's thought may be this: in order to define the distributions (e.g., equal states of
affairs) that are intrinsically good, and then practically apply this definition to determine what we ought to do, we
must appeal to some process of distribution that can only be described by antecedent principles of right or
justice. But once we do that, then it is no longer the case that the right is exclusively
defined in terms of what maximizes the good. For example, suppose fairness or the equal capacity of persons
to realize their good is among the intrinsic goods in a consequentialist view: we are to act in whatever
ways best promote fairness or equality of capacity for all persons. It is difficult to see
Page 182 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
how such vague ends can be specified for practical purposes without appealing to
principles or procedures defining peoples' equal basic rights, powers, and entitlements.
But once this specification is incorporated into the maximand, the right is no longer
simply a matter of maximizing the good. For the concept of the good itself, in this instance, cannot be described
without an antecedent nonmaximizing moral principle of right: that people ought to be treated fairly,
afforded certain basic rights and powers, and so on. Not only is such a view by Rawls's definition
nonteleological; it is also not consequentialist if by this is meant that to maximize the good is the
sole fundamental principle of right. Incorporating rights or other moral dictates into the
maximand is incompatible with this very idea.4
Deontological morality promotes individualism, protecting humans from
utilitarian obligations to society
Stelzig 98 Masters degree in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago,
obtained J.D. from University of Pennsylvania and is currently an attorney for the FCC
(Tim, Deontology, Governmental Action, and the Distributive Exemption: How the
Trolley Problem Shapes the Relationship between Rights and Policy, University of
Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 146, No. 3, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3312613)
Deontology is the theory of moral obligation, and, by connotation, encompasses moral theories
that emphasize rights and duties. Put another way, deontological theories are those moral theories of a vaguely
Kantian stripe. Kant held that one should "[a]ct in such a way that [one] always treat[s] humanity,
whether in [one's] own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means,
but always at the same time as an end."22 It was not always so. When Jeremy Bentham, one of utilitarianism's
founders, first coined the word in 1814, "deontology" referred to the marshaling of self-interested reasons for agents to act for the
general good. Essentially, this was a utilitarian theory of obligation, and was quite distinct from modern use.
Modern-day
deontologists focus much attention on rights.26 It might be thought that this focus is merely a preference, for
rights are often taken to be correlative with duties. For example, where this relation holds, if I have a right not to be punched, you are
under an obligation not to punch me, and conversely. Thus, deontology may be articulated through either related element. More
generally, in theories holding that rights and duties are correlative, one may give an account of rights and then define duties by
reference to rights; one may define rights in terms of an antecedent theoretic account of duties; or one may give separate theoretic
accounts of rights and duties.27 Rights need not be completely correlative with duties .28 For example,
take the notion of privileges, understood here as a subspecies of rights. The lone occupant of a small and isolated island presumably
possesses a privilege to sing show-tunes at the top of her voice.2 This right, however, has no correlative obligation. It is not just that
the island, being otherwise deserted, has no one in whom the obligation inheres. Rather, it is a structural feature of the example that
no obligation not to interfere can exist. Introducing another person onto the island would destroy the privilege, for it would be
immoral for the singer to subject another person to her showmanship without the other person's consent. Likewise, there may be
obligations for which correlative rights do not exist. For example, one may be under an obligation to write letters to her grandfather
without her grandfather having the right to receive letters written by his granddaughter.30 "Omissions" may also be understood as
obligations for which there are no corresponding rights. If you may easily save somebody from great harm or death without
substantial risk to yourself, a moral obligation exists to so help them.3l Most people, however, do not think that the victim has a right
whether or not one takes rights to be

correlative with duties has implications for other aspects of moral theory. For the purposes of this
to your efforts.32 Although more could be said, my point is that
Comment, there is no need to trace the contours of deontology with precision. Thus, although it is a simplification, this Comment will
we may appeal to rights as a way of

protecting ourselves against the demands of society. The next Part examines the nature of rights more
focus only on rights. The ultimate goal, again, is to discover when
closely.
Humans should morally have a right to themselves and the right to their
property the government is immoral to deny property rights regardless of
their utilitarian intentions
Stelzig 98 Masters degree in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago,
obtained J.D. from University of Pennsylvania and is currently an attorney for the FCC
Page 183 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
(Tim, Deontology, Governmental Action, and the Distributive Exemption: How the
Trolley Problem Shapes the Relationship between Rights and Policy, University of
Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 146, No. 3, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3312613)
Rights, for Dworkin, are understood functionally through their distributional character, and are distinguished from goals.40 Take first
the distributional character of collective goals. These goals seek to achieve some particular, even if vaguely defined, distribution
within the society.4' For example, Dworkin notes that economic efficiency is within a collective goal. Importantly, with respect to
collective goals, "distributional principles are subordinate to some conception of aggregate collective good, so that offering less of
some benefit to one [person] can be justified simply by showing that this will lead to a greater benefit overall."43 Hence, the
Rights, however, have a different

distributional character. As Dworkin states: "If someone has a right to something, then it is
wrong for the government to deny it to him even though it would be in the general
interest to do so."44 Put another way, the right is prior to the good. Thus, for Dworkin, "individual rights are
collective goals of a community are appropriate fodder for consequentialist reasoning.
political trumps held by individuals.
Page 184 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****MORALITY GOOD / BAD*****

**Morality Good: Obligations, Moral Laws, etc**
Moral justice vital sets us apart from animalistic tendencies
Project MUSE.
Reasonableness, or the capacity for a sense of justice, is the ability to limit the pursuit of ones conception
of the good out of a respect for the rights and interests of other people and out of a desire to cooperate
with them on fair terms. A person who acts reasonably acts according to a principle of reciprocity: he seeks
to give justice to those who can give justice in return (p. 447). The tight connection between
reasonableness and autonomy is explained by Rawls in sec. 86 of Theory: the sense of justice . . . reveals
what the person is, and to compromise it is not to achieve for the self free reign but to give way to the
contingencies and accidents of the world (p. 503). When we act reasonably, says Rawls, we demonstrate
an ability to subordinate the pursuit of our own good, which may be unduly influenced by the
contingencies and accidents of the world, to those principles we would choose as members of the
intelligible realmour reasonableness, in other words, is emblematic of our autonomy, our independence
from natural and social contingencies. This explains our sense of shame when we fail to act
reasonably: we behave then as if we were members of a lower order of animal , whose actions
are determined by the laws of nature rather than the moral law (p. 225).
Moral law outweighs other considerations integral to human nature.

Project MUSE.
The Priority of Right over the Good and the Priority of Justice over Welfare and Efficiency are both
expressions of our nature as reasonable beings, i.e., beings able to act in conformity with, and out of
respect for, the moral law. In Kants terms, to sacrifice justice for the sake of welfare or excellence of
character would be to sacrifice what is of absolute value (the good will) for what is of merely relative value
(its complements). Rawls himself makes the same strong connection between reasonableness and these
two kinds of priority: But the desire to express our nature as a free and equal rational being can be fulfilled
only by acting on the principles of right and justice as having first priority. . . . Therefore in order to realize
our nature we have no alternative but to plan to preserve our sense of justice as governing our other aims.
This sentiment cannot be fulfilled if it is compromised and balanced against other ends as but one desire
among the rest (TJ, p. 503, emphasis added). Just as reasonableness is a key facet of our autonomy, so the
priorities of right and justice are expressions of our reasonableness: we best indicate our commitment to
guide our actions by the principles of justice by refusing to compromise those principles for the sake of our
other ends.
Moral rationality key to sustainable decisionmaking avoids animalistic

tendencies.
Project MUSE.
Rationality is our capacity for a conception of the good, which we pursue through a plan of life. We
schedule, prioritize, temper, and prune our desires in accordance with this plan; rather than living from
impulse to impulse, as other animals do, we arrange the pursuit of our interests and ends according to a
Page 185 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
coherent scheme (secs. 6364). Now, given what was said in the previous subsection, one may find it
difficult to see the connection between rationality, so defined, and autonomy: if our desires are largely the
product of natural and social contingencies, then how can acting in accordance with a plan to advance
them be an aspect of our autonomy? In other words, if rationality is merely the slave of the passions, 11
and these passions are the result of such contingencies, then how can rationality possibly express our
nature as free and equal beings? According to Rawls, however, rationality is much more than a slave of
the passions. The exercise of rationality involves a clear distancing from ones immediate desires, as
Rawls indicates in the following passage: The aim of deliberation is to find that plan which best organizes
our activities and influences the formation of our subsequent wants so that our aims and interests can be
fruitfully combined into one scheme of conduct . Desires that tend to interfere with other ends, or
which undermine the capacity for other activities, are weeded out; whereas those that are
enjoyable in themselves and support other aims as well are encouraged. 12 The image of rationality here is
active, not passive. Rather than being haplessly driven on by the dominant desires, rationality exercises
authority over them: rationality elevates some desires and lays low others; it integrates retained desires
into one scheme of conduct; and it even shapes the development of future desires. Far from being a
slave of desire, rationality is its master. This conception of rationality is consistent with at least one reading
of Kants idea of practical reason as applied to the pursuit of happiness: H. J. Paton notes that prudential
reasoning in Kants moral theory involves a choice of ends as well as means and a subsequent
maximum integration of ends.13
Utilitarianism fails to take into account prima facie rights moral resolution of
conflicts necessary.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy. 1986.
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. Pg 133.
The theory of prima facie human rights that is outlined here is one in terms of prima facie rights, many
of which are rights of recipience, in which the rights create obligations and claims that collide with one
another and with the moral demands created by other values. Many of these conflicts are to be resolved
without reference, or with only negative reference, to consequences. When the consequences do enter
seriously into the resolution of the conflicts, the solution arrived at is often very different from that which
would be dictated by utilitarian con siderations. The points made in the preceding section may be
illustrated by reference to conflicts of prima facie human rights such as the right to life, viewed as a right
of recipience, the right to moral autonomy and integrity- and values such as pleasure and happiness, and
the absence of pain and suffering. A consideration of the morally rightful resolution of such conflicts brings
out the inadequacy of the utilitarian calculus as a basis for determining the morally right response to such
situations and conflicts.
Failure to satisfy moral obligations leads to violent backlash.

Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press.
Pgs 188-189.
How can we absorb this idea into the conceptual scheme developed so far? Morality, as I have described it,
is a feature of agents - their motives, dispositions to fed guilt - and of the attitudes of the generality of
other persons toward agents - approval or disapproval of them. In my account nothing has been said about
the patients, the targets of the behavior of agents. I now suggest that we should extend our description of
moral codes, to include something about patients. First. patients may have a disposition to resent
infringements of the rules we have been talking about when these impinge on them, when they are the
parties injured. or deprived. or threatened. Of course, people tend to resent any deliberate injury . so this
reaction is not specific to rules of rights.10 Second, persons who resent it when they are injured or
deprived in one of these ways or even when they are threatened because of the nonexistence of
institutions able to protect them, may also be inclined not to feel ashamed or embarrassed to protest on
their own behalf. This feature need not occur, and in societies in which individuals have felt it is their place
to be downtrodden, ill-treated, and so on, it was not the case. Of course there are several levels of this.
The first is expression of resentment to the injuring party. A second level is public protest, or joining in a
public protest, calling attention to the situation and inviting sympathy and support, particularly for the
institution of legal devices for prevention of what has occurred or redress or punishment when it already
has occurred. A third level is that of passive disobedience, lack of cooperation, perhaps nonviolent
Page 186 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
economic pressure that causes inconvenience or discomfort on behalf of a cause. Finally there is violent
action, willingness to cause personal or property damage, in order to bring about a change in those
who are infringing moral obligations or to bring about legal institutions to prevent or punish such
infringements. Presumably the level of protest will normally correlate with the strength of the obligation
being infringed and the seriousness of the damage or threat. The practice of company stores might elicit
one level of protest, the practice of lynch law on members of a racial minority quite another.
Page 187 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Morality Bad**
Ethics is structurally flawed, in that it implies a transgression
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of
Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of
the Real, p. 95-96)
This is why we propose to maintain the concept of the act developed by Kant, and to link
it to the thematic of overstepping of boundaries, of transgression, to the question of
evil. It is a matter of acknowledging the fact that any (ethical) act precisely in so far as it
is an act, is necessarily evil. We must specify, however, what is meant here by evil.
This is the evil that belongs to the very structure of the act, to the fact that the latter
always implies a transgression, a change in what is. It is not a matter of some
empirical evil, it is the very logic of the act which is denounced as radically evil in
every ideology. The fundamental ideological gesture consists in providing an image for
this structural evil. The gap opened by an act (i.e. the unfamiliar, out-of-place effect
of an act) is immediately linked in this ideological gesture to an image. As a rule this is
an image of suffering, which is then displayed to the public alongside this question: Is
this what you want? And this question already implies the answer: It would be
impossible, inhuman, for you to want this! Here we have to insist on theoretical rigour,
and separate this (usually fascinating) image exhibited by ideology from the source of
uneasiness from the evil which is not an undesired, secondary effect of the good
but belongs, on the contrary, to its essence. We could even say that the ethical ideology
struggles against evil because this ideology is hostile to the good, to the logic of the
act as such. We could go even further here: the current saturation of the social field by
ethical dilemmas (bioethics, environmental ethics, cultural ethics, medical ethics) is
strictly correlative to the repression of ethics, that is, to an incapacity to think ethics in
its dimension of the Real, an incapacity to conceive of ethics other than simply as a set
of restrictions to yet another aspect of modern society: to the depression which seems
to have became the social illness of our time and to set the tone of the resigned
attitude of the (post)modern man of the end of history. In relation to this, it would be
interesting to reaffirm Lacans thesis according to which depression isnt a state of the
soul, it is simply a moral failing, as Dante, and even Spinoza, said: a sin, which means a
moral weakness. It is against this moral weakness or cowardice [ lachete morale] that
we must affirm the ethical dimension proper.
The ideology of good and evil is inherently flawed
Sciences, 00
the Real, p. 90-91)
The first difficulty with this concept of diabolical evil lies in its very definition: that
diabolical evil would occur if we elevated opposition to the moral law to the level of a
maxim (a principle or law). What is wrong with this definition? Given the Kantian
concept of the moral law which is not a law that says do this or do that, but an
enigmatic law which only commands us to do our duty, without ever naming it the
following objection arises: if the opposition to the moral law were elevated to a maxim or
principle, it would no longer be an opposition to the moral law, it would be the moral law
itself. At this level no opposition is possible. It is not possible to oppose oneself to the
moral law at the level of the (moral) law. Nothing can oppose itself to the moral law on
Page 188 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
principle that is, for non-pathological reasons without itself becoming a moral law. To
act without allowing pathological incentives to influence our actions is to do good. In
relation to this definition of the good, (diabolical) evil would then have to be defined as
follows: it is evil to oppose oneself, without allowing pathological incentives to influence
ones actions, to actions which do not allow any pathological incentives to influence
ones actions. And this is simply absurd.
The real drive behind ethics is desire, not the will to do good
Sciences, 00
the Real, p. 3-4)
Kants second break with the tradition, related to the first, was his rejection of the view that
ethics is concerned with the distribution of the good (the service of goods in Lacans terms).
Kant rejected an ethics based on my wanting what is good for others, provided of course that their good
reflects my own.
It is true that Lacans position concerning the status of the ethics of desire continued to develop. Hence
his position in Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis) differs on several points
from the one he adopted in Seminar VII (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis). That the moral law, looked at
more closely, is simply desire in its pure state is a judgment which, had it been pronounced in
Seminar VII, would have had the value of a compliment; clearly this is no longer the case when it is
pronounced in Seminar XI. Yet even though the later Lacan claims that the analysts desire is not a pure
desire, this does not mean that the analysts desire is pathological (in the Kantian sense of the word), nor
that the question of desire has lost its pertinence. To put the matter simply, the question of desire does
not so much lose its central place as cease to be considered the endpoint of analysis. In the later view
analysis ends in another dimension, that of the drive. Hence as the concluding remarks of
Seminar XI have it before this dimension opens up to the subject, he must first reach and then traverse
the limit within which, as desire, he is bound.
Morality is a demand for the impossible as it is based on our desires

Sciences, 00
the Real, p. 3)
Kant is admired by Lacan above all for his break, at two crucial points, with traditional ethics.
The first is his break with the morality that spelled out obligations in terms of the
possibility of fulfilling them. According to Lacan, the crucial point here is that morality as such, as
Kant well knew, is a demand for the impossible : the impossibility in which we recognize the topology
of our desire. By insisting on the fact that the moral imperative is not concerned with what
might or might not be done, Kant discovered the essential dimension of ethics: the
dimension of desire, which circles around the real qua impossible. This dimension was excluded from
the purview of traditional ethics, and could therefore appear to it only as an excess. So Kants crucial first
step involves taking the very thing excluded from the traditional field of ethics, and turning it into the
only legitimate territory for ethics. If critics often criticize Kant for demanding the impossible, Lacan
attributes an incontestable theoretical value to this Kantian demand.
Ethics is merely a tool by which personal morals are imposed on others, which
is the root of discontent in society
Sciences, 00
Page 189 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the Real, p. 1)
The Freudian blow to philosophical ethics can be summarized as follows: what philosophy calls the
moral law and, more precisely, what Kant calls the categorical imperative is in fact nothing other
than the superego. This judgment provokes an effect of disenchantment that calls into question any
attempt to base ethics on foundations other than the pathological. At the same time, it places ethics
at the core of what Freud called das Unbehagen in der Kultur. the discontent or malaise at the
heart of civilization. In so far as it has its origins in the constitution of the superego, ethics becomes
nothing more than a convenient tool for any ideology which may try to pass off its own
commandments as the truly authentic, spontaneous and honourable inclinations of the
subject. This thesis, according to which the moral law is nothing but the superego, calls, of course, for
careful examination, which I shall undertake in Chapter 7 below.
It is impossible to determine whether an action is truly ethical or not

Sciences, 00
the Real, p. 16-17)
By spelling things out in this way we can see clearly that the ethical is, in fact, essentially a supplement.
Let us, then, begin with the first level (the legal). The content of action (its matter), as well as
the form this content, are exhausted in the notion of in conformity with duty. As long
as I do my duty nothing remains to be said. The fact that the act that fulfils my duty
may have been done exclusively for the sake of this duty would change nothing at level
of analysis. Such an act would be entirely indistinguishable from an act done simply in
accord with duty, since their results would be exactly the same. The significance of acting
(exclusively) for the sake of duty will be visible only on the second level analysis, which we will simply call
the level form. Here we come across a form which is no longer the form of anything, of some content of
other, yet it is not so much an empty form as form outside content, a form that provides form only for
itself. In other words, we confronted here with a supply which at the same time seems to be pure waste,
something that serves absolutely no purpose.
Ethics in terms of attempts to do something good only re-entrenches the

presence of the omnipresent evil
Sciences, 00
the Real, p. 86)
The theme of radical evil is currently something of a hot topic, and Kant, as a theoretician of radical evil,
is subject to very diverse and sometimes contradictory readings. In his book, LEthique Alain Badiou
points out that the topic of radical evil has become a spectre raised by ethical
ideologists every time a will to do something (good) appears. Every positive project is
capable of being undermined in advance on the grounds that it might bring about an
even greater evil. Ethics would thus be reduced to only one function: preventing evil, or
at least lessening it. It seems that such an ethics of the lesser evil is justified in its reference to Kant.
The criticism of Kant according to which he defined the criteria of the (ethical) act in such a way that one
can never satisfy them goes as far back as Hegel . From this point it follows that all our actions
are necessarily bad, and that one can remain pure only if one chooses not to act at all.
In this perspective, good does not exist, whereas evil is omnipresent.
Page 190 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
People already realize they have a moral obligation but dont actually follow
them or treat them as anything but another obligation
Leiter
1997
(Brian, Professor at the University of Chicago, Princeton University; JD, 1987, PhD (philosophy Nietzsche
and the Morality Critics, Chicago Journals) MF
Morality's purportedly threatening notion of "obligation," for ex-ample, is constructed by Williams entirely from the works of Kant and
Ross, with no gesture at showing what relation their philosophically refined notions of "obligation" bear to those in play in ordinary
people treat "moral obligations] [as]

inescapable" (ELP, p. 177) and that they accept the idea that "only an
obligation can beat an obligation" (ELP, p. 180)? Surely the evidence is not in the
way people actually live, in the way they actually honor-or, more often, breachtheir moral obligations, a point Nietzsche well understood.'7 What is the
evidence that, in our relativistic culture, individuals think that "moral
obligation applies to people even if they do not want it to" (ELP, p. 178)? Even Williams, in
life. Yet where is the evidence, one might ask, that real
leading up to the specter of morality dominating life, says that "the thought can gain a footing (I am not saying that it has to) that I
could be better employed than in doing something I am under no [moral] obligation to do, and, if I could be, then I ought to be" (ELP,
p. 181, emphasis added). But surely this "thought" might only gain a footing for Kant or Ross, or some other philosopher who followed
It is a pure philosopher's fantasy to think that

real people in the moral culture at large find themselves overwhelmed by this
burdensome sense of moral obligation. Like the other Morality Critics, Williams writes as though he is
out to its logical conclusion a deontological theory.
attacking "morality," when what he is really attacking is "morality" as conceived, systematized, and refined by philosophers. Such a
critique may be a worthy endeavor, but it is far different from worrying about the "dangers" of ordinary morality as understoodunsystematically and inchoately-by ordinary people. What, then, distinguishes a Morality Critic from a Theory Critic if both are
ultimately talking about moral theory? Roughly, the idea is this: for the former, there is always room, in principle, for a better theory
Theory (in the technical sense) is the heart of the

problem, not part of the solution. These points are well illustrated in Stocker's well-known paper "The
Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories."'8 Stocker argues that "if we ... embody in our motives, those
various things which recent ethical theories hold to be ultimately good or
right, we will, of necessity, be unable to have those motives" (p. 461) and thus be
unable to realize the associated goods (e.g., friendship, love, pleasure). Stocker claims, however, that a
to thwart the criticsm, while for the latter,
suitable ethical theory must be one in which reasons and motives can be brought into harmony, such that one can be moved to act
by what the theory identifies as "good" or "right." Stocker's point isn't, then, that theorizing in ethics is a misguided enterprise; it's
just that we need better theories, ones in which theoretical reasons can also serve as motives for action. Like a Morality Critic, Stocker
holds that adherence to morality as it is (read: moral theory as it is) is incom-patible with having the motives requisite for certain
personal goods ("love, friendship, affection, fellow feeling, and community," p. 461); unlike a Theory Critic, he allows, or at least
implies, that a better (i.e., nonschizophrenic) theory could solve the problem.'9
Ethics fails to take into account human nature and therefore does not allow
the individual to embrace oneself. Instead, it forces a model that is not
grounded in humanity and actually alienates human life
Daiger 2006
(Christine, Associate Professor President, NASS Chair, Equity Committee, CPA Member of the Team CPA B.A. Concordia, M.A.
Universit de Montral, Doctoral studies Brock University, Nietzsche: Virtue Ethics.. Virtue Politics,Project Muse) MF
Nietzsche does indeed

share the critical program of virtue ethicists. His attacks against the
traditional view of morality and the nihilism he proposes make clear that, for
him, traditional morality is alienating to any human life. In The Gay Science he says: In the
In this section, I will delineate Nietzsches own brand of virtue ethics. It should be clear that
main all those moral systems are distasteful to me which say: Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome thyself!On the other hand I am
favorable to those moral systems which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning till evening, to dream of it at
night, and think of nothing else but to do it well, as well as is possible for me alone! [. . .] I do not like any of the negative virtues
he talks about a sin of

morality: The most general formula at the basis of every religion and morality
is: Do this and thisand you will be happy! Otherwise. . . . Every morality,
whose very essence is negation and self-renunciation (304). Elsewhere, in Twilight of the Idols,
Page 191 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
every religion is this imperativeI call it the great original sin of reason,
immortal unreason (Errors 2). Nietzsches view of traditional morality can be found throughout his writings; however,
I think these quotations are satisfactory for our purpose. These two clarify the spirit with which Nietzsche approaches morality. The
problem with traditional morality is that it does not take into consideration
human nature. It does not look at the individual as he is and aim to embrace
what he is but, rather, aims to impose a model on him that has no ground in
the reality of the human. This model is of a transcendent nature and does not
fit the immanent nature of the human being.
Philosophers provided ethics as a rational foundation for thought and moral
responsibility but never really quested or compared them, only when
questioned can they actually be considered
Walter Kaufmann 1980
From Shakespeare to Existentialism http://taimur.sarangi.info/text/kaufmann_nietzsche.htm
One should own up in all strictness what is still necessary here for a long time to come, what alone is justified so far:
to collect material, to conceptualize and arrange a vast realm of subtle feelings of value and differences of value which
are alive, grow, beget, and perish - and perhaps attempts to present vividly some of the more frequent and recur ring
forms of such living crystallizations - all to prepare a typology of morals. To be sure: so far one has not been so modest.
With a stiff seriousness that inspires laughter, all our philosophers demanded something far
more exalted, presumptuous, and solemn from themselves as soon as they

approached the study of morality: they wanted to supply a rational foundation
for morals; and every philosopher so far has believed that he has provided
such a foundation. Morality itself, however, was accepted as "given." How
remote from their coarse pride was that task which they considered
insignificant and left in dust and dirt - the task of description, although the subtlest fingers and
senses can scarcely be subtle enough for it. Because our moral philosophers knew the facts
of morality only very approximately in arbitrary ex tracts or in accidental
epitomes - for example, as the morality of their environment, their class, their church, their time, their climate
and part of the world - because they were poorly informed and not even very curious about different peoples, ages,
and the past, they never laid eyes on the real problems of morality; for these emerge only when we
compare many moralities. In all previous studies of morality one thing was
lacking, strange as that may sound: the prob lem of morality itself; what was lacking
was the suspicion that there was anything at all problematic here. What the philosophers called "a rational foundation
for morality" and tried to supply was, properly considered, only a scholarly variation of a common faith in the prevalent
morality; a new means of expression of this faith; in short, itself simply another feature of, or rather another fact
within, a particular morality; indeed, in the last analysis, a kind of denial that this morality might ever be considered
problematic certainly the very opposite of an examination, analysis, questioning, and vivisection of this very faith.
Ethics is a faade, a back bone by which western philosophers could bounce

contrived ideas, ethics as a whole must be questioned to critique the culture
that creates it instead of the inconsequential rationalizations
Nietzsche revolutionized ethics by asking new questions. As he saw it, his predecessors had simply taken for granted
that they knew what was good and what was evil. Moral judgments had been accepted as incontrovertible facts, and
the philosophers had considered it their task to find reasons for them. In other words, traditional moral
philosophers made it their business to rationalize the moral idiosyncrasies of

their environment. What F. H. Bradley was to say of metaphysics in his Preface to Appearance and Reality
(1891) is what Nietzsche said in effect of traditional ethics: it is "the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on
instinct.'" But Nietzsche would not have added like Bradley that "to find these reasons is no less an instinct.'" Nor,
indeed, did he consider moral idiosyncrasies instinctive in any literal sense. Far from construing them as part of our
Page 192 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
biological make-up, Nietzsche was struck by the great variety of moral views in different times and places.To cite
Nietzsche's Zarathustra ("On Old and New Tablets," 2): "When I came to men I found them
sitting on an old conceit: the conceit that they have long known what is good
and evil for man. All talk of virtue seemed an old and weary matter to man;
and whoever wanted to sleep well still talked of good and evil before going to
sleep." With Nietzsche, our common moral valuations are suddenly considered
questionable, and ethics, instead of being a matter of inconsequen tial
rationalizations, becomes a critique of culture, a vivisection of modem man.
Morality is complex Blanket claims that we need to save people in poverty
prevent us from making rational choices
Stubbs, 81
(Anne, @ the U of Combridge, "The Pros and Cons of Consequentialism," Oct, Philosophy, Vol. 56, No. 218
(Oct., 1981), pp. 497-516, jstor, AD: 6/30/09) jl
There is a common criticism of absolutism which, if sound, could be taken to demonstrate its irrationality. It
is that the absolutist refuses to consider the details of particular cases and insists instead on the automatic
application of a blanket rule; he thus fails, it is said, to 'take each case on its merits'. Now there may be
absolutist positions which are vulnerable to this kind of objection; for example, the position that one is
never justified in taking a human life, whatever the circumstances. Someone might reasonably object that
there are moral distinctions to be made over which this view simply rides rough-shod. Someone may kill a
fellow human being in many different circumstances and for many different reasons; for personal gain of
some kind; to put a loved one out of his misery; in self-defence; in just war or revolution; as retribution;
and so on. Surely it would be irrational, if not absurd, to insist on making the same moral judgment about
all these cases. However, even if this is correct, it is a count against only some absolutist positions, not
against all. It is commonly assumed that the absolutist must operate with some highly general,
exceptionless rules; but this is not an accurate picture of the kind of absolutism of which I have been
speaking throughout this paper. I have spoken, not so much of moral rules, but of specific moral notions,
concepts, or categories-murder, courage, cowardice, honesty, loyalty, etc.; and I have maintained that
these operate as fundamental in moral assessment, in the sense that their applicability to a particular
action will often be morally decisive, and, for some of them, will always be so.14 Let us consider the
example of murder, which is a notion the applicability of which to an action is always morally decisive. My
absolutist claims, not that killing can never be justified, but that murder can never be justified; and he will
not classify all cases of killing as cases of murder. Thus it is simply not true that he does not have to
investigate the details of a particular case; indeed it is only through such an investigation that he can be in
a position to decide whether or not the action in question is properly classifiable as 'murder'. Further-more,
he will take into account many features of the situation not con-sidered relevant by the consequentialist,
for example, the agent's motive for the killing. Indeed, it could be maintained that the consequentialist's
claim to consider each case 'on its merits' is vitiated by his extremely restricted conception of where these
merits must lie. I maintain that it is he, with his exclusive concentration upon consequences, who abstracts
from morally relevant features of particular cases. Again, this is a point to which I will return. Thus, if
readiness to pay attention to the details of individual cases be a test of rationality, my absolutist passes it
with his colours flying rather more conspicuously than those of the supporters of consequentialism; they,
after all, have theformula.
Page 193 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Ethical Action & Legality Mutually Exclusive**

Ethical action cant be based on the legal and illegal
Sciences, 00
the Real, p. 12)
We might say that the ethical dimension of an action is supernumerary to the

conceptual pair legal/illegal. This in turn suggests a structural connection with the
Lacanian notion of the Real. As Alain Badiou has noticed, Lacan conceives of the Real in
a way that removes it from the logic of the apparently mutually exclusive alternatives of
the knowable and the unknowable. The unknowable is just a type of the knowable; it is
the limit or degenerate case of the knowable; where the Real belongs to another register
entirely. Analogously, for Kant the illegal still falls within the category of legality they
both belong to the same register, that of things conforming or failing to conform with
duty. Ethics to continue the analogy escapes this register. Even though an ethical act
will conform with duty, this by itself is not and cannot be what makes it ethical. So the
ethical cannot be situated within the framework of the law and violations of the law.
Again, in relation to legality, the ethical always presents a surplus or excess.
Ethical action and legality cannot be related
Sciences, 00
the Real, p. 14-16)
But then, what exactly is at stake, what is this pure form? First of all, it is clear that the form in question
cannot be the form of the matter, simply because Kant situates the legal and the ethical in two different
registers. Hence matter and form, the legal and the ethical, are not two different aspects of one and the
same thing. Despite this, several commentators have suggested the following solution to the Kantian
problem of form: every form has a content associated with it; we are always and only dealing with
a form and a content. So, in this view, if we are to decide whether an act is ethical or
not, we simply have to know which in fact determines our will: if it is the form, our
actions are pathological; if it is the form, they are ethical. This indeed, would rightly be called
formalism but it not what Kant is aiming at this his use of the concept of pure form. First of all we should
immediately note that the label formalism is more appropriate for what Kant calls legality. In terms of
legality, all that matters is whether or not an action conform with duty the content of such an
action, the real motivated for this conformity, is ignored; it simply does not matter. But the
ethical, unlike the legal, does in fact present a certain claim concerning the content of
the will. Ethics demands not only that an action conform with duty, but also that this
conformity be the only content or motive of that action. Thus Kants emphasis on form is in
an attempt to disclose a possible drive for ethical action. Kant is saying that form has to come to occupy
the position formerly occupied by matter, that form itself has to function as a drive. Form itself must be
appropriated as a material surplus, in order for it to be capable of the will. Kants point, I repeat, is not
that all traces materiality have to be purged from the determining ground of the moral will but, rather, that
the form of the moral law has itself become material, in order for it to function as a motive force of action.
As result of this we can see that there are actually two different problems to be resolved, mysteries to be
cleared up, concerning the possibility of a pure ethical act. The first is the one we commonly associate
with Kantian ethics. How is it possible to reduce or eliminate all the pathological motives or incentives of
our actions? How can a subject disregard all self-interest, ignore the pleasure principle,
all concerns with her own well-being and the well-being of those close to her? What kind of
a monstrous, inhuman subject does Kantian ethics presuppose? This line of questioning is related to the
issue of the infinite purification of the subjects will, with its logic of no matter how far you have come
Page 194 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
one more effort will always be required. The second question that must be dealt with concerns what we
might call the ethical transubstantiation required by Kants view: the question of the possibility of
converting a mere form into a materially efficacious drive. This second question is, in my view, the more
pressing of the two, because answering it would automatically provide an answer to the first question as
well. So how can something which is not in itself pathological (i.e. which has nothing to do
with the representation of pleasure or pain, the usual mode of subjects casuality) nevertheless become
the cause or drive of a subjects actions? The question here is no longer that of a
purification of motives and incentives. It is much more radical : how can form become
matter, how can something which, in the subjects universe, does not qualify as a cause, suddenly
become a cause? This is the real miracle involved in ethics. The crucial question of Kantian ethics is thus
not how can we eliminate all the pathological elements of will, so that only the pure form of duty
remains? but rather, how can the pure form of duty itself function as a pathological element ,
that is, as an element capable of assuming the role of the driving force or incentive of our
actions?. If the latter were actually to take place if the pure form of duty were actually to operate as
a motive (incentive or drive) for the subject we would no longer need to worry about the problems of the
purification of the will and the elimination of all pathological motives. This, however, seems to
suggest that for such a subject, ethics simply becomes second nature , and thus ceases to
be ethics altogether. If acting ethically is a matter of drive, if it is as effortless as that, if neither sacrifice,
suffering, nor renunciation is required, then it also seems utterly lacking in merit and devoid of virtue.
This, in fact, was Kants contention: he called such a condition the holiness of the will, which he also
thought was an unattainable ideal for human agent. It could equally be identified with utter banality the
banality of the radical good to paraphrase Hannah Arendts famous expression. Nevertheless and it is
one of the fundamental aims of this study to show this this analysis moves too quickly, and therefore
leaves something out. Our theoretical premiss here is that it will actually be possible to found an ethics on
the concept of the drive, without this ethics collapsing into either the holiness or banality of human
actions.
Page 195 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**State Ethics Bad**
A Government that drops political obligation in order to obtain correct moral

or ethical responsibility has the ability to totalize into a destructive
regime that strips human dignity (turn)
Diprose 08
(Philosophy Social Criticism 2008; 34; 617 Rosalyn Diprose, Arendt and Nietzsche on responsibility and futurity
http://psc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/6/617)
The final point I want to highlight about Arendts account of responsibility is this: she asks the burning question, what
provides the criterion of judgment if not moral norms one has inherited or explicit laws that may have been reversed by those who
govern the public sphere? On the basis of the idea that judgment is a reflective self-relation in the form of a dialogue with oneself,
Arendt argues that the criterion that limits what one permits oneself to do is set by what would allow one to live at peace with
oneself (SQMP 108). Following Socrates, conscience, she argues, is governed by the desire to avoid self-contradiction or, following
Kant, the desire to avoid self-contempt.13 Put simply it is better to suffer wrong than do wrong (a dictum that she claims, while
originating with Socrates, underlies all moral philosophy) because you could not, logically and with dignity, live with that other part of
yourself that you would kill or make suffer. As a lover of contradiction Nietzsche would not hold to this idea that making peace with
oneself either inspires or provides the criteria for conscience. While I think he is right about that, I am not convinced that he succeeds
in coming up with appropriate alternative criteria. That is what I will attempt to do.
What is radical about
Nietzsches
approach to responsibility,
and what will be my focus in the next section, is that he locates the condition of
conscience, normativity and responsibility, not first of all in reflective thinking or judgment, but in responsiveness based on what I will
what opens that gap between past and future is the

constitution of a corporeal and affective self-relation that manifests as a
futural ability to respond to circumstances with conscience and in excess of
existing law and custom. This is an important intervention into the meaning of
being-responsible, for several reasons. First, it moves the debate about
responsibility beyond the impasse between freedom and determinism by
proposing that the relation between the self and the juridico-moral code is
constitutive (and therefore habitual), but, as with Arendt, it must also be
excessive, self-critical and potentially transformative of norms. Second, in a departure
from Arendt, Nietzsches idea that this constitutive and transformative relation
involves feeling, or the channeling of affect into action and thought , is crucial I think
for explaining how political ideals of national identity that effect a reversal of
moral norms in the public realm can have such a rapid and potentially
destructive impact on a population. Third, in placing the highest value in the uniqueness and opacity of this
call somatic reflexivity. For him,
somatic reflexivity, rather than in, say, life itself14 or human dignity based on autonomous practical reason, Nietzsche revises the
very basis of normativity in ethics and politics: this somatic reflexivity is that through and for which we are, most fundamentally,
responsible whatever the other characteristics (sex, race, religion, age) that corporeality may signify. This responsiveness and, hence,
responsibility, as Emmanuel Levinas later puts it, is what first enables one to catch sight of and conceive of value.15 Fourth,
Nietzsches emphasis on the temporal dimension of somatic reflexivity reveals what is most at stake in a crisis of morality in politics.
It is the body open to an undetermined future that is a condition of agency, normativity and responsibility and it is this futural
inclination or futurity of the body that is most at risk in such a crisis. Where Arendt improves on Nietzsche is through implying another
criteria of judgment besides the criterion she highlights, the supposed desire to avoid self-contradiction. This other criterion of
judgment that would limit what we can do in good conscience is implied in her work on political community where it becomes
apparent that we are not only responsible through our own futurity, we are also responsible for maintaining the world for the
disclosure of the who and hence the futurity of others. And this is where morality meets politics. The political concern is not whether
the act of striking somebody unjustly or being struck is more disgraceful. The concern is exclusively with having a world in which such
morality, understood as fixed principles for guiding

action that vary between individuals and groups, along with individual thought
itself, have no place in politics, as politics is concerned with collective dialogue
and action and the maintenance of law regarded as essential to the integrity
of our common humanity (PRD 22). While one may concede that compromise lies at the heart of the political, there
acts do not occur. (SQMP 93)
Ordinarily,
is a conceptual difficulty with the way Arendt always insists that thinking is individual, is distinct from and runs counter to the
collective speech and action that characterizes the political.16 This is why she describes the moral I have been discussing as a
borderline phenomenon: moral judgment is only relevant to politics in times of crisis, that is, when customary moral standards,
which would ordinarily guide action without thinking, have been suspended or reversed in the public realm (SQMP 1045). It is also
why she needs to posit judgment of particulars, experienced as conscience, as the bridge and arbiter between thinking and morality,
on the one hand, and politics and law on the other.
Morality and law intersect, for example, insofar

Page 196 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
as they deal with persons rather than institutions and systems (SQMP 57) and
they presuppose the same power of judgment of what is right and wrong (PRD
22). I suggest that morality is a borderline political issue also in the sense that
when political initiatives of government precipitate a conflict then dampening
of conscience within a citizenry what this exposes is that these initiatives have
undermined, not just customary moral standards, but with that the basis of
normativity that both liberal democratic politics and morality would ordinarily
share, whatever particular moral values one holds. Taking into account the corporeal and affective
basis of conscience, I will argue that the basis of normativity in both politics and
morality in a secular democracy is not only the preservation of human dignity
understood as the capacity for judgment in Arendts sense but, more fundamentally, and as a precondition of judgment, maintenance
of the collective exposure to each other of the uniqueness of the futurity of bodies. Government that puts this in jeopardy, by
abandoning political responsibility for maintaining the conditions for this, is no longer anonymous in the Foucauldian sense it has
separated itself from the collectivity of the polis that it would then totalize .
Ethico-politics gives governments the logocentric nature that leads to the

worst atrocities in humanity such as the Holocaust (turn)
Sharpe 02
(Department of Philosophy and Ashworth Center for Social Theory, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, PHILOSOPHY &
SOCIAL CRITICISM vol 28 no 2 pp. 173189)
I hope that this necessarily overbrief argument has served to lay down the coordinates for a thinking together of Camus and Derrida.
For both authors, the possibility of an identity wholly insulated from [the] Other[s] is debarred to us as finite. Indeed, a further parallel
between their works consists in how both consider the lure of this possibility profoundly dangerous. In The Rebel,
Camus
argued that the crimes of the Holocaust (like those of the Gulag) represented
not outbreaks of chaos within the enlightened world, but the products of an
inhumanity ever close to the enlightenments elevation of reason. What a clean up!
Clamence likewise remarks of the Nazis spacing . . . out of the Jewish quarters of Amsterdam, where
(significantly) Camus has him residing in The Fall: Seventy-five thousand Jews deported or
assassinated; thats real vacuum cleaning. I admire that diligence, that
methodical patience! When one has no character one has to apply a method
(1963: 10). Havent you noticed that our society is organized for this kind of
liquidation? (ibid.: 8).Derridas comparative Zeitdiagnose, defended in such pieces as The Principle of Reason (1983), is
more widely known. Indeed, what I will argue gives deconstruction its prophetic tone is how Derrida like Camus always argues that
There is always a danger, Derrida argues,

of a politics of the archive that deconstruction resists and decries (cf. Caputo,
1997:265). It is an ethic-politics that gives body to the logo centric desire which
he has always argued organizes even the most apparently extra philosophical
praxes and institutions. It has the form of the claim that we are the . . .
uniquely chosen archive of the Truth, Caputo writes in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida:
In that sense, the mal darchive lies at the basis of every feverish racism,
nationalism, fundamentalism, or messianism, at the root of every
identitarianism.Burning with the desire to kill off, to incinerate, the memory
and the trace of the other, archive fever is not a finite, limited threat, no tone
threat among others. . . . Archive evil, mal darchive, is the root of all evil.
(Caputo, 1997: 265)
The question then becomes for both Camus and Derrida what viable
alternative exists to such a fevered ethic politics. For the famed death of
God in modernity has not quelled its radical evil, both agree. It has only
given rise to refigurations of this evil .6 As Clamence again rejoins towards the end of The Fall: He who
untainted Identity is not only impossible, but to be prohibited.
clings to a law does not fear the judgement that puts him in his place within an order he believes in. . . . [T]he keenest of human
torments is to be judged without law. Yet we are in that torment [today]. Deprived of their natural curb, the judges, loosed at random,
are racing through their job. Hence we have to try to go faster than they, dont we? And its a real madhouse. Prophets and quacks
multiply: they hasten to get there with a good law or a flawless organization before the world is deserted. (1963: 867) How does
Derrida respond to this madhouse? In Passions, in fact, he takes up the logic of responding tout court. The context is an invitation
Page 197 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
he has received to speak on the occasion of the publication of Derrida: A Critical Reader. How should he have taken up this invitation?
Derrida asks himself. To speak authoritatively, he notes, would involve running the risk of claiming an exclusive patent over the
Derrida and the texts which it names, as if he had the right and the
capability to assume such an authority. To not respond, he notes, however,
would be no less dangerous, since silence is a mode of discourse which can
humiliate others more violently than anything said. As Caputo notes, then,
here Derrida adduces a moral refiguring of the double bind. Either way, he
says, Derrida . . . is sacrificed: this is a double bind in which his two hands are
tied or nailed down (Caputo, 1997: 106).
signifier
Whenever ethics is reinforced through ideals and norms chosen by the state it
results in a world where people are desensitized. Any universally imposed
ethics will result in the destruction of man as people gain the conscience of a
machine. (turn)
Rosalyn Diprose 2008
Arendt and Nietzsche on responsibility and futurity
With regard to this overarching concern for the bodys futurity, Nietzsche has three related criticisms of juridical self-responsibility.
First, insofar as the constitution of the responsive self is normalizing, with reference to a
morality of mores and the social straitjacket that guides future action, any responsibility
the individual assumes for such action is not genuine (GM II 2 and HAH 105): responsibility
cannot rest on blind obedience to ideals and norms that have been imposed rather than
chosen. Second, and conversely, Nietzsche is critical of the fable of responsibility insofar as it rests on the illusion of free will
(HAH 39). Two aspects of his well-known critique of free will are relevant here. One is that the illusion of free will carries with it the
illusion that we can choose and predict the future in advance (HAH 105). The other is Nietzsches claim that the individual is not
responsible for anything arising from his nature because his nature is not freely chosen; it is to some extent inherited it is an
outgrowth of the elements and influences of past and present things (HAH 39; see also GM I 13). While, for Nietzsche, we cannot
choose the future or our inheritance, we can, through somatic reflexivity, transform our inheritance and so keep the future open.
Nietzsches third criticism of juridical self-responsibility follows from the other two and is the one I wish to emphasize: in pre-empting
a future, juridical self-responsibility dampens responsiveness and forecloses futurity. 22
Insofar as the last man, for example, is the embodiment of a socially prescribed good, in
him the future, ordained in advance, is actualized. He is the endpoint of a teleological
conception of history where everything leads toward the realization of some ideal
identity. But, if such an ideal could be realized, those who embody it would be unable to create, unable to respond to elements
and influences of concrete existence in a way that keeps the body open to the future and keeps affects and their interpretations open
to revaluation. Any set of ideas or legal order thought of as sovereign and universal . . . would
be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an

attempt to assassinate the future of man (GM II 11).23 The last man is the end of history, the end of spatio-
temporalization, and so would be as dyspeptic as the self for whom the force of forgetting is dysfunctional he cannot have done
with anything (GM I 1). He would have the conscience of a machine.
The affirmative cant reach out to the other when mandated by the state to do
so, your evidence is perverted on this, using the state allows authoritative
action against the other.
Savu 01
Jacque Derrida / Anne Dufourmantelle. Of Hospitality. Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Trans.
Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2000.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/symploke/v009/9.1savu.html
in light of pressing contemporary topics and events such as

immigration, terrorism, the Internet and its censorship or surveillance by the
State (police), civil wars, etc., these canonical texts reveal to Derrida the heterogeneous yet
irreducible relation between a genuine ethics of hospitality and a politics of
When revisited
Page 198 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
hospitality. Whereas absolute/unconditional/all-inclusive hospitality suggests a

"law without imperative, without order and without duty" (83), the laws of
ordinary/conditional/exclusive hospitality refer to the actual conditions of
hospitality, its rights and duties, which preexist the subject and are inscribed
in the social/political order (25). These political structures share a
phallogocentric model that Derrida traces back to the Greco-Roman and the
Judeo-Christian traditions. According to them, it is always a male figure of
authority that, in laying down the laws of hospitality, testifies to the "violence
of the power of hospitality" (149). Playing upon the ambiguity of the French word "hte"-which can mean both "guest" and "enemy"--Derrida reflects on the paradoxical status of the
host at the moment of his/her initial encounter with the xenos. This proximity
between "host" and "hostage" also accounts for the nexus between hospitality
and hostility, which Derrida turns to when he considers the false dualities of
private and public, private law and public law. Derrida's careful analysis of the
political uses and abuses of an ideal hospitality leads him to suggest that political
action should take place in the space between ethics and politics . Digressive and
informal, his discourse on hospitality is also rich in potentialities due to the deconstructive method through which he
uncovers the mystery at the heart of the "naturally obvious" (136). In the sense that it expands, or, to quote
Dufourmantelle, "takes to the limit" the "field of the thinkable," the movement of Derrida's "spoken reflecting" (10) is
indeed "hyperbolic," just as it constitutes an act of remembrance, in that it "revives questions held in forgetfulness and
secrecy" (140). Thus both lectures deserve credit not only for representing a significant step in Derrida's reflection on
ethics and politics but also for prompting us to begin our own deconstructive work and rethink our identity.
The goal of ethics to the other and the ethics of the refugee actually furthers
state control. Only by challenging sovereignty can we have independent
ethics.
Popke 03
(Jeffrey, Department of Geology, East Carolina University, Poststructuralist ethics: subjectivity,
responsibility and the space of communitySage) MF
In sum, the subject of modern ethics is a subject fundamentally constituted through the
maintenance of boundaries, both social and spatial. Partly for this reason, much modern ethical
thought has focused concern on those distant others who are located on the other side of the
boundary. Indeed, as Zygmunt Bauman (1991: 59) has noted, within the modern spatialization of
subjectivity, the figure of the stranger becomes the prototypical ethical problem, because the
stranger is . . . someone who refuses to remain confined to the far away land or go away
from our own and hence . . . defies the easy expedient of spatial or temporal segregation. In a
similar vein, Michael Dillon (1999) has argued that the refugee, existing outside of ontopolitical
borders, has come to represent a scandal for modern political subjectivity, calling into
question the nature of political and ethical conduct. The typical response to such problems has
been to endow the autonomous subject with a set of rights, which can be legally enforced
within the boundaries of political jurisdiction. One of the most important figures in this conception of
ethics is Kant, who believed that the project of modernity could be universally extended for the benefit of
humankind through the application of reason and judgment (Shapiro, 1998). Kants philosophy, as Walker
(1999: x) notes, was an attempt to internalize the law of reason, to develop the autonomous rationality,
the mature personality realizable within each individual so that it might act in accordance with some
universal moral norm. Importantly, Kant viewed this universal norm arising from the spatial
interconnections between different parts of the world, which necessitated a cosmopolitical right that
would guarantee conditions of universal hospitality. Kant writes (1939: 27): [due to] the connections,
more or less near, which have taken place among the nations of the earth, having been carried to that
point, that a violation of right, committed in one place, is felt throughout the whole, the idea of a
cosmopolitical right . . . is the last step of perfection necessary to the tacit code of civil and public right. For
Kant, this notion of a public right was founded upon a federation of free states (1939: 18), and thus depended upon a
bounded notion of state citizenship. These two notions the autonomous subject of political
reason and the territorialization of the state system have come to define contemporary
Page 199 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
politics based upon an epistemology of sovereignty. Recent work in international relations theory
has posed significant challenges to this conception of sovereignty, politics and space (Edkins et al., 1999;
Campbell and Shapiro, 1999b). Rather than accepting state territorialization and citizenship as
natural, such work suggests that we view it as part and parcel of the philosophical
infrastructure of modernity. As Shapiro notes (1999: 60), our understandings: tend to be
constructed within a statecentric, geostrategic cartography, which organizes the
interpretation of enmities on the basis of an individual and collective national subject and
cross-boundary antagonisms. Ethical approaches aimed at a normative inhibition of these
antagonisms continue to presume this same geopolitical cartography. One of the provocations of
poststructuralism would be to call into question this conception of subjectivity and space, to follow JeanLuc Nancy (2000: 136) in asserting that in order to think the spacing of the world . . . the end of
sovereignty must be faced head-on. It is in this sense that Whatmore (1997) has called for a
dissecting of theautonomous self in order to promote a relational ethics (see also Cloke,
2002). We need, as David Slater (1997: 68) puts it, to rethink what we might mean by
responsibility to otherness. This responsibility can be linked to a notion of radical
interdependence, in which the ethics of intersubjectivity are in the foreground.
Deconstructing universal conceptions of right and ethics actually opens up the

possibility for responsibility to the other. Working within the state reentrenches current oppressive dualisms
Popke 03

Although I am sympathetic with the impulse behind such sentiments, I think that Smith mischaracterizes the nature of postmodern
thinking, and I would suggest that a deeper engagement might be possible between the concerns of poststructuralism and
This engagement would reject any normative ground for ethical

conduct, not in order to evade our responsibility to distant others, but rather
because foundational normative theories provide the means by which our
ethical responsibility can be elided. From this perspective, the deconstruction of
universalist conceptions of rights, ethics and justice should be viewed as a
means of opening possibilities, rather than closing them. In what follows, I want to elaborate
geographical ethics.
on this perspective, focusing attention on three areas in particular: the nature of the subject, the question of politics, and the ways in
which these imply particular understandings of space. Most renditions of moral or ethical theory have their roots in Enlightenment
thinking, when the decentering of the authority of God and monarch placed human individuals at the center of the social world, and
thus provided the possibility for an ethics that would be based upon human reason and agency (Venn, 2000). The locus of this agency
is the Cartesian subject, endowed with autonomy and rationality, and thereby capable of making moral decisions. There are two
the modern subjects

coherence and autonomy has been managed and maintained through repeated
attempts to define, categorize and classify a range of deviant others. Modern
notions of autonomy and agency, in other words, have been dependent upon
the specification and control of difference (ethnic, racial, gender, class, etc.),
against which the positive identity and self-image of the (western, male)
Enlightenment subject could be maintained. The birth of the modern subject, in
this sense, is tightly bound up with the processes of colonialism,
industrialization and governmentality through which certain kinds of
difference were made to matter in both conscious and, perhaps especially,
unconscious ways (Pile, 1996; Wilton, 1998; Venn, 2000). The second and related point is that the ways in which these
various axes of identity/difference have been mobilized are fundamentally spatial. Modern subjectivity is not
only inscribed through a dualism between self and other, but also between
here and there, via the spatialization of inclusion and exclusion, presence and
absence, and the specification of what is in-place and out-of-place (Shields, 1992;
dimensions in particular of this modern subjectivity that are worth highlighting here. First,
Sibley, 1995; Cresswell, 1996; Kirby, 1996). The Cartesian subject is interpellated within ametaphysics of spatial presence in
Heidegger s terms, Dasein, or being-there and circumscribed by a location or place from which it can negotiate the world. Derrida
Page 200 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
(1994a: 82) has referred to this metaphysics as ontopology, an axiomatics linking indissociably the ontological value of present-being
to its situation, to the stable and presentable determination of a locality, the topos of territory, native soil, city, body in general.
Government enforcement of responsibility takes away from the individuals

ability to think and act on an individual level of morality, which is key to
regaining lost sense of morality in politics
Diprose 08
First, in Some Questions of Moral Philosophy and Responsibility Under Dictatorship (or what Arendt prefers to call totalitarianism),
Arendt, following Nietzsche, argues that

conscience, and hence the capacity for personal or self-responsibility, is not
determined either by the moral norms we inherit or by the particular laws of
the society into which we are born. Otherwise how could such norms be so
easily reversed and the reversal embraced by a majority of a citizenry, and,
further, as Nietzsche would say, how can we be responsible for acts
determined by conventions we did not choose ? Arne Vetlesen shows, in his comprehensive analysis of
Arendts thoughts on the relation between conscience and doing evil, that she actually
points to two kinds of conscience: that ever present conscience that operates
habitually and is influenced by prevailing norms and laws (TMC 186), and
conscience that, as the experience of judgment of particulars (TMC 189) that is
a by-product of thinking, makes thinking manifest in the world (LM I 193), where
the thinking that conscience makes manifest is not knowledge of the good
but the challenging of all established criteria, values and accepted rules of
conduct (TMC 188).8 This second kind of conscience is what matters to Arendt. Put simply, both she and Nietzsche
posit a difference between acting habitually in accordance with moral and
legal rules that dictate what is right and wrong and what Nietzsche would call
genuine conscience the experience of the capacity to judge what is right or
wrong for oneself. Second, in linking conscience to reflective critical thought or judgment, Arendt posits a connection
and crucially for a revision of the juridical sense of responsibility,
between the experience of conscience and both the undeterminable and futural character of the self. That is, reflective thinking
(hence judgment of particulars experienced as conscience), and along with it our finitude, temporalize the self in a way necessary for
both responsibility and an undetermined future. Arendts account of the historicity of the self borrows from Nietzsches concept of
time in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Vision and the Riddle.9 Against both cyclic and linear notions of time, Zarathustra formulates
time in terms of two paths extending from the present gateway called the moment in which human beings stand, one toward the
past and the other toward a future that contradicts the past. In Life of the Mind (especially LM I 20213) Arendt argues that it is the
act of reflective thought that opens this gap between past and future to disrupt the passive passing of linear historical time between
Only a finite being can inherit a

tradition of laws and moral norms, but in inheriting a tradition that would
determine the path one takes, the act of reflection, that is, remembrance and
anticipation, opens an undetermined future. Nietzsches gateway, for Arendt, is . . . [t]he path paved
those two exemplars of human finitude: the moments of birth and death.10
by thinking [or judgment] . . . within the space-time given to natal and mortal men. Following that course, the thought-trains,
remembrance and anticipation, save whatever they touch from the ruin of historical and biographical time. This small non-time space
in the very heart of time, unlike the world and the culture into which we are born, cannot be inherited and handed down by tradition.
This gap between the past (tradition memorialized) and an

undetermined future, which thinking opens and conscience makes manifest,
constitutes the selfs futurity. And it is this futurity that is foreclosed in a
dampening of conscience and a failure of personal responsibility. Not only do
totalitarian government and a reversal of norms for the treatment of others
jeopardize this fundamental undetermined futural aspect of the human
condition, but it also destroys human plurality in general. 11 Arendts third salient point then
(LM I 210)
is that the capacity for judgment (and therefore conscience) expresses what she had referred to in The Human Condition as the who
as opposed to the what of the person (HC 179). Her model of judgment in her reflections on responsibility is explicitly Kantian,
although it owes much to Socrates. Conscience is at once the capacity to judge particulars autonomously and rationally and it is a
self-relation, that is, it is self-awareness and an internal dialogue with oneself (e.g. SQMP 76; see also LM I 17993). As an internal
Page 201 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
dialogue between the habitual self and the selfs other internal witness, judgment expresses both difference in identity (TMC 1834)
and the persons capacity to transform the past and embark on a new path: judgment or thinking expresses the person in his or her
uniqueness, and conscience is the experience of this uniqueness made manifest in the world. The process of thinking, as opposed to
knowing, therefore indicates that humans exist in the plural (SQMP 96) and thinking and remembering . . . is the human way of
striking roots, of taking ones place in the world into which we all arrive as strangers. What we usually call a person . . . as
distinguished from a mere human being or nobody, actually grows out of this root-striking process of thinking (SQMP 100). So,
although Arendt does not put it this way, this capacity to discourse with oneself, including the judgment of what is right and wrong, is,
for her, the basis of normativity in two senses: it is the capacity through which we arrive at our own norms of conduct and, as a
Acting according to conscience, being

responsible in a non-juridical sense, rather than being coordinated by a
totalizing politics, is, she says, how one can regain what those in former
times, including Kant, called the dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of
mankind but of the status of being human (PRD 48).
capacity in others, it is what gives other persons moral value.
Government established norms of ethical and moral right and wrongs lead to
the dulling conscience of the individual taking out all solvency. It also leads to
accepting the shift to totalitarian regimes in the name of crises.
Diprose 08
The juridical concept of self-responsibility cannot explain, and indeed may

exacerbate, a contemporary crisis of conscience of the order that concerned
Arendt: when liberal democratic governments initiate programs that citizens
feel are contrary to what they had assumed (rightly or wrongly) to be law or
moral custom.4 Examples of this abound in the present: a government engages in what its citizens consider to be an
unjustified war or it annexes part of its territory for what its citizens may consider to be immoral and illegal treatment of refugees (in
the case of Australia) or prisoners of war (e.g. Guantanamo Bay in the case of the USA). Or, as happened in Australia in December
2005, a government implements (anti-terrorism) legislation that puts in jeopardy fundamental rights and freedoms of its own citizens
(for example, provisions allowing preventative detention without charge and control of the movement of individuals or groups merely
suspected of terrorist activities, and antisedition provisions that criminalize activities that urge disaffection against the government).5
under the umbrella of economic rationalism a

government gradually abdicates responsibility for the well-being of the
disadvantaged or the sick. Such government initiatives can precipitate a crisis
of conscience, and responsibility (in the juridical sense of either duty or
blame) seems to vanish or falls disproportionately toward women, particular
racial and ethnic groups, the socially disadvantaged and/or the dispossessed.
Rather than examine this shift in the distribution of responsibility, my concern
is with the mechanism of the dampening of conscience that disables it or
precipitates its redistribution. This crisis, then dampening, of conscience can
manifest in different ways. Citizens may take the government initiative to be
establishing an exemplar for the ill-treatment or neglect of particular groups
and, without question or even passionately, hold those groups responsible for
their own suffering or for felt insecurity in a population, and follow the
governments example in their conduct toward these others. Arguably, the race riot on
Or less dramatic but of a similar order,
Cronulla beach in Sydney on 11 December 2005 (the week after that anti-terrorism legislation was rushed through Parliament amid a
flurry of publicity) was a particularly graphic example of this flow-on effect, where a large group of flag-waving inebriated and
largely Anglo-Celtic Australians aggressively sought to protect their beach from what they felt to be an invasion by unwelcome
Lebanese youth.6 While the Prime Minister explained the riot in terms of isolated criminal behavior and others viewed it as an
eruption of wider suppressed racism, it could be equally well explained in terms of an unthinking imitation, albeit disordered and
extreme, of norms of conduct toward particular groups emerging from several years of a nationalistic politics of division and fear that
A dulling of conscience and

disabling of responsibility under such circumstances can take less spectacular
but no less affective forms. Citizens may feel uncomfortable or distressed about such trends but turn a blind eye in
would direct blame for felt insecurity toward those considered un-Australian.
the belief either that this is a localized problem or that the rule of law, more compatible with their own moral sensibility, will be
restored. Or citizens may strongly oppose such government initiatives, and abhor their flow-on effects, but, in the absence of any
obvious culpable agent, may feel powerless to do anything about it (after all, this is government of the people by the people). In any
Page 202 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
volatile emotions or passive compliance or confusion about what is right

and wrong govern our conduct toward others. That we are reluctant or cannot
find someone to blame for acts carried out in accordance with such
government initiatives is in part because, insofar as modernity can be
characterized by anonymous government, as Foucault following Nietzsche has
analyzed, this involves a transfer of responsibility for upholding law and moral
norms from the state to the disciplined, self-governing individual. Under such
conditions liberal democratic governments can act apparently without
conscience but with impunity while the individual citizens who bear the burden
of responsibility, in the juridical sense, seem unable to assume it. What is at
issue when such governments seem to initiate a reversal in customary
standards of conduct toward others is not only whether individuals should be
held responsible for acts committed in accordance with that regime, but also
whether they have the capacity to assume responsibility in any ensuing dulling
of conscience. What happens to the capacity for responsibility, and to the normative basis of conscience, judgment and
case
conduct, when the laws and moral norms we supposedly embody through a disciplinary regime of anonymous government are
undermined by that same government which remains, nonetheless, anonymous and beyond judgment? This was Arendts concern.
Not so much the transfer of responsibility from the state to the individual or any ensuing failure of leadership in upholding political
but the dulling of conscience and failure of personal responsibility

that follows. The government she had in mind was totalitarian not a
dictatorship, she hastens to add but totalitarian in the sense of government
that reaches beyond the political into all spheres of life and that
coordinates human existence toward, for example, a uniform national
identity (PRD 334).7 Insofar as such government can be democratically
elected and enthusiastically embraced in times of felt insecurity, Arendts
question as to why so many went along with and allowed themselves to be
coordinated by the Nazi reversal of law and moral norms is just as pertinent
now, 30 years after she last asked it. As a consequence of neglecting the corporeal and affective dimension of conscience, Arendt,
responsibility,
I will argue, cannot adequately explain how conscience can be dampened and personal responsibility fail under such government (I
will turn to Nietzsche for that). But she does pinpoint what is at stake in such a failure (the humanness or value of persons) and why
conscience must be restored if the world of potentiality and plurality that we share is to endure. I now draw together and provisionally
summarize her salient claims about conscience and responsibility that move the meaning of responsibility away from, without
abandoning,
its juridical sense.
Forcing ethical views upon people through politics results in the ethics being
short lived as individuals are unable to feel invested in these new ideals.
Nancy Luxon 2008
Ethics and Subjectivity: Practices of Self-Governance in the Late Lectures of Michel Foucault
Yet, although he believes such ethical work might prepare for public
engagement, Foucault avoids any claim that such ethical cultivation translates
directly into political action. Individuals may have a richer set of ethical
resources upon which to draw and potentially enter politics, but it remains to
them to make that choice. Forcing that connection might be perilous. A clue to
the perils of such self-governance for politics appears in Alexanders famously
reported comment to Diogenes: if I were not Alexander, I should like to be
Diogenes. Politically, this remark might be interpreted as reflective of
Alexanders own humility and of the moderation with which he exercised his
own power. Yet it also alerts us modern readers to another danger: for
Alexander to express himself as does Diogenes would be to require him to be
Page 203 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
someone other than who he, in fact, is. It would be to deny his currency, his
powerful position, and the very real relations that constitute the political and
social terms of communityin Christian terms, it would be an act of self-renunciation, while in Deleuzian terms it
would be an act made from longing.59 In both instances, the cost of longing or self-renunciation
would be that stability of mind and presence to oneself that Foucault finds to
be so difficult to establish and so inherently fragile. Renunciation and desire simply return
individuals to the unsteady longing to be other than what they are. Paradoxically, the daily adjustments of parrhesia result in a
Requiring individuals to be otherwise is to unsettle

them without educating them to the techniques by which they might regain
their balance. As a political program, then, its effects will be fleeting, as
individuals are unable to situate themselves in these new ideals or to feel
invested in the relationsto themselves, to others, to truththat sustain it.
greater steadiness both in thought and action.
State ethics violate the very idea of democratic ethics (no solvency)
Jeffrey Minson 1985
Genealogies of Morals: Nietzsche, Foucault, Donzelot and the Eccentricity of Ethics. Lecturer in the School of Humanities Griffith
University, Queensland, Australia
the current tarnished image of morality, by which she

means its equation with moralism and its vulnerability to social criticism, may be traced back to an historical
event. Somewhere back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, morality
became delimited in both law and opinion as a province of social life and
thoughts in its own right, alongside politics, economics, the fine arts and so on. In identifying this
Midgley argues in a semi-genealogical fashion that
representation as an historical-intellectual development, Midgley predictably cites J. S. Mils essay On liberty as a milestone in that
a sphere of
independent action and moral judgment for every morally competent citizen of
a modern (democratic) state. Independence is cashed out in terms of Mills
famous distinction between private and public domains. The ethical is thus
defined as a domain of personal freedom of thought and action; it is a private
domain insofar as neither law nor organized public opinion are permitted to
intervene into this domain in order to enforce collective moral strandards (or even
history. In this essay, which is often regarded as the definitive philosophical manifesto of liberalism, Mill delineates
to prevent self-inflicted damage).
Page 204 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Universal / Absolutist Ethics Bad**
Universal morality is impossible because everyone has individual passions and

views.
The highest type, to Nietzsche's mind, is the passionate man who is the master of
his passions, able to employ them creatively without having to resort to
asceticism for fear that his passions might conquer him. But not everybody is
capable of this achievement, and Nietzsche does not believe in the pos sibility
of a universal morality. He prefers self-control and sub limation to both license
and asceticism, but concedes that for some asceticism may be necessary.
Those who require such a radical prescription strike him as weaker, less
powerful types than men like Goethe, for example. The will to power is, according
to Nietzsche, a universal drive, found in all men. It prompts the slave who dreams of a
heaven from which he hopes to behold his master in hell no less than it prompts the
master. Both resentment and brutality, both sadism and asceticism are expressions of it.
Indeed, Nietzsche thinks that all human behavior is reducible to this single
basic force. He does not endorse the will to power any more than Freud
endorses sexual desire; but he thinks we shall be better off if we face the facts
and understand ourselves than if we condemn others hypocritically, without
understanding.
Institutional ethics results in a homogenous mindless unconscious. Only by
advocating individual ethics can humans gain value for themselves
Daiger 2006
(Christine, Associate Professor President, NASS Chair, Equity Committee, CPA Member of the Team CPA
B.A. Concordia, M.A. Universit de Montral, Doctoral studies Brock University, Nietzsche: Virtue Ethics..
Virtue Politics,Project Muse) MF
Let us remember the three points under criticism in the critical program of virtue ethicists: the overreliance on rule models of moral
choice, the overly rationalistic accounts of moral agency, and the formalism inherent in such theories. If we did not know that we are
Nietzsche does reject rule

models. His ethics of creativity argues that one must create values for oneself
and not rely on any external (transcendent) rule. Nietzsche also fiercely rejects the rationalistic
talking about virtue ethicists, we would readily say that this pertains to Nietzsche.
account of moral agency. He struggles to rehabilitate the repressed parts of human nature, claiming that reason is but a very small
part of ourselves. He talks of the human being in terms of a fiction (see D 105). We are wronged in the conception of ourselves: we
are led to believe that we are neatly divided between reason and instinct. But this division is illusory. The human being is a social
structure of many souls (BGE 19). We possess a soul that is a social structure of the instincts and passions (BGE 12). Nietzsche
says further that [i]f we desired and dared an architecture corresponding to the nature of our soul (we are too cowardly for it!)our
model would have to be the labyrinth! (D 169). We are indeed very far from the traditional picture of the self and also far from the
superiority of reason that is proposed by traditional philosophical approaches and moralities in particular. Last, it is also evident that
Nietzsche rejects the formalism inherent in traditional moralities as he would

generally reject any formalism in thought. Nietzsche does share the critical program of virtue ethicists.
The nihilism he proposes is supposed to remedy the alienating traditional
philosophical (and religious) discourse. But does he stop at the nihilistic moment? Is his program purely
nihilistic, as Leiter suggests? I have argued elsewhere that far from being purely nihilistic, Nietzsches philosophy is
entirely constructive.19 His challenge consists in rejecting the existing
morality to construct anew. The old systems deficiencies cannot be adjusted
Page 205 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
by reorganization. One must erase everything and start from scratch.
This is where
his attacks on morality come into play. In this moment Nietzsche announces the death of God and its metaphysical import. Nietzsche
is clear about his self-attributed immoralism: At bottom my expression immoralist involves two denials. I deny first a type of man
who has hitherto counted as the highest, the good, the benevolent, beneficent; I deny secondly a kind of morality which has come to
be accepted and to dominate as morality in itselfdcadence morality, in more palpable terms Christian morality (EH Destiny 4).
His rejection of morality is thus clearly identified by him as a rejection of

traditional morality. He also says of fellow immoralists, they see [their] honor in affirming (TI Morality 6).20 There is
no question of abandoning ethics. Ethics is needed and will be his preoccupation for the first steps of his reconstruction, for it was a
preoccupation before his reconstruction as it lead to the rejection of the defective ethics. Nihilism is a necessary step toward this
reconstruction. As he says in The Gay Science: We
deny, and must deny, because something in us

wants to live and affirm itself, something which we perhaps do not as yet
know, do not as yet see! (307). What is it that wants to affirm itself? In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche
says that We are accountable to ourselves for our own existence; consequently,
we also want to be the real helmsmen of our existence and keep it from
resembling a mindless coincidence (1). The bermensch, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is the figure who is
successful in becoming his own master. He is an Overman, more than a man, a human being that is human and more. Why more? The
bermensch is the individual who has overcome the fragmentation inherent in tradition. It is the person who has reunited himself,
who has decided to live fully as he is. It is also the person who knows that life is will to power and that he himself is an instance of this
will to power. Accordingly, he wishes to embody and respect the will to power within himself. In addition to all of this, he accepts the
eternal return hypothesis. He is ready to suppose that the actions and decisions he makes during his life will return eternally the
same. The change from man to bermensch is tremendous. So much so that we cannot talk about an elevation from man to
bermensch but really of a transfiguration, as Nietzsche himself refers.21 Even the highest type of human being present in
Nietzsches writings, the strong man, is far below the bermensch. He says: Your souls are so unfamiliar with what is great that the
Superman would be fearful to you in his goodness! And you wise and enlightened men, you would flee from the burning sun of
wisdom in which the Superman joyfully bathes his nakedness! You highest men my eyes have encountered! This is my doubt of you
and my secret laughter: I think you would call my Supermana devil! (Z Manly Prudence). The bermensch is an ideal type of
human being. Every individual should emulate this figure as an illustration of what one can become if only one were to engage
oneself in the way of creation. When I speak of an ideal type, the bermensch, I mean that it is a figure toward which one must strive,
not to be confused as a state one can reach. For one thing, it is not clear in Nietzsches mind whether there will ever be
bermenschen. For another thing, I think we should interpret the figure he presents to us as a dynamic state of being. If the
bermensch accepts life and himself as an instance of the will to power, he will be in constant becoming. The drive for more power,
characteristic of Nietzsches being, will lead the individual into a continuous flux and constant overcoming of oneself. This is how one
should understand the ber of bermensch. But even if we are talking about a state of flux, this is a state that one should strive to
acquire while engaging in the process of attainment. According to Nietzsche, there are certain things that one must do in order to
the creation of oneself and

the creation of values that is essential in supporting a new ethics. The human
being should be the creator of oneself. She should be her own master and define her own rules (which is
approach this excellence and in turn become an bermensch. Among these things are
what is truly meant by the famous, or infamous, Master morality).22 Once the sky of values has been emptied, the task is to fill it
again for oneself. The individual should no longer rely on any transcendent to provide these values, as the previous experiment of
Human beings must

create an ethics for human beings. The individual must create an ethics that
respects ones nature as human and as will to power. This is expressed in Nietzsches maxim:
Christianity and its transcendent morals has proven that its only possible result is alienation.
What Saith thy Conscience?Thou shalt become what thou art (GS 270). You must flourish! Note that there is nothing in
Nietzsches writings until Beyond Good and Evil that indicates that the way of the bermensch is bared for certain individuals. He
makes clear that this potentiality exists in every individual. It is only a matter of the individual choosing to actualize his or her own
self as will to power.23 Thus the emphasis is placed on the flourishing of the agent via the adoption of certain virtues in line with
ones own being.
Any project that defines a universal ethical claim fosters indifference. Only by
finding ethics in the absence of universal norms can ethical action take place
Popke 03
From an empirical perspective, these insights have provoked a re-examination of geographical phenomena in a wide range of
domains, with emphasis increasingly placed upon the ways in which social meanings and categories take on the appearance of truth
or objectivity. Recent work has examined, for example, the discourses governing geopolitics ( Tuathail, 1996; Tuathail and Dalby,
1998), the economy (Barnes, 1996; Gibson-Graham, 1996), urban space (Soja, 1996; Dear, 2000), colonialism and development
(Jacobs, 1996; Yapa, 1996), the environment (Braun and Castree, 1998) and the nature of identity, particularly the spatial structuring
of gender/sexual and racial/ethnic difference (Sibley, 1995; Dwyer and Jones, 2000; Nast, 2000). The poststructuralist intervention
has also prompted a series of philosophical debates, which have posed a challenge to traditional understandings of metaphysics and
epistemology. In this more theoretical vein, poststructuralism offers a critique of logocentrism, the centering or grounding of claims to
Page 206 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
truth or objectivity . From this perspective, the apparent stability of meaning embedded in any system of thought is potentially
destabilized by elided traces of difference, and by the multiple contexts in which knowledge is produced, received and interpreted. As
Strohmayer and Hannah (1992: 36) put it, the truth of any statement, scientific or otherwise, which ultimately must rely on some
undecidable. This deconstruction of universals

poses a significant challenge to traditional understandings of ethics, for the antifoundational stance of poststructuralism implies that any project aimed at defining
an ethics, or a normative theory of society, would be doomed to failure. From a
poststructuralist perspective, universal claims to knowledge and truth can become a
barrier to fostering a sensitivity to difference, and thus ethics would need to
find its purchase in the radical instability of meaning and the deconstruction of
universal normative claims. The goal of such an anti-essentialist approach, as David Slater (1997: 69) has noted, is
anchoring in order to avoid being completely arbitrary, is
to cultivate a political openness, or an ungrounded ground, where foundations or norms or universal prescriptions only exist to be
put into question as a permanent feature of the process of democratization. Some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that
we should take up a position against ethics, in the sense of a model of moral

or ethical actions, and instead work to foster an ethics of encounter without a
commitment to resolution or closure (Campbell and Shapiro, 1999a: xi, xvii; see also Caputo, 1993). I will
try below to suggest how we might imagine such an ethics of encounter, but first I turn to examine some of the responses within
geography to the postmodern challenge to ethics.
Their form of moral absolutism prioritizes clean moral hands over moral results: they are more
concerned with not acting directly immoral than preventing much larger immoral
consequences
Nielsen 1993 (Kai, Phil. Prof @ U. Calgary, Absolutism and It Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber, p. 170-2)
letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is still
more monstrous. The consequentialist is on strong moral ground here , and, if his reflective moral convictions
Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But
do not square either with certain unrehearsed or with certain reflective particular moral convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral
convictions. One could even usefully and relevantly adapt here-though for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's. Consequentialism of the kind I have been arguing
for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not theory, is corrupt."
Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism, it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square
with such a theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral convictions that would be another matter indeed
Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing of the
innocent but cannot the compliment be returned by speaking of the even greater
inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far
greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the
death and misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to
prevent seems to me to constitute a moral evasion . I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in normal circumstances
would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity he [it] allows, when he has the power to prevent
it, a situation which is still many times worse. He tries to keep his 'moral purity' and [to]
avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard called 'double-mindedness.' It is understandable
that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not make it right .
Ignoring consequences is immoral - they sacrifice others to preserve moral purity. It is most
moral to act to produce the best end regardless of the moral cleanliness of the means
Ailinsky 1971
(Saul D., Activist, Prof, Social Organizer with Int'l Fame, Founder of Industrial Areas Foundation, Rules for Radicals, p. 24-7)
"Does this particular end justify this particular means?" Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change,
the question of means and ends arises. The person [man] of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the
possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the
immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to
conscience is the virtue of observers and not of

agents of action in action one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent
both with one s individual conscience and the good of [humankind. The choice must
always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal
salvation. He [or she1 who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has
peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't care enough for people to be
"corrupted" for them. The people [men] who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics of means and ends-which with rare exception is conspicuous for its sterility-rarely
bed; he who fears corruption fears life. The practical revolutionary will understand Geothe's "
write about their won experiences in the perpetual struggle of life and change. They are strangers, moreover, to the burdens and problems of operational responsibility and the unceasing pressure for immediate
decisions. They are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends
Page 207 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This

as if studying a navigational chart on land. They can be recognized by one of two verbal brands; "We agree with the ends but not the means," or "This is not the time." The means-and- end moralists or non-doers
always wind up on their ends without any means. The means-and- 'ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their
The fear of soiling ourselves by

entering the context of history is not virtue, but a way of escaping virtue." These nondoers were the ones who chose not to fight the Nazis in the only way they could have been fought; they were the ones who drew their
window blinds to shut out the shameful spectacle of Jews and political prisoners being dragged through the streets; they were the ones who privately deplored the horror of it all-and did nothing. This is
the nadir of immorality. The most unethical of all means is the nonuse of any means . It is this
real political position. In fact, they are passive-but real-allies of the Haves. They are the ones Jacques Maritain referred to in his statement, "
species of man who so vehemently and militantly participated in that classically idealistic debate at the old League of Nations on the ethical differences between defensive and offensive weapons. Their fears of
action drive them to refuge in an ethics so divorced from the politics of life that it can apply only to angels, not to men. The standards ofjudgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the
world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be. 1 present here a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends: first, that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies
inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. When we are not directly concerned our morality overflows; as La Rochefoucauld put it, "We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."
Page 208 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Aesthetic Ethics Good**
Foucault proposed an aesthetical ethics in which individuals choose their

ethics based on an aesthetic existence.
Poster 07
Mark, Swans Way: Care of Selfin the Hyperreal University of California, Irvine Configurations, 2007, 15:151175
2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science.
To be sure, in the late project on ethics, Foucault does not propose a new
version of the liberal notion of the autonomous individual, self-reliant and
free, one who builds a stable identity, like the comic character Baron von
Munchausen, by lifting himself up by his own bootstraps. This Western conceit
is, after all, the main subject of Foucaults critique, and the chief
preoccupation of his work. The post structuralist in fact presents his notion of
self-subjectivation as an alternative, and overlooked or repressed, stream of
thinking in the West, one that has been overshadowed by the injunction know thyself.Foucault
formulates the tradition he points to as the care of self, implying that this
somewhat underground alternative culturemight provide resources in the
present for new types of emancipator endeavors. Here he takes his cue from
Nietzsche, who foresaw atransvaluation of values in which ethics would be
based not on renunciation and self restraint but on aesthetics .31 Foucault anticipates the
project of the hermeneutics of the subject contributing to a culture in which everyones life [might] become a work of art.32 I shall
raise the question of the care of self in relation to cosmeticsurgery reality TV, but before embarking on this project, a thorough
understanding is required of Foucaults idea of the care of self. In the 1982 lectures at the Collge de France, Foucault presented a
genealogy of ethics in the ancient world, concentrating on the Hellenistic period where the care of self reached its richest point of
development. He contrasts the care of self with the relation to the self in Platonism, Christianity, and modern philosophy, primarily
Foucault strives to distinguish the care of self as a spiritual

practice in which the self is transformed. In the care of self, the self is not
discovered as it is in Descartes, or realized in its authenticity as it is in Sartre;
rather, Hellenistic care of self is a complex of lifelong practices in which the
individual attempts to change himself/herself. It is not a case of attempting to
discover the truth of oneself, as in Plato, or to convert oneself in the image of a
Descartes. In all three cases,
transcendent principle, as in Christianity. Here is one definition Foucault gives of the Hellenistic care of the self: The Greeks of the
Hellenistic period developed a culture of self-constitution, potentially open to all, through meditation, writing exercises, group
meetings, and other practices. The direct goal was an art of living, an aesthetic of self-relation, an ethic of spiritual formation.
Narcissism were the Other is supposed to discover themselves is opposed by

Foucault, indicating that we should live aesthetically instead and draws a line
between this narcissistic enlightenment and aesthetic values
Poster 07
Mark, Swans Way: Care of Selfin the Hyperreal University of California, Irvine Configurations, 2007, 15:151175
2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science.
One more aspect of Foucaults position must be clarified before I begin. As we have seen, Foucault rarely
addresses the idea of the care of self in relation to contemporary culture. But one distinction about the care
of self is crucial and must be borne in mind. In response to a question from Paul Rabinow and Hubert
Dreyfus suggesting the common narcissism in modern society and ancient Greek ethics, Foucault
offers the following comment: In the Californian cult of the self, one is supposed to discover ones
true self. . . . not only do I not identify this ancient culture of the self with what you might call the
Californian cult of the self, I think they are diametrically opposed. 40 If I Want a Famous Face and The
Swan are understood only as depictions of individuals in quest of their true selves, then clearly the issue is not
one that concerns Foucaults idea of the care of self. I want rather to inquire if there is a hint of care of self in
these most abject television series. For as Foucault writes, our culture, complex as it is, does not easily
Page 209 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
support this idea: We have hardly any remnant of the idea in our society that the principal work of
art which one must take care of, the main area to which one must apply aesthetic values, is oneself,
ones life, ones existence.41 Surgeries Reexamined The question I shall pose in relation to The Swan and I
Want a Famous Face is this: What can be learned about these shows when they are approached from the
vantage point of the concept of the care of self? And what does such an interrogation reveal about popular
culture at a time when the media are disseminated throughout society ever more densely and with increasing
variation and intermediation?42
Aesthetic judgments, or judgments free of bias and societal opinion, are the
best alternatives to judging morals and ethics without placing our own vanity
and egos as the hidden priority
Downard 04
(Northern Arizona University. Nietzsche and Kant on the Pure Impulse of Truth. The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 27)
Nietzsche maintains that art and not morality is the origin of our pure impulse
to truth. I believe that Nietzsche's purpose in appealing to art is to find a basis
for establishing and perhaps improving our freedom as inquirers. According to
both Nietzsche and Kant, aesthetic judgments express a special kind of
freedom. Kant maintains that this freedom surpasses even the autonomy of
our moral agency. 11 Like moral judgments, aesthetic judgments must be free
from any given inclination or contingent purpose. Unlike moral judgments,
aesthetic judgments must be free from any given concept or principle,
including the ends and principles of reason. Given Nietzsche's larger philosophical project, this fact
makes it easy to see why he would appeal to art. His question is one of how the capacity to act from a pure impulse ever evolved
from natural inclinations. Furthermore, he wants to give an account of how this capacity evolved that does not make an appeal to
either language or reason. It is the independence of art from both the concepts embodied in language and the principles of reason
that makes art an especially appealing candidate. At this point, I would like to review the general features of Kant's account of
aesthetic judgment. At the same time, I will offer some textual evidence [End Page 30] for thinking that there are substantial
agreements between Kant and Nietzsche about the nature of aesthetic judgments. In his early essay on truth, Nietzsche does not
offer an account of aesthetic judgment. As such, I would like to start by briefly reviewing the agreements that Nietzsche expresses in
both The Birth of Tragedy and Zarathustra with Kant's aesthetics. According to both Kant and Nietzsche, there are two types of
aesthetic judgments. We experience the sublime when we confront the infinitude of abysses, mountains, and storms. We experience
the beautiful when we hear the harmony of a piano sonata or see the unity in a painting. Setting to the side the differences between
these two types of judgments, let us focus on the points that are common to both. Kant's analytic is an attempt to make sense of
three conflicting intuitions that we share about aesthetics. 12 On the one hand, matters of art are a matter of personal taste. Aesthetic
estimations are subjective judgments. Because they are subjective, there are no objective proofs to which we could appeal to settle
disputes. At the same time, we do quarrel about matters of beauty and sublimity. If I find a painting beautiful and you think it is ugly,
we take ourselves to be engaged in a real disagreement even if there are no objective grounds to settle the dispute. In order to help
Nietzsche
maintains that the distinction between the subjective and the objective cannot
be used in aesthetics to do any philosophical work. Nietzsche's main point, like
Kant's, is that aesthetic judgments are not merely subjective. They are not
expressions of what is merely agreeable for an individual. A judgment of taste
cannot be based on the satisfaction of personal preferences: "the striving
individual bent on furthering his egoistic purposescan be thought of only as
an enemy to art, never as its source" (BT, 41). At the same time, aesthetic
judgments are not determinative judgments, for there are no objective
grounds for matters of taste. Nietzsche challenges the idea that aesthetics is
grounded on standards of reason (Z, 166). He wants to suggest that the
aesthetics must be independent of such determinate concepts and principles.
settle our quarrel, I might point to the harmony of shapes, while you might point to the unattractive colors.
Nietzsche recognizes that there can be quarrels over matters of taste. In fact, he elevates the idea to a crucial position in his
argument in Zarathustra when he challenges those who would maintain that judgments of taste are merely subjective expressions of
personal preference: "[t]astethat is at the same time weight and scales and weigher; and woe unto all the living that would live
The fundamental prerequisite to being a

self-conqueror is that one overcome one's personal biases and prejudices .
without disputes over weight and scales and weighers!" (Z, 117).
According to Kant's transcendental analysis, judgments of taste must be grounded on a disinterested pleasure. In order for the
pleasure that we take in an aesthetic experience to be disinterested, we must seek a higher ground for our judgments. In exercising
[End Page 31] his judgment, Zarathustra tells us that he "had to fly to the highest spheres that (he) might find the fount of pleasure
again" (Z, 98).
Not only do we need to set aside our interest in what we find
Page 210 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
agreeable and what we find to be consistent with our prudential interests, but
we must also set aside our interest in satisfying the requirements of morality
(BT, 142). According to Kant's analysis, aesthetic judgments must be purposive
without any given purpose. Zarathustra teaches us to live without any
dependence upon given ends. He urges us to renounce any servitude under
given purposes. Often, Nietzsche refers to such a condition as a matter of
chance or accident. It is through the purposiveness of art that purposes grow
from mere accidents (Z, 62). Purposiveness is realized where harmony and unity
are restored to what was merely fragmentary. Under the last two moments of Kant's analysis,
aesthetic judgments must make claims of subjective universality and subjective necessity. When we estimate the
beauty or sublimity of an object, we make claims to the effect that all other
human beings ought to agree with our judgment. 13 The judgment is universal
insofar as it makes a claim on all others. According to Nietzsche, judgments of
taste help us to become reconciled to one another by teaching the "gospel of
universal harmony" (BT, 19-24). A judgment of taste is necessary insofar as it makes a claim on how others ought to
estimate the object. According to Nietzsche, in the Apollonian state we experience dreams with a sense of real necessity. For
Zarathustra, the "Thou shalt is higher than to command for those that are sublime" (Z, 48). Nietzsche recognizes that it is possible to
As such, you can only

make such claims where you call this cessation of all need "necessity" (Z, 77, 222).
make such claims of necessity only where you have set aside personal biases and prejudices.
So far, we have reviewed the agreements between Kant and Nietzsche on aesthetic judgments and have found them to be in
substantial agreement on major points. The fact that the agreements are found in both The Birth of Tragedy and Zarathustra is
evidence that Nietzsche did not dramatically alter his position on these points in aesthetics between his early and later periods. 14
Furthermore, the fact that "Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral Sense" and The Birth of Tragedy were published at about the same
time indicates that Nietzsche was likely working with such ideas in his early essay on truth. Kant tells us that the key to the critique of
taste is in the solution to the following problem. The question is whether the feeling of pleasure that we take in an aesthetic judgment
follows from the judgment, or whether the feeling of pleasure precedes the judgment. 15 Only if the feeling of pleasure follows from
the judgment is the judgment free from determination by external causes. Only if the judgment is free from such causes can we
As an aesthetic reflective judgment, [End Page

32] the basis for the correctness of the judgment is the complete freedom of
the subject. Here we find what may be the key to understanding Nietzsche's account of aesthetic judgments. In Nietzsche's
presume to require that others agree with our judgment.
terms, the purely perspectival character of aesthetic judgments is the key to their legislative authority. For Kant, one who is engaged
in an act of aesthetic judgment can tell us how we ought to judge because only a subjective necessity is presupposed by such
judgments. Taste claims a special kind of autonomy. Only where we have overcome all of the external causes of bias in judgment,
including the tyranny of our feelings, the tyranny of reason (scientific, prudential, and moral) and even the tyranny of the object and
the truth of its existence, does our judgment have autonomy. Only where autonomy has been realized can we presume to tell others
how they ought to judge, assuming that they have adopted an aesthetic perspective and distanced themselves from their own biases
and prejudices. The structural similarities between Kant's two arguments against consequentialism are striking. In both Kant's ethics
Because of the structural similarities

between the two arguments, we can make the same kinds of arguments
against rationalist and empiricist accounts of truth from the perspective of art
as can be made from the perspective of ethics. On Kant's account, aesthetic
reflective judgments share some of the same features as determinative moral
judgments. Most important, aesthetic reflective judgments are categorical in
their form even though they are singular judgments and are not determined by
an objective principle of reason. Because they are categorical and not
hypothetical, aesthetic judgments must be grounded in a pure impulse . Kant claims
and his aesthetics, the issue is one of the purity of the judgment.
that the experience of the sublime teaches us to esteem in opposition to our interests and that the experience of the beautiful
In a similar fashion, Nietzsche claims that the experience of the

sublime gives us a height above our vanity and the experience of the beautiful
teaches how to love something, such as the truth, from a pure impulse (Z, 116teaches us to love.
18).
Page 211 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
By placing our own individual art and judgment before the worlds ethics we
have the ability to question the institutionalized ethics that leads our lives and
form our own idea of ethics by the superior imperatives
Downard 04
Why should we think that Nietzsche is right to claim that art is the origin of
our pure impulse to truth? Why shouldn't we agree with Kant that a pure impulse to the truth can
and should be grounded in practical reason? I believe that Nietzsche can make the same
criticism of Kant that he has made of empiricist and especially rationalist
accounts of truth. Namely, that on certain questions, Kant's account of truth is
grounded in a principle of self-love. The main [End Page 37] reason Kant falls
prey to such an objection is that there are a whole host of questions Kant is
unable or unwilling to admit are real questions . Let us start with Nietzsche's example of
honesty. According to Kant, why should we be honest? The answer is that any minimally rational agent
recognizes a duty to be honest. Rational agents need no further reason to do their duty because the
principles of morality give them overriding reasons to be moral. On Kant's account, can a moral agent
honestly question what it is to be honest? What I mean is, supposing the circumstances are perfectly clear,
and supposing that there are no apparent conflicts of duty, can a moral agent honestly raise the question,
what ought I to do? Kant maintains that any minimally rational agent already knows the answer. Such an
agent may feel a temptation to violate the duty to be honest, but the agent recognizes that the duty to be
honest should always be given the highest respect. Nietzsche seems to think that we can raise honest
questions about our values. On the one hand, the requirements of conscience do appear to impose
necessary obligations for our conscience. On the other hand, we can raise questions about what, in
particular, is required by an obligation. Furthermore, we can raise questions about the legitimacy of an
obligation itself. As moral agents, we realize that social traditions and personal biases may unduly affect
our conception of the requirements of morality. Even those requirements of conscience that seem the
clearest and the strongest may, in a manner great or small, be infected by certain biases and prejudices.
Kant insists that all minimally rational agents know what duty requires and, as such, are aware of the
principles of morality. When a question about the requirements of morality arises, all we need to do is
carefully abstract from our personal biases and prejudices and focus our attention on the principles that
are innate to our power of practical reason. In effect, the answers to any moral questions that might arise
are already contained in the principles embedded in our conscience. We can rest assured that the
principles are absolutely universal and necessary. As a system of principles, the set is complete,
consistent, and unchanging. Why does Kant believe that the system of moral principles has these general
features? In ethics, he takes a stronger stand than he does in natural science.
The ideas of freedom, immortality, and God are regulative ideas that are
justified only as practical postulates. But the ideas that the requirements of
morality are absolutely universal, necessary, complete, consistent, and
unchanging are constitutive of the very idea of a categorical imperative. In
ethics, we know with significantly more certainty that the requirements of
morality really do have these general features. 20 Nietzsche is free to question
Kant's assumptions on such general points. How do we know the truth about
honesty with such certainty? Kant's response is that we just know the
principles of morality. Nietzsche's point is that such a response is empty. It is
not an answer to the question. Rather, it is an attempt [End Page 38] to avoid
the question. Why does Kant seek to avoid the question? His reason seems to be that the question
leads us to skepticism about the requirements of morality. A natural response to Kant's worry is that such
questions may lead us to be skeptical about claims to certainty in ethics, but it is an open question as to
whether or not we need such certainty in ethics. Kant's mistake was to turn his back on
questions that we ought not ignore. He closes the door to inquiry by setting to
the side questions to which we ought to seek answers. That is a bad habit to
inculcate. Nietzsche's criticism works equally well against both the rationalists
and Kant (GM, 289-92). The attempt to avoid real questions by saying that the
question has no answer, or by simply assuming an answer, is ultimately
Page 212 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
grounded on vanity. The fact that you happen not to like the consequences that follow from the
question is not sufficient reason to set the question to the side. Kant would have been better off to forward
such claims as regulative principles. He could have made his claims about the absolute necessity and
universality of the principles of duty as transcendental hypotheses. While such a move would have avoided
premature claims to certainty, it would not remove Nietzsche's objection. As a hypothesis, the claim that
the principles of practical reason are absolutely universal and necessary is not a good hypothesis. The
problem is not that it is false. For all we know, the principles of morality may be
absolutely necessary and universal. The problem is that, as a hypothesis, it

does not answer real questions. How can I be so sure that my understanding of
my moral duties is correct? I have a clear understanding of the principles of
morality and it is plausible to suppose that those principles are absolute.
Simply asserting that the principles of morality are absolutely universal and
necessary does not answer the question, regardless of whether the assertions
are forwarded with certainty or only as hypotheses. Having made what I take to be the
main point of Nietzsche's criticism in his early essay on truth, and having turned the criticism toward
Kant's ethics, let us step back and consider how he might have obtained the upper hand in the debate. The
main question is, When engaged in inquiry, why ought I to commit myself to standards of correctness in
general? Kant and Nietzsche agree that the pursuit of truth must be grounded on a free impulse . The
advantage of modeling the standards of correctness on aesthetic judgments

and not moral judgments of duty is the following. The former but not the latter
are free from determination by any given purpose or rule. As such, Nietzsche
does not need to make nearly as many presumptions about the nature of truth
as Kant. The fact that aesthetic judgments are not determined by objective
principles was thought to be their greatest weakness. But Nietzsche seeks to
turn a weakness into a source of strength. The greatest strength of aesthetic
judgments is their superior freedom from such presumptions. Aesthetic
judgments are a natural model for such hypotheses because neither makes a
claim [End Page 39] to truth. When we forward a hypothesis, we say that it
would explain a certain phenomenon if it were truth. We think it is a plausible
conjecture, but we do not (at least yet) claim that it is true. Similarly, the
freedom of an aesthetic judgment is predicated upon its independence from
any claims to truth. Nietzsche wants to raise further questions. What is the origin of our pure
impulse to the truth? How can beings that were once governed entirely by self-interest ever gain the
capacity for freedom? In order to gain the upper hand on these questions, Nietzsche does not need to
assume that the capacity to act from pure impulses did in fact evolve from natural inclinations. The main
advantage to his position is not merely that he can give answers to questions that Kant cannot. Rather, the
main advantage to his position is that he can raise the questions in the first place. Because he does not
need to presuppose the status of any rules or ends, he is free to pursue any line of inquiry whatsoever, let
the consequences of what he discovers be damned. Once we have decided to address such
questions in the terms of art, we have new resources available to us. Instead
of having to ignore certain difficulties, we can stare them in the face. For
Nietzsche, overcoming our servitude to vanity is the greatest hurdle: "Nature
threw away the key; and woe to the fatal curiosity which might be able for a
moment to look out and down through a crevice in the chamber of
consciousness, and discover that man is indifferent to his own ignorance, is
resting on the pitiless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, and, as it
were, hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger" (TF, 177). Ultimately, the way
in which we need to face such challenges is to let the sublimity of the task
remind us of the sublimity in ourselves.
Page 213 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Kants Categorical Imperative**
Institutionalized ethics, such as the Kants Categorical Imperative, places

regulations of what is right and what is thought to be wrong without
explanation or freedom to assume an alternative pathway by the individual
Downard 04
All four types of moral theories fall prey to the same objection. The principles that they hold up as the primary principle of morality all
have the form of a hypothetical imperative. Hypothetical imperatives establish only that a means is good relative to some end. In
order to show that a given end is worth [End Page 27] pursuing, all of these moral theorists simply assert that we are inclined toward
such an end either because it is something that we desire, or because we have rational impulses that move us in such a direction.
According to Kant,
all such incentives, regardless of whether they are empirical or rational in character, are impure. As
such, they fail to express our freedom as moral agents. Only an incentive of respect that is generated by an awareness of the
categorical imperative is pure. The reason is that only a principle of this form expresses our autonomy as moral agents. The
difference is a matter of priority .
The feeling of respect is pure because it follows from the

moral law. All other moral theories use a form of justification that puts the
incentive first and the principle second.
At this point, let us turn to
Nietzsche's argument against both rationalist and empiricist accounts of truth .
I hope to show that Nietzsche's criticisms can be defended using Kant's moral argument against consequentialism. If Nietzsche's
criticisms can be defended in this manner, then his criticisms will work against any philosophical account of truth that is grounded on
a principle of self-love. The targets of Nietzsche's criticisms in his early essay on truth can be divided, according to Kant's table, along
the axes of subjective and objective accounts. Taking them in reverse order from Kant's argument, let us first examine rationalist
Rational beings control

their behavior entirely by abstractions. Their aim is to avoid being carried
away by a disorderly array of perceptual impressions. Abstract concepts can
be put into a pyramidal order of genus and species, with the unruly
impressions residing at the bottom. Standing back, looking at the pyramid that
we have constructed, we are impressed by those concepts that are "more
fixed, general, known, human of the two and therefore the regulating and
imperative one" (TF, 181). In creating such a world of concepts, our conduct is
regulated by imperatives. These imperatives guide the conduct of our inquiry
and determine how we ought to form concepts and distinguish between those
assertions that are worthy of being believed and those that ought to be
treated as false. The target of Nietzsche's criticism is, first and foremost, the
imperatives that rationalists think should guide the conduct of our inquiry, and
only secondly the beliefs that are held to be true at any given time as a result
of following those imperatives. Nietzsche makes his criticism of rationalist accounts of truth in the following
accounts of truth. According to Nietzsche, such theories posit the following kinds of claims.
terms. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not
much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of
reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal" I have indeed brought
a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. [End Page 28] Nietzsche's criticism has the same structure as Kant's
On both accounts, the mistake of the rationalists was to

assume that merely logical principles could establish how we ought to conduct
ourselveseither morally or in scientific inquiry. Logical principles cannot
establish what we ought to hold as true any more than they can establish ends
that are morally worthy of our pursuit. In order to hide this flaw, rationalists try to sneak in a given end or
criticism of Wolff's moral theory.
belief. But the question remains, is that end really worth pursuing and is that assertion really worth believing? We should note that
Nietzsche does not assert that the belief adopted on the basis of such a
procedure is false. Rather, he says that it has limited value as a truth. The
reason is that the belief is, to some extent, improved by following the
rationalists' method. It is rendered more consistent and harmonious with all
the other assertions that are held to be true. But the rationalists have failed to
Page 214 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
use a method that honestly asks whether or not the belief itself is worthy of
being believed. By way of contrast, empiricists explain the origins of our beliefs in the following kinds of terms. A habitual
relation between a word and certain images is caused by mere repetition. A nerve stimulus causes an image to appear in our
consciousness as a sound or a sight. Objects external to us cause the stimulation of our nerves. Nietzsche's first point against an
empiricist account is that the appeal to an object outside of us is the "result of a wrong and unjustifiable application of the concept of
causality" (TF, 177). This concept has led empiricists to formulate a chain of causes, each one explaining what follows it in the series.
Empiricists such as Hobbes and Hume openly assume that all objects have the same basic nature (material objects for Hobbes and
conscious impressions for Hume), and all relations between things must be understood in terms of de facto causes. But insufficient
justification is given for the presumption that words, images, nerve impulses, and objects external to us all have the same nature and
can all stand in causal relations to one another. Empiricists believe that these kinds of philosophical assumptions should guide our
Nietzsche takes issue first and foremost with the imperatives that they
think should regulate our conduct. What is the basis of these imperatives? Why
not think that there is a difference in kind between nerve impulses and conscious images? Why not think that the relation
inquiry.
between the two is fundamentally an aesthetic relation and not a merely de facto causal relation? The question that Nietzsche puts to
The point of Nietzsche's criticism

of both rationalists and empiricists can be understood by considering his
account of our move from the state of nature to the state of society. In order
to end the war of all against all, human beings forge a peace treaty in which
they agree to use concepts according to fixed conventions. This treaty
establishes the difference between truth and lie. The [End Page 29] honest person
follows the fixed conventions, the liar uses the fixed conventions to make
things that are "unreal appear to be real" (TF, 2). He reverses the fixed conventions and says, for
the empiricists is at root the same as the question he puts to the rationalists.
example, "I am honest," when the correct word for his actions is "dishonest." The liar misuses the proper designations for his own
The majority of people follow the established

conventions, but are their actions any less fraudulent? What the majority of
people hate is not being deceived, but the harmful consequences of being
deceived. Once again, Nietzsche does not assert that there is no value to such
a grade of truth. Rather, he wants to question whether there is a higher grade
of truth that we ought to pursue. The point of his criticism of both rationalists
and empiricists is to question whether or not the imperatives that they
recommend for the conduct of our inquiry can lift us out of the this state. In
this state, we can establish a certain peace. We can rest in confidence that the
fixed conventions have the status of accepted certainties. But we lack
freedom. Nietzsche does not believe that either account can improve our
freedom. The reason is that neither teaches us to act from a pure impulse to
truth. Rather, they encourage us to seek the pleasant consequences of
preserving the fixed conventions.
selfish purposes and causes harm to others.
Kants categorical imperative results in duty being impersonal. This results in

a society where we work simply out of necessity and no person choice
resulting in the destruction of ourselves like the German writer Heinreich von
Kleis
J. Thomas Howe 2003
Faithful to the Earth. J. Thomas Howe studied at Lake Forest College (BA, 1989), Yale Divinity School (MAR, 1993), and Claremont
Graduate University (PhD, 1999). He teaches at the Iliff School of Theology and Regis University in Denver, Colorado
With this point in mind, Nietzsche takes Kants categorical imperative as the
very recipe for decadence, even for idiocy (A,11). The ideas of a good-in-itself
and universal (noncontextual) notions of cirtue and duty are chimeras and
expressions of decline, of the final exhaustion of life (A, 11). They make duty
impersonal. Nietzsche does not dismiss notions of duty and virtue but only
suggests that they must be personal discoveries. Regarding Kant, he says: Yet
this nihilist with his Christian dogmatic entrails considered pleasure an objection. What could destroy us more
Page 215 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner necessity,
without any deeply personal choice, without pleasureas an automaton of
duty? (A,11) For Nietzsche, the result of this is a general weakening of the
human personality. Along similar lines, Nietzsche takes Kants aesthetics to lead to the same sort of weakening of
human personality. For Kant, Nietzsche quotes, the beautiful is that which gives us pleasure without interest (GM, III:6). Nietzsche is
amused by this, writing, If one can even view undraped female statues without interest, one may laugh a little at their expense
(GM, III:12). Nietzsche offers Stendhals idea of beauty as a contrast to Kants disinterested aesthetic. Stendhal calls the beautiful
une promesse de Bonheur, which ought to arouse the will (GM, III:6). In schopenhauer, Nietzsche finds a manifestation of the
Kantian aesthetic that brings its nihilism into clear light. Making use of the Kantian notion of disinterested beauty, Schopenhauer finds
aesthetic contemplation to be lupulin and camphor, a sort of anesthesia for the will. Asking us to listen to its tone and sentiment,
Nietzsche quotes Schopenhauer: This is the painless condition that Epicurus praised as the highest good and the condition of the
gods; for a moment we are delivered from the vile urgency of the will; we celebrate the Sabbath of the penal servitude of volition, the
wheel of Ixion stands still! (GM, III:6) Schopenhauer thought that the beautiful should calm the will, and, by calming it, the human
being can find a degree of relief. Not far down the road from this point in intellectual history is Nietzsches last man, who no longer
To be sure, there is a difference between the last man and the

human being Kant envisioned as governed by the categorical imperative. But
insofar as Kant relegated the sphere of meaningfulness to the sphere of the
noumena, he made such a realm ultimately unavailable. If such a person were
to live according to the Kantian worldview, with a high degree of honesty, he
or she would resemble, as Nietzsche writes, the German writer Heinrich von
Kleist. In 1811, Kleist committed suicide. His desire to live was diminished
earlier when his conviction that the world was meaningful, purposeful, and
knowable was shattered by Kants epistemology. Nietzsche writes in Schopenhauer as Educator
that Kleist suffered from a despair of truth (SE, 3). This danger, he continues,
accompanies every thinker whose starting point is Kantian philosophy (SE, 3).
Nietzsche then goes on to quote a letter from Kleist: A short while a go I
became acquainted with Kants philosophyand I must now share with you one
of his ideas, whereby I dare not fear that it will shatter you as deeply and painfully
as it did me. We cannot decide whether what we call truth is really truth, or whether it only appears to us to be such. If the
desires anything.
latter is the case, then the truth we collect here is nothing upon our death. And all our efforts to procure a possession that will follow
us to the grave are in vain
other.
My sole, my supreme aim has disappeared, and I have no
(SE, 3).
Kants categorical imperative creates a world where people are impersonal to

the notion of duty. A nation following this categorical imperative of impersonal
duty will assure its destruction as it makes a nation of conscience lacking
machines.
Nietzsche
The Antichrist
Friedrich
1895
A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention; it must
spring out of our personal need and defence. In every other case it is a source
of danger. That which does not belong to our life menaces it; a virtue which
has its roots in mere respect for the concept of "virtue," as Kant would have it,
is pernicious. "Virtue," "duty," "good for its own sake," goodness grounded
upon impersonality or a notion of universal validitythese are all chimeras,
and in them one finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life ,
the Chinese spirit of Konigsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of selfpreservation and of growth: to
A nation goes to pieces when it

confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more
complete and penetrating disaster than every "impersonal" duty, every
sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.To think that no one has thought
wit, that every man find hisown virtue, his own categorical imperative.
Page 216 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
of Kant's categorical imperative as dangerous to life!...The theological instinct alone took it under
protection !An action prompted by the lifeinstinct proves that it is a right action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and
What destroys a man

more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any
deep personal desire, without pleasureas a mere automaton of duty? That
is the recipe for decadence, and no less for idiocy. . . Kant became an idiot.
yet that Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as an objection . . .
And such a man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs passed for the German philosopherstill
Didn't Kant see in the French

Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic form to the
organic? Didn't he ask himself if there was a single event that could be explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in
passes today! . . . I forbid myself to say what I think of the Germans. . . .
man, so that on the basis of it, "the tendency of mankind toward the good" could be explained, once and for all time? Kant's answer:
"That is revolution." Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct as a revolt against nature, German decadence as a
philosophythat is Kant!
The categorical imperative destroys any individualism and promote

sovereignty by claiming in the name of self-preservation we must embrace a
universal ethics
White 97
(University of Illinois Press, Nietzsche and the problem of sovereignty)
Kants philosophy may have enabled the resurgence of tragic wisdom. But it soon became clear to Nietzsche that while his own
philosophy was also concerned with the sovereignty of the individual, Kantian solutions, like the categorical imperative, must entail
Nietzsche describes the

categorical imperative as typical metaphysical ploy. He views it as an attempt
to escape or redeem individual existence by directing it after a law that is both
universal and necessary. The fundamental laws of self-preservation and
growth demand that everyone invent his own virtue, his own categorical
imperative, he writes. Nothing ruins us more profoundly, more intimately
than every impersonal duty, every sacrifice to the Moloch of abstraction AC
the complete oblivion of the individual as such. In The Antichrist, for example,
sec. 11). We might say that for Kant we are only moral (and hence autonomous) agents insofar as we disregard the particularities of
Nietzsche
asserts that the categorical imperative is therefore an immoral concept
since it suppresses the singularity of individual existence within the
monotonous rule of law. In fact, Nietzsche realized that by reason by itself,
or through the meditation of the categorical imperative, may never be used to
direct or determine the nature of individual sovereignty. This conclusion is in
keeping with our basic understanding of what sovereignty means. If
sovereignty really is the celebration of the individual, or that mode of being in
which the individual achieves some kind of self-possession, the legislation of
any specific formula for sovereignty actually denies individuality by
attempting to order it in advance. The paradox here is that no one may simply legislate sovereignty, since
space and time to consider ourselves the embodiment of universal law. Arguing from the perspective of sovereignty,
sovereignty is precisely the commandment one has over oneself. Thus, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche celebrates his own life and the
project of self-appropriation, but he deliberately frustrates all imitation when he warns about the danger of all books, or when he
counters the heroic portrayal of himself as the champion of impossible causes with a warning to beware of all great poses(EH Why I
Am So Clever sec. 10). Clearly, he understood that to prescribe the specific content of sovereignty is ipso facto to destroy it; and he
was therefore bound to reject Kans circumspection of autonomy and sovereignty in the formula of the categorical imperative. In the
end, Nietzsches criticism of Kant is really a critique from within. For it is an attempt to radicalize Kant that is still guided by the same
sovereign ideal that is common to both of them. And perhaps for this reason ,
Nietzsches invective against

Kant is so relentless and impassioned; for in this way he empathizes the
essential difference between their retrospective projects. In fact, Nietzsches
meditation on Kants doctrine of sovereignty suggests the paradoxical nature
of Nietzsche own philosophical goal. In all of the passages quoted above,
Nietzsche criticizes Kant because the latter has abandoned the individual to
Page 217 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the rule of the impersonal law. Clearly, Nietzsches goal is somehow to rescue
individuals from whatever values, institutions, or moralities constrain them
and encoureage self-oblivion. But if sovereignty is to be identified with the affirmation of the individual as such,
then it follows that sovereignty can never be conceptually appropriated; the individual is that which cannot be analyzed, reduced, or
repeated in language: individuum ineffabile est. In this sense, however, a philosophy of sovereignty is bound to express that which
can never be said. Hence it must remain deeply problematic and will require every kind of ruse and strategy if it is ever to succeed.
Page 218 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****BIOPOWER*****
**Link: State Ethics**
The affirmatives attempt to secure society allows for the government to rule
a state of exception on behalf of Humanitarian Imperatives. It allows the
sovereigns biopower to go global
Doucet 2008
(Miguel De Larrinaga and Marc G, Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa, Associate Professor at
the Department of Political Science at Saint Marys University, Sovereign Power and the Biopolitics of
Human Security Sage Journals) MF
The second area of complementarity can be seen as relating to the manner in which Agamben articulates
the relationship between bare life and the exercise of sovereign power as one that operates through the
state of exception. What we argue here is that human security is instrumental in sovereign
powers ability to delineate the circumstances in which such a state of

exception can be proclaimed. What the discourse of human security does,
whether broad or narrow, is to help define the exceptional circumstances that require
the international communitys intervention, whether on behalf of humanitarian
imperatives as initially conceived or in the service of maintaining global order as made evident more
recently. It does so by initially constructing the terms that inform the exceptional
circumstances that define the range of threats to human life . In turn, it
contributes to the labour of defining and authorizing when the suspension of
conventional international law of nations can occur . The question that surfaces at this
juncture is what authorizes the suspension of the law in the name of human security when the discourse of
human security has yet to find its codification as international law? In other words, what allows human
security to stand before the law? Returning to Agamben, human security can be understood here as
participating in the institution of a form of sovereign power insofar as it simultaneously operates within and
outside the law. It points towards a zone of indistinction in relation to its efforts to codify the authorization
of a form of international intervention that becomes apparent in the fact that this authorization has yet to
receive the status of international law while, at the same time, it must invoke the force that law normally
assumes. The human security discourse thus finds itself in an aporia in relation to international law, which
it must suspend while simultaneously invoking its force. On this point, Agambens reading of the
relationship between sovereign power and biopower clearly brings back an element of analysis that is
intentionally left aside in Foucaults biopoliticization of sovereign power highlighted through his reading of
racism noted earlier. Agamben allows us to reintroduce the connection between the institution of the
juridico-political order and biopower, which much of Foucaults work on modern forms of power under the
rubric of a multiplicity of force relations sought to sever (Neal, 2004: 375). Having said that, Agambens
reading is not entirely satisfactory either, which leads us to the final element of the assemblage between
sovereign power and biopower brought to light by the human security discourse. Following Connollys
critique noted earlier, Agamben appears to maintain a view of the logic and paradox of sovereign power as
coherent and ultimately centred on the sovereignty of the state. The cartography of the form of sovereign
power that articulates itself through the human security discourse would seem to complicate this view.
Human security can be read as informing the institution of a form of sovereign

power that ultimately has as its plane of exercise the globe. This element of
globality emerges most clearly in the manner in which the human security
discourse articulates threats. Constituting threats specifically in terms of
threats to human life means that the human security discourse, through a
categorization and accounting of such threats, must constitute them with a
view of (in)security that is global. In conceptual terms, viewing human life as a
grounds upon which the (in)security dilemma is played out makes the life of
Page 219 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the human species the referent of security (Dillon, 2007). To be sure, the human
security discourse in practice identifies these threats as emanating from
specific locales insofar as its interventions target delimited non-Western
populations, and thus the Western state clearly continues to play a central role
in mounting the recent series of international interventions . However, too much
emphasis on the state misses how such interventions have come to depend upon strategic complexes of
global governance that bring together state and non-state actors, public and private organizations,
military and civilian organisations (Duffield, 2001: 45). In helping to constitute key elements
of the state of exception, the human security discourse prepares the

conceptual ground upon which such complexes are bound up with instituting a
form of global sovereign power unmoored from the formal juridico-political
sovereignty of any one state or coalition of states . Within the post-9/11 moment, then,
human security can be seen as having laid the conceptual terrain for a form of
human subjectivity amenable to the exercise of global sovereign rule . Rather than
seeing a disjuncture between pre- and post-9/11, human security proposes a form of life that is intimately
connected to the assemblages of biopower and sovereign power that mark this rule.
The modern humanitarian movement is rendered in biopolitical terms and

actually works to extend the states biopolitical control to a global scale
Doucet 2008
Human Security Sage Journals)
This article has sought to explore the interconnections between biopower and sovereign power in relation
to the human security discourse. An entry point into understanding factors contributing to such an
assemblage is to be found precisely in the shifting conceptions of security in the postwar period. In this
frame, the circulatory dynamics become the new grounds upon which to understand global order in terms
of security. From here, the broadening and deepening of security can be traced to
the apprehension of irremediable threats at a global level . It is from this general
context that we can comprehend the advent of the human security discourse in both its broad and narrow
forms. While the human security discourse draws from the transformations of security in the postwar
environment, it also, we argued, moves towards new terrain. Most notably, it casts the problematique of
(in)security in biopolitical terms by having the health and welfare of populations as its referent. Much of
the initial work of the human security discourse has been about properly
ordering, categorizing and accounting for the true threats to human life . More
recently, the formalization and institutionalization of the human security discourse within the UN has
begun to locate areas of strategic intervention that, informed by rationalities of governmentality, are
meant to minimize risks by distinguishing between good and bad circulation. In the post-9/11 era, we
identify continuity rather than rupture in the human security discourse. While many would see the
humanitarian impulse within the human security discourse as anathema to

emerging patterns of world order signed by the global war on terrorism, we
make the argument that, in rendering life in biopolitical terms, this discourse
in fact prepares the ground for the operation of a form of sovereign power that
claims the globe as its field of operation. What an institutional examination of the human
security discourse affords us is a way in which we can trace the assemblage of sovereign power and
biopower in the contemporary moment while concurrently revealing a complexity to this articulation that
escapes its more formal theorization. In rendering life bare and politically unqualified,
human security enables a form of human subjectivity amenable to the sway of

sovereign power exercised from the global realm. Moreover, we argue that the human
security discourse is intimately bound with the problematique of exceptionality, and thus participates in
providing the ground for the justification of suspending founding elements of international law while
simultaneously seeking the force that law must entail in order to authorize a new form of international
Page 220 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
this production of human subjectivity that the

human security discourse participates in enabling, coupled with the logic of
exceptionality in the post-9/11 moment, can be understood as providing the
grounds for an exercise of sovereign power on a planetary scale.
intervention. Finally, we suggest that
The States attempt to be ethical is just a cover to increase biopolitical control

over the population. Humanitarian intervention is meant to justify state
sponsored security and control over life
Doucet 2008
During the 1990s, the concept of human security circulating among academics,
governments, policy institutes, nongovernmental organizations,
intergovernmental bodies and the media became increasingly influential in
narrating the changing patterns of world order and prescribing action within
them. Meant to figure the shifting source and meaning of threats, human
security coincided with the broader labour of redefining traditional notions of
national security that had begun in the 1970s but intensified with the collapse of the Cold War.
Although the discursive economy of human security tended to be divided between strong notions
(emphasizing threats such as famine, hunger, disease and economic crisis) and narrow readings (focusing
on violence, state failure, civil war, crimes against humanity and genocide ), the common thread
that tied the discourse together was the emphasis on shifting the referent
from the state to the individual and, thus, bringing security down to the lives
of human beings. In so doing, the discursive economy of human security not only
sought to unravel the notion of security from statism and the interstate
system, but also attempted to couple security with the concerns of
international humanitarianism and human development. The responses to world order
marked by the events of 9/11 seem to have created two positions with regards to the present and future of the concept of human
security.1 On the one hand, there are those who would argue that 9/11 sounded the death knell of the human security discourse . The
military actions and the counter-insurgency campaigns waged in various parts of the globe that sign the global war on terror would
suggest a violent and brutal return to the discourse of traditional state-centric security and the concomitant collapse of the vaunted
From unsanctioned,
preemptive military actions against harbouring states and rogue states and
targeted military operations to support the war on terror, to extralegal
detention centres, state-sponsored assassinations, extraordinary rendition,
deportation without due process, suspension of habeas corpus and indefinite
detention, the contemporary moment certainly does not seem to leave much
space for governance with a human face. On the other hand, for others, while the policies
New World Order foretold in the early 1990s from which the notion of human security emerged.
and actions unleashed by the global war on terror certainly appear to mark a setback in the form of world
order that is necessary for the continued implementation of human security, 9/11 served as a stark
reminder of the kinds of socio-economic conditions that the broader human security discourse was meant
to remedy. Advocates would point to the continued institutionalization of this discourse
within the United Nations as evidence that the unilateral measures of the United States do not
obviate the need for, and have not mitigated the continued articulation of
policies and practices aimed at, the development of a more humane form of
global governance. This article argues that both possible responses leave unattended the manner
in which the human security discourse works towards setting the terrain for the transition from the pre- to
the post-9/11 world order. The initial humanitarian imperatives that drive the
discussions surrounding the need to bring greater security to human lives help
Page 221 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
to constitute a form of life amenable to an exercise of the form of sovereign

power that has marked the post-9/11 era. This article traces this alternative reading by
illustrating how the concept of human security can be read as working to set the
discursive terrain for the dual exercise of sovereign power and biopower . Using
the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, we outline this duality by examining not only how the
human security discourse participates in defining the conditions of exceptionality, thus enabling the
exercise of sovereign power, but also how, in having human life as its target, human
security ultimately enacts the human in biopolitical terms. Seen from this vantage
point, the concept of human security informs the current biopolitical networks
of global governmentalities and works in conjunction with rather than

against the exercise of sovereign power made evident by the global war on
terrorism. The article also seeks to turn the discussion towards theory by bringing to light how our
reading of the conceptual deployment of human security from the vantage point of the international leads
to assemblages of sovereign power and biopower unanticipated by the theoretical articulations offered by
Foucault and Agamben. Our initial aim is to examine what, at first sight, may appear as two competing
modalities of power that is, sovereign power and biopower. We then turn to the concept of security with
regards to the conditions of possibility for the development of the human security discourse in the postCold War world. This sets the stage for our examination of human security. Here, our objective is twofold:
(a) to interpret the concept of human security through biopower and sovereign power, as noted above, and
(b), conversely, to use the human security discourse as a vantage point from which
to read the way in which these technologies of power can be seen as

interwoven in ways not made evident by their theoretical articulation.
The idea of human rights and a states obligation to protect things like hunger
is just the moving of security discourse into the private life. This idea of an
ethical responsibility is just the states excuse for further biopolitical control
of everyday life
Doucet 2008
DT
What we propose below is an examination of the complementarity between sovereign power and biopower via the concept of human
security as it has been articulated from the realm of the international, while concurrently revealing how the human security discourse
itself provides a way of tracing some of the complexity highlighted above, thus problematizing the more formal and theoretical
assemblage of sovereign power and biopower found in the work of Foucault and Agamben. In order to place this analysis in context,
we begin by tracing the discourse of security from the post-World War II context onward. What we intend to show is that the shift from
the term defence to security helps set the terrain from which the interweaving of biopower and sovereign power found in the
concept of human security is rendered possible. The formal origins of the concept of human security are to be found in the worldview
of an international organization that was concerned with post- Cold War humanitarian issues, and only subsequently became
enmeshed in the discourse of national foreign policy concerns and academic debates on security. Generally attributed to the 1994
the initial impulse was to

shift the referent from the state to the legitimate concerns of ordinary people
who s[eek] security in their daily lives (UNDP, 1994: 22). In other words, the objective
was to bring security down to the level of human life by seeking to develop
strategies in the provision of both safety from such chronic threats as hunger,
disease and repression and protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in
the patterns of daily life whether in homes and jobs or in communities (UNDP,
1994: 23). In so doing, security was to be decoupled from the particular national
interest of states and tied to the universal concern[s ] (UNDP, 1994: 22) of all
people. In articulating itself universally, human security was therefore initially meant to
be built upon the bedrock of universal human rights. This move would be
accompanied by efforts to identify a comprehensive list of threats that the all
encompassing (UNDP, 1994: 24) concept of human security would respond to
UNDP Human Development Report and some of the concurrent writings of Mahbub ul-Haq ,
Page 222 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
that is, economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and

political security (UNDP, 1994: 2425). Clear connections were made between severe impediments to human
development and pervasive and chronic threats to the fulfilment of human potential. Such a broad formulation sought
to transcend the state, insofar as it brought into question its role as a provider of security relative to other actors for
example, international organizations, NGOs and non-military government agencies while simultaneously identifying
the state itself as a potential source of insecurity. This elision of the state also served to make the quotidian the object
of security. Whereas security tended to be understood in terms of defining historical moments centred around the
survival and integrity of the state, we now see emerging an understanding of (in)security that arises more from
worries about daily life than from the dread of a cataclysmic world event (UNDP, 1994: 22). In this way, human
security certainly participated in the broader redefinition of security begun in the 1970s and 1980s; however, it also
set off on new terrain, in that shifting its referent to the individual introduces as threats a host of contingencies that
emerge from daily life. This initial deployment of the concept in the mid-1990s was subsequently accompanied by
other efforts to theorize human security in ways that would be more amenable to the multilateral and middle-power
approaches found in the foreign policy concerns of certain states. Examples like the Responsibility To
Protect generally moved away from the broader development concerns of the
Human Development Report towards a more narrow focus on introducing a
new set of international norms on intervention that would guide and restrict
the conduct of the state and the international community in extreme and
exceptional cases (ICISS, 2001: 31). Here, the threats are concomitantly narrowed
down to violent threats to individuals (Human Security Center, 2005: viii), such as mass
murder and rape, ethnic cleansing by forcible expulsion and terror, and
deliberate starvation and exposure to disease (United Nations, 2004: 65). Emphasis shifts
from an understanding of threats that stem from a broad set of quotidian political, social, economic and environmental
contingencies, to what are deemed to be avoidable catastrophe[s] (United Nations, 2004: 65). Within this context,
there is a partial but significant return to the state, in that it is through the nexus of the state that the provision of both
security and insecurity, by state and non-state actors, is predominantly understood.
The State exploits and destroys the Other in the name of humanitarian
intervention and for the sake of humanity as a whole
Doucet 2008
The traditional apparatus of the state as concerns its monopoly over the
(il)legitimate use of violence also makes its return in the form of military
intervention as a response of last resort to the extreme violation of rights that
are held as inviolable. This then enables the shift towards tying security to the
notion of the states ability or inability to fulfil its responsibility to protect the
human beings within its care. In this sense, the referent and threats continue to
be articulated in non-territorial forms, as within the broader notion of human
security, but the responses are framed within the nexus of the state and
therefore call forth a statist conception of security. This return to the state is
made all the more evident in the manner in which the narrower concept of
human security centres around (re)defining norms surrounding the legitimacy of the
international communitys right to intervention. Such an effort attempts to inaugurate and
codify a new law around a set of norms that simultaneously requires the
suspension of certain foundational elements of international law in cases of
violence which so genuinely shock the conscience of mankind, or which
present such a clear and present danger to international security, that they
require coercive military intervention (ICISS, 2001: 31) on the part of the international
community. It is the concept of human security that serves to define and identify the extreme and
exceptional circumstances that it itself requires in the subsequent formulation of its responses. In so doing,
Page 223 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the human security discourse participates in setting the conditions for both
the suspension of the law and the authorization of its refounding in the form
of new norms of intervention. As we will explore below, this marks a key dimension of
the operation of the concept of sovereign power elaborated earlier. The bulk of the most
current stage of the development of the human security discourse can be found in the institutionalization
of that discourse within the UN, beginning with the 2004 report by the High-Level Panel on Threats,
Challenges and Change (United Nations, 2004), the UN Secretary-Generals 2005 report In Larger Freedom
(United Nations, 2005a), the General Assemblys World Summit Outcome Document in September 2005
(United Nations, 2005b), and UN Security Council Resolutions 1674 and 1706, adopted in April and August
of 2006, respectively. These documents which set the stage for the formalization of the human security
discourse within the UN via its two main bodies.10 In parallel with these developments, the independent
Advisory Board on Human Security and the Human Security Unit (HSU) within the Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) were created in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Both were
fashioned as a result of the recommendations formulated in the Human Security Commissions (2003)
report Human Security Now, and both were charged with disseminating and integrating human security
within the UN and beyond. These activities have been financed by the UN Trust Fund for Human Security
(UNTFHS), set up by the government of Japan, which also sponsored the establishment of the
Commission.11 The Human Security Unit reports that an average of 24 projects have been funded per year
since 2004. While these developments are recent and cannot be overstated given the chill that 9/11
brought to the debates on international humanitarian intervention, they do however indicate an attempt at
mainstreaming the concept of human security through a process of initiating formalization and
institutionalization. What follows is a reading of the broad and narrow conceptions of human security
informed by our earlier elaboration of the concepts of sovereign power and biopo wer.
The ability of the state to apply good or bad ethical claims is the root of
security discourse. In the name of ethics the affirmative gives the state
increased biopolitical control.
Doucet 2008
In (re)defining the threats to human life as its most basic operation, the
discourse of human security must begin by defining and enacting the human in
biopolitical terms. The target of human security, whether broad or narrow, is
to make live the life of the individual through a complex of strategies initiated
at the level of populations. In defining and responding to threats to human
life, these strategies have as their aim the avoidance of risk and the
management of contingency in the overall goal of improving the life lived by
the subjects invoked in their own operation. In this sense, as with Foucaults understanding
of the biopolitical, the health and welfare of populations is human securitys frame of intervention;
however, until its recent institutionalization within the UN, the human security discourse, from
the vantage point of the international , has been marked mostly by defining and
identifying the global patterns and trends of human insecurity. In other words, the
human security discourses initial move is found in creating the measurements

that aggregate the threats to human life. The clearest example of this initial labour in
relation to the narrower understanding of human security can be found in the Human Security Report in
2005, which boasts that no annual publication maps the trends in the incidence, severity, causes and
consequences of global violence as comprehensively (Human Security Centre, 2005: viii). This quest to
properly order, categorize and account for the true threats to human life in the post-Cold War world is
also exemplified in the series of UNDP reports. As Mark Duffield & Nicholas Waddell (2006: 5) point out,
the UNDP . . . launched its annual Human Development Report in 1990, dedicating it to . . . ending the
mismeasure of human progress by economic growth alone. It is through this mapping that
Page 224 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the human security discourse then advocates on behalf of specific areas of

strategic intervention in the name of the health and welfare of targeted
populations. Although still in their infancy, the strategies are meant to foster
development as a means of securing the health and welfare of targeted
populations. Recent programmes detailed by the Human Security Unit include preventing the abuse of
illicit drugs in Afghanistan; addressing the health of women and adolescents affected by HIV in Honduras,
El Salvador and Guatemala; contributing to the provision of more secure access to small-scale energy
services for local basic necessities in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Guinea; combating the trafficking
of women and children in Cambodia and Vietnam; providing access to education in Kosovo; integrating
displaced peoples in Colombia; promoting the radio broadcasting of information covering humanitarian
issues in areas of Africa and Afghanistan; building civic participation and self-reliance in Timor-Leste; and
stabilizing refugee host communities through a multifaceted strategy that includes the reduction of small
arms and the provision of basic education, food and environmental security in Tanzania (United Nations
Human Security Unit, 2006). Such programmes operate at the level of the chronic insecurities in the dayto-day life of targeted populations. They envision human security as part of comprehensive, integrated,
people-centered solutions (United Nations Human Security Unit, 2006: 2) that are meant to provide a
measure of remedy to quotidian threats. While the programmes target specific populations in delimited
locales, the threats are themselves framed in regards to circulation and seek to
ultimately distinguish the bad from the good flows in terms of (in)security . In
this scenario, following from the programme examples above, good circulation would include
information on humanitarian issues, civic participation and self-reliance; bad

circulation would entail, inter alia, trafficking, illicit drugs and small arms.
Returning to Foucaults understanding of security and circulation elaborated earlier, the frame of
intervention of the human security discourse, in seeking to maximize the
positive elements and minimize the risks to human life, operates on a terrain
of calculability that attempts to manage the incalculable through probabilities.
In its initial stages, the objective of the human security discourse, in seeking to
distinguish between bad and good circulation, had as its primary grammar of
reference sustainable human development.12 With the post-9/11 moment and the ensuing
war on terror, however, the distinction between good and bad circulation tends to take as its frame of
reference global order. With the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as the
subsequent bombings in Madrid and London, the globality of the circulation of threats for the West
becomes more explicit, and consequently a new cartography of threats and vulnerabilities is drawn up and
rationalities and technologies are deployed to counter them. As Duffield & Waddell (2006: 10) explain in
relation to the war on terrorism: The predominance of security concerns, especially
homeland security, means that issuesof global circulation of people,

weapons, networks, illicit commodities, money, information, and so on
emanating from, and flowing through the worlds conflict zones, now influence
the consolidating biopolitical function of development . Unlike Duffield & Waddells work,
the tack we would like to follow in the section below is not directed towards
tracing the biopolitical function of international development practices in
relation to the war on terror, but to the way in which the human security
discourse participates in setting the terrain for and the deployment of
sovereign power.
In the name of humanitarian and ethical concerns the government intervenes
even more into the person life of the people. The biopolitical order is
reinforced by the idea that the state has a responsibility to its people and
therefore has a right to control it.
Doucet 2008
Page 225 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
One would be hard pressed to find a more paradigmatic symbol of the post- 9/11 world order than Camp
Delta. Guantnamo Bay has become the prime example through which the
question of exceptionalism and its bounded relationship to sovereignty has

come to the fore.13 How is it possible to reconcile the biopolitical function of human security outlined
above with the exceptional times of the post-9/11 world? What are the mechanisms and assemblages
through which we can understand the complementarity between biopower and sovereign power? In this
final section, we explore what we understand to be two key dimensions that mark the complementarity
between these forms of power while simultaneously showing how their articulation problematizes the way
in which they have been understood in theoretical terms. We have already explored via Agambens work
how rendering life bare can be seen as the originary activity of sovereign power. What can be brought to
light here, in relation to our discussion of human security above, is that the life lived by the subjects of the
human security discourse can be seen as life lived as bare inasmuch as this discourse is not meant to
qualify political life. As explored previously, life through the lens of human security is understood primarily
in terms of providing for the basic sustenance of day-to-day life. Brought into the post-9/11
context, what this enables is an opening towards mapping global order in a

way that apportions this bare life in relation to zones of exceptionality
amenable to the logic of an exercise of sovereign power. This is reflected in the
way development objectives and humanitarian goals now tend to submit more
directly to the dictates of the management of global order . Instead of targeting
populations that are most insecure as measured by the human security
discourse and viewing the provision of security to those populations as an end
in itself, the targeting is now overridden by the hard security concerns of
homelands and ends understood increasingly in terms of the aims of the
global war on terror.14 While the human security discourse could always be critically interpreted
as prioritizing its responses to populations that are threatened in relation to servicing the maintenance of
the global liberal order (Chandler, 2004), the shift here can be understood as one where
this servicing reveals a more intimate connection between sovereign power,

biopolitics and the maintenance of post- 9/11 order. This connection comes in the way in
which the human security discourse prepares conceptually a form of life that is at hand for the mounting of
proactive interventions of pre-emption and prevention. We can see elements of this shift in the most recent
institutional developments of the human security discourse within the UN. To be certain, the post-
9/11 moment can be taken as a movement away from a further codification of

grounds for humanitarian intervention that would have as its objective the
health and welfare of populations as an end in itself . As Alex Bellamy (2006: 165)
chronicles, the language of the World Summit Outcome Document as it relates to
the model of humanitarian intervention outlined in the 2001 ICISS report was
watered down in favour of reinforcing not only the principle that the burden of
protecting populations fell chiefly on individual states, but also the idea that
the threshold for interventions on humanitarian grounds should be high . Thus,
there was a clear shift in the document away from what was meant to be
shared responsibility between the international community and the host state
through a re-emphasis of the responsibility of the latter . At the same time, the
document also moved towards safeguarding the Security Councils political discretion to choose when and
whether it would intervene rather than endorsing binding criteria that would compel the Council to act in
cases of clear humanitarian emergencies, as prescribed in the ICISS report (Bellamy, 2006: 166167).
While these changes can be seen as weakening the case for binding the Council to intervene on
humanitarian grounds, they can also be read as broadening the scope for
interventions on discretionary grounds. They do this by further codifying the range of
justifications for intervention that emerged from Security Council resolutions during the 1990s while
Page 226 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
simultaneously reaffirming the Councils ability to choose which cases merit its attention. Perhaps most
importantly, the outcome document retains the understanding of sovereignty

as responsibility outlined in the ICISS report, reinforcing the notion that it is
the host state that has the primary responsibility to protect. The test of
responsibility here remains couched in terms of the biopolitical functions of
the state insofar as what is measured is the latters ability or inability to
provide for the health and welfare of the populations within its care. As recounted
by Bellamy (2006: 164167), the negotiations leading to the final draft of the outcome document came as
a result of pressure from representatives of states that wanted either a free hand to determine whether
and when to intervene (the USA) or to retain the traditional supremacy of sovereignty in terms of political
and legal autonomy (Russia and China). Although this can be taken as a deferral to the norms of territorial
inviolability, there is a continued adherence to an understanding of sovereignty
that is qualified in line with the states biopolitical functions, in that each
individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity (United
Nations, 2005b: para. 138). Combined with the endorsement of the Security Councils political discretion
on intervention, these most recent institutional developments could also be read
as a codification of sovereignty in biopolitical terms, and thus as reinforcing

the linkages between sovereign power and biopower.
Page 227 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Link: Ethics**
Foundationalism is a moral stance that leads towards a homogenous
biopolitical structure
Jeffrey Minson 1985
Genealogies of Morals: Nietzsche, Foucault, Donzelot and the Eccentricity of Ethics
Foundationalism we define abstractly as follows. It views ethical

considerations as always grounding, and therefore ideally overriding other
considerations. The ethical cannot be confined to other province of human and
social life but rather subsumes all other provinces. This subsumption consists
in always being entitled to subject economic, political, artistic, legal or any
other aspects of situation to its criteria of evaluations. Moral evaluations takes priority over
other particularistic and consequently one-sided types of evaluations; these themselves lie under an injunction to attempt to take
Evaluations takes the form of

subjecting actions or state of affairs to the test of whether they conform to the
first principles of that ethic. To take a well-known example from eighteenth century political philosophy, Jeremy
their cue from the ethic mode of evaluations which transcends them all.
Benthams Fragment on Government advertised the merits of the principle of utility as the rock on which all rationally justifiable
Parliamentary legislation and social administration must be grounded: accurately apprehended and steadily applied (the principle
However,
philosophical theories hold no monopoly on this form of argument. Anticipating the
of utility) affords the only clue to guide a man through these straits (Bentham 1967, pp. 93, 97).
case-study on abortion in Chapter 8 below, it is on the basis of ethical foundationalism that people view abortion as primarily a moral
issue, the questionable corollary of this view being that principled abortion law and policy must flow from a prior consideration of its
moral justifibiability. Foundationalism is never a purely ethical stance; over and above principles of evaluations or justification, it
always embodies a view (if not in explicit empirical propositions, then in its metaphors, imagery and rhetoric) about its moral
constituency i.e. the nature of the agents who are subjected to its constraints. When Mary Midgley seeks to base her ethics on
foundationalism framework
orders the space in which these universal human attributes can appear as the
prior and ethically decisive one. Foundationalisms mode of evaluation conveys
two implications in respect to change: (i) if something is morally wrong,
therefore we ought to move heaven and earth to change it; and (ii) an
imperialist impulse towards homogenization, i.e. an urge to remould the whole
world in the ideal image of its first principles. For these reasons
foundationalism may be singled out as the single most important key to the
enigma of the so-called eccentricity of ethics which was first broached in the preface.
universal human needs, she neglects to take account of the extent to which the ethical
Attempts to coercively generalize ethical stances results in reinforcing the

already hierarchal and dominating system of the state, this coercively brings
people into the states control and is biopolitical
Richard Day 2001
Ethics, affinity and the coming communities. B.A.Sc.(UBC), M.A.(York,Toronto), Ph.D.(SFU)
Associate Professor
Contemporary Western societies are not only societies of the tree; they are also societies of
the state form. Since it is impossible to do justice to this concept here, I will
restrict the discussion to the couplet war-machine/state form, and the relations of this
couplet with the arborescent/rhizomatic distinction. State forms, at the highest level of generality,
are apparatuses of capture that bring outside elements inside by
connecting them up with an arborescent system. While Deleuze and Guattari do provide elements of a
genealogy (1986: 42437), they are careful to point out that the state form cannot be traced back to a point of origin. Rather, there have been states
always and everywhere (429), coexisting in relations of competition and cooperation with war-machines, forces that are exterior to the state apparatus
and attempt to untie the bonds of capture (352), to destroy the State and its subjects (Deleuze and Parnet, 1983: 104). In terms of social and political
effects, states tend to perpetuate already instantiated (arborescent) forms, while war-machines tend to destroy old forms and instantiate new ones
through rhizomatic connections. Thus, for Deleuze and Guattari, revolutionary organization must be that of the war machine and not of state apparatus
Page 228 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This

(Guattari, 1995: 66); indeed, they see their own writing as an operation that weds a war machine and lines of flight, abandoning . . . the State
apparatus (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 24). Yet, just as arborescent forms can grow rhizomatic appendages, states can and must incorporate
warmachines, tame them and put them to use in an institutionalized army, make them part of the general police function (Deleuze and Parnet, 1983:
103). This is the special danger of the war-machine: if it does not succeed in warding off the development of a state form, it must pass into the service
of the state or destroy itself (104). It is here, in the form of ecstatic injunctions accompanied by somber warnings, that Deleuze and Guattari, like
Foucault, present not only a negative call to resistance, but also a consistent and positive ethicopolitical stance. At times, they take us even further
We
have no need to totalize that which is invariably totalized on the side of [dead]
power; if we were to move in this direction, it would mean restoring the
representative forms of centralism and a hierarchical structure. We must set
up lateral affiliations and an entire system of networks and popular bases
than this, advocating what Keith Ansell-Pearson has called novel images of positive social relations (Ansell-Pearson, 1998: 410). Thus Deleuze :
(Foucault, 1996: 78). This system of networks and popular bases, organized along rhizomatic lines and actively warding off the
would provide bases for social forces that neither ask

for gifts from the state (as in the liberal-democratic new social movements) nor seek state power
themselves (as in classical Marxism). Unlike the molar forms of social transformation,
these molecular movements would resist the will to domination in Foucaults
sense, in favour of affinity; that is, they would take up ethico-political
positions but refuse to try coercively to generalize these positions by making
moral, ontological, or other foundational claims.
development of arborescent structures,
Page 229 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****GOVERNMENT PROVISION*****
**Rimal**
Authoritarianism and constraints are key to avoid overpopulation and resource
crunch that will end life
Leeson 79 Adjunct Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Former
Professor of Political Science at Willamette University, Former Judicial Fellow for the
U.S. Supreme Court and Justice for the Oregon State Supreme Court [Susan,
Philosophical Implications of the Ecological Crisis: The Authoritarian Challenge to Liberalism
Polity Vol. 11, No. 3, pg. 303-318, jstor]
resources are finite. The conditions that

make life possible are being threatened by overpopulation and by industrial processes
which deplete resources and pollute air and water. Typically, the crisis is considered the result of
increasing shortages in the physical environment. However, a more complete understanding of
the ecological crisis requires an examination of human nature, especially as it has been
reflected in and shaped by modern political thought since the Renaissance. Modern
political thought, in a departure from classical modes of reasoning, emphasized
secularism, materialism, individualism, and individual rights-the cornerstones of the
political ideology of liberalism and the foundation of the American political system. The
resulting view of man's relations to his fellow man and to the physical environment
makes solutions to the ecological crisis particularly difficult in the United States because ,
contrary to the liberal ideology and political institutions so long enjoyed here, solutions will require
constraints on individual and group behavior . The radical departure of modern political philosophy
Essays on the ecological crisis usually stress the point that
from the classical tradition becomes apparent on recalling Plato's Republic, in which Socrates and the interlocutors sought to discover
the meaning of justice as it appeared in the soul and in the city. Their dialetical search for a just "City in Speech"-a hypothetical cityled them first to the simple city which provided for man's basic needs. It was well ordered but assured adequate provisions for only
the necessities of life. Though Socrates called it the city healthy, Glaucon called it a "city of pigs," for it failed to satisfy man's desire
for those comforts and conveniences which go far beyond life's necessities. This point forced the interlocutors to continue the search
for the City in Speech, examining not only the requirements of justice but the nature of human desires and the source of proper limits
human beings must

control their desires, and the discovery and implementation of proper controls , said
Socrates, required rule by philosophers. In order for the City in Speech to come into being,
philosophers would have to become kings or vice versa. But since chances of wisdom coinciding with consent
for the soul and the city.' Creation of the just City in Speech reflected the ancient understanding that
were slight, Socrates completed the dialogue by showing how the City in Speech could degenerate because of the triumph of
governing principles other than wisdom. The City in Speech was left to stand only as a standard by which to evaluate actual political
Its creation in the dialogue, however, exposed enduring political problems,

among them how to control human desires for material comforts and conveniences. The
communities.
classical tradition assumed that part of the art of governing was the control of such desires.2 In many ways
modern political philosophy stood this classical tradition on its head by emphasizing
popular consent rather than philosophic wisdom as a major goal of politics. Individual
rights and liberties became the source of limits on governmental authority . Government
came to be understood as originating from a contract agreed to by autonomous individuals. And the
pursuit of happiness became largely a pursuit of material goods for which there were no
natural limits. This modern political philosophy has nurtured the liberal tradition in
America. One of the major accomplishments of the Founders was creation of a political
system that legitimized the pursuit of material comforts , that thinkers in the classical tradition
had sought to harness. However, the success of the Founders' experiment in liberal
government depended on the infinite availability of the natural resources necessary for
such pursuits. Contemporary discovery of the earth's "carrying capacity," or limits to
nature's "commons," appears to jeopardize the continued success of the American
Page 230 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
experiment. If American political ideology and institutions have been successful

in encouraging pursuit of happiness through material acquisition, they appear
incapable of imposing the limits which are required to forestall ecological
disaster. This incapability, in turn, leads to arguments that popular government must give way
to authoritarianism. But if authoritarianism is the response to the inability of popular government to impose the limits
required to avoid ecological disaster, such a response merely reflects the crisis to which modern political philosophy and liberalism
have led; it is not itself a solution. There is no assurance that authoritarianism is any more capable of proper limits than is popular
government. Perhaps the best illumination of the dilemma posed by the ecological crisis is a review of the philosophy of John Locke,
whose thought profoundly influenced the Founders of the American republic.
Constitutional liberties encourage an unsustainable relationship with natural

resources
Lockean thought legitimated virtually endless accumulation of material goods; helped equate the process
of accumulation with liberty and the pursuit of happiness; helped implant the idea that with ingenuity man
can go beyond the fixed laws of nature, adhering only to whatever temporary laws he establishes for
himself in the process of pursuing happiness; and helped instill the notion that the "commons" is served
best through each man's pursuit of private gain, because there will always be enough for all who are
willing to work. In short, Lockean philosophy led to a strong ideology of man's relationship to man and the
earth, in which autonomous individuals seek comfort and enjoyment through hard work and material
acquisitions. Such beliefs, added to the doctrine of inalienable rights and the argument of limited
government, have played a significant role in the design of the American Constitution and political
Private property and liberty encourages unsustainable resource consumption


Less than forty years after the adoption of the Constitution, Alexis de Tocqueville observed
America, "Nothing checks the spirit of enterprise ." He noted that the enjoyment of
that in
liberty
could not be separated from the "productive industry" fostered by free enterprise. 14 The
dream of life lived for the enjoyment of liberty (freedom to pursue abundance through
productive enterprise) and happiness (the securing of abundance) appeared to be
coming true. Nothing in the constitutional structure threatened the dream, and it was
increasingly clear that government in the United States existed to secure the blessings of
property, just as Locke had taught . By the nineteenth century the radically secular orientation
of American liberalism was bolstered by developments in modern natural science. 15
Scientific advances provided new insights into the workings of the physical environment
and ways to control it. Technology and industrial- ism provided seemingly unlimited
opportunities to create the material abundance associated with happiness . Liberalism,
argues Louis Hartz, proved its real strength in driving out any ideological forces which sought to compete
with growing visions of abundance and happiness on earth.16 Although liberal ideology and
institutions nurtured the commitment to material abundance and earthly happiness in America, they
neglected to instill an understanding of America's dependence on natural resources.

Foreign observers saw the dependence much more clearly. For example, Tocqueville noted that: The
physical causes, independent of the laws, which contribute to promote general
prosperity, are more numerous in America than they have been in any other country in
Page 231 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the world, at any other period of history. In the United States not only is legislation
democratic, but Nature herself favors the cause of the people .17 However, John Stuart Mill
contended that despite such conditions unlimited growth was impossible because the resources of nature
were not infinite. Mill considered nature's physical limits a blessing and looked forward to a "stationary
state" in which population and capital would be balanced. He said such a state would still man's productive
passions and allow him to cultivate social and moral endowments.l8 Nineteenth-century German biologist
Ernest Haeckel coined the term "ecology" in his effort to point out man's dependence on his physical
environment. Every system, he argued, reflects three qualities-interdependence, complexity, and
limitation.l9 But ecological lessons ran contrary to the liberal belief that nature could and
must be conquered to serve man's purposes. And repeated warnings in this century that
man could exceed the carrying capacity of the environment if he did not limit population
or industrial processes have gone largely unheeded.20
Welfare is key to avoid the resource crunch that will end all life
a
or
industrialization is curtailed drastically, worldwide collapse of the ecosphere will occur
within 100 years.21 In 1974 an updated study responded to many of the criticisms leveled at the 1972
report but came to only slightly more optimistic conclusions: survival is possible, but only if
man diverts from the path of "undifferentiated growth" to "organic growth ."
That is, growth compatible with the requirements and limits of physical nature: For the
first time in man's life on earth, he is being asked to refrain from doing what he can do;
he is being asked to restrain his economic and technical advancement, or at least to
direct it differently from before; he is being asked by all the future generations of the
earth to share his good fortune with the unfortunate-not in a spirit of charity, but in a
spirit of survival.22
Of late, the warnings have intensified, notably in the reports of the Club of Rome. In 1972
sophisticated computer model developed by the Club projected that unless population
Tyranny is inevitable its only a question of how quickly we allow it to form

who now foresee and advocate authoritarianism as the only workable

response to ecological problems anticipate the demise of the liberal experiment in much
the same way Socrates anticipated the demise of democracy in Book vIII of the Republic.
Socrates argued that democracy inevitably leads to tyranny because of the refusal of the
many to accept proper limits. The absence of limits leads to chaos, which in turn gives
way to tyranny because any order is better than no order. The democratic man, unable
to distinguish right from wrong, proper from improper, eventually accepts tyranny in
preference to the chaos which makes life unlivable . Hardin, Heilbroner, and Ophuls suggest that
modern man is, or soon will be, in a similar situation with respect to the ecological crisis.
Despite the hopes of "technological optimists" the carrying capacity of the earth is bound
to be exceeded unless rigid limits are imposed. Faced with chaos and extinction, modern
Ironically, those
Page 232 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
man will find authoritarianism the only alternative.

Frontline: Mutual coercion agreed upon by the majority will check bad
instances of coercion
Hardin contends that coercion is the only remedy. As a safeguard against arbitrary
coerion, he prescribes "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon by the majority of the
people affected." 45 Presumably, majority rule will reduce the possibility of arbitrariness
since it will merely coerce the minority to behave in ways that will not destroy the
commons.
Uniqueness: A global authoritarian revolution is coming there is a lack of
political interest in the promotion of democratic freedoms.
Windsor, director of Freedom House; Gedmin and Liu, presidents of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty & Radio Free Asia, 09
(Jennifer Windsor, director of Freedom House; Jeffrey Gedmin and Libby Liu, presidents of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty & Radio Free Asia, June 2009, Undermining Democracy: 21st-Century
Authoritarians, http://www.underminingdemocracy.org/overview/)
When asked not long ago about the effectiveness of the European Unions posture toward an increasingly assertive and illiberal
European democracies had

lost their voice and needed to take a firmer, more open stand against abuses by their
large and strategically important neighbor to the east. * He warned that todays Russia is
advancing a new form of authoritarianism , with methods of control that are significantly more sophisticated than
Russia, former Czech president and communist-era dissident Vaclav Havel argued that the
the classic totalitarian techniques of the Soviet Union. Finally, the former Czech leader lamented that as democratic states
increasingly gave primacy to economic ties in their relations with Russia, the promotion of human rights was being shunted to the
The Kremlin was intensifying its repression of the political opposition, independent
journalists, and civil society organizations, but the response from established
democracies had softened to the point of inaudibility . Havel was referring only to
Russia, but he could just as easily have been speaking of China, another authoritarian
country whose high rates of economic growth and rapid integration into the global
trading system have had the effect of pushing the issues of democratic governance and
human rights to a back burner. China , like Russia, has modernized and adapted its
authoritarianism, forging a system that combines impressive economic development
with an equally impressive apparatus of political control . As in Russia, political dissidents and human
margins.
rights defenders in China continue to challenge the regime. Chinese activists recently published Charter 08, a human rights and
democracy manifesto that draws its inspiration from Charter 77, the Czechoslovak human rights movement of which Havel himself
was a founder. But while Europes anticommunist dissidents were the focus and beneficiaries of a worldwide protest movement, the
Chinese intellectuals who endorsed Charter 08 labor in virtual anonymity. Few in the United States and Europe are familiar with the
name of Liu Xiaobo, a respected literary figure and leader of Charter 08, who has been imprisoned by the Chinese authorities since
December 8, 2008, for his advocacy of democracy and the rule of law in China. Havel too spent years in jail during the Soviet period
for questioning the communist authorities monopoly on power and their denial of basic human and democratic rights. But the world
paid attention to his plight; even government leaders raised his case in meetings with communist officials. In China, Liu remains in
Todays
advocates for freedom may be receiving less attention, and less assistance, from their
natural allies in the democratic world because the systems that persecute them are
poorly understood in comparison with the communist regimes and military juntas of the
Cold War era. As a result, policymakers do not appear to appreciate the dangers these 21stcentury authoritarian models pose
detention and effectively incommunicado, and democratic leaders rarely speak out publicly on his behalf.
to democracy and rule of law around the world. It is within this context of shifting and often confused perceptions of threats and
priorities that Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia undertook an examination of five pivotal states
Page 233 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and Pakistanto advance our common understanding of the strategies and methods these regimes
are employing, both within and beyond their borders, to impede human rights and democratic development.
The countries
assessed
in Undermining Democracy were selected because of their fundamental geopolitical importance. They are integrated
into larger economic, political, and security networks and exert a powerful influence on international policy at the regional and global
However, they are also geographically, economically, ideologically, and politically diverse . Iran, a unique
authoritarian polity ruled by Shiite Muslim clerics, looms over the Middle East . The
levels.
governing cliques in Russia cloak their kleptocracy in a contradictory blend of Soviet nostalgia and rightwing nationalism. Venezuela is ruled by a novel type of Latin American caudillo who holds
up Fidel Castro as his mentor. China sets the standard for authoritarian capitalism, with rapid
economic growth sustaining a single-party political system. Pakistan, a South Asian linchpin, is faltering
under the legacy of military rule and an extremist insurgency . Three of these countriesIran,
Russia, and Venezuelaare heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, and exhibit all of the peculiar
distortions of so-called petrostates. The present analysis comes at a time of global political
recession. According to recent findings from Freedom in the World, Freedom Houses annual survey,
political rights and civil liberties have suffered a net global decline for three successive
years, the first such deterioration since the surveys inception in 1972 . Freedom Houses
global analysis of media independence, Freedom of the Press, has shown a more prolonged,
multiyear decline. While the consolidated authoritarian systems of China, Russia, and Iran are rated
Not Free in Freedom in the World, and the rapidly evolving, semi-authoritarian states of Pakistan and
Venezuela are currently rated Partly Free, all five have played an important role in contributing
to the global setbacks for democracy.
Uniqueness: Authoritarianism is spreading globally its already enmeshed in
global political and economic institutions.
Eckert, Reuters Asia Correspondent, 6-4
(Paul Eckert, Reuters Asia Correspondent, June 4, 2009, Democracy seen threatened by new
authoritarianism, http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE55344V20090604?sp=true)
China, Iran, Russia and Venezuela form a clique of authoritarian

states that use their wealth and influence to undermine global democracy and rule of
law, a study by U.S.-funded agencies said on Thursday. The report, released on the 20th anniversary of
China's suppression of the Tiananmen democracy movement, says these states' challenge to
Western democratic institutions represents a far "murkier picture" than the Cold War
because they are integrated into the global economy and world bodies. "Policymakers
do not appear to appreciate the dangers these 21st century authoritarian models pose to
democracy and rule of law around the world ," said the study by Freedom House, Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia, all prominent U.S. democracy-promotion bodies. " Just as they
rule without law within their borders, authoritarian regimes are eroding the
international rules and standards built up by the democratic world over the
past several decades, threatening to export the instability and abuses that
their systems engender," it said. The study said manufacturing and trading power China
and petro-states Iran, Russia and Venezuela shared strong similarities despite their
distinct political systems and backgrounds . Authoritarian capitalist China and Russia have
built systems that twin "impressive economic development with an equally impressive
apparatus of political control ," it said. CURBS ON OPPOSITION, MEDIA Shiite Muslim clergy-ruled
Iran and Venezuela, run by "a novel type of Latin American" strongman, held managed elections
amid curbs on the opposition and on media , it said. Ruling powers in the four states
buttressed their control with tight restrictions on the Internet and media, promotion of
nationalist versions of history in school textbooks and use of state wealth to serve their
own interests, said the report. Internationally, China has built a strong following in Africa
and Latin America with generous no-strings-attached aid packages. Russia,
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Page 234 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Iran and Venezuela have used oil wealth to support regional client s, said the report.
"At the regional and international level, these authoritarian regimes are undercutting or
crippling the democracy-promotion and human rights efforts of rules-based
organizations," it said. Targets included the United Nations, the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Organisation of American States (OAS), added the report.
The
report also included Pakistan because of its struggling democracy, history of military rule
and growing extremist insurgency.
Page 235 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Privatization**
Privatization Fails More Than Succeeds
Vestal, Staff Writer of Stateline.org, 06 (Christine Vestal, Staff Writer of Stateline.org, 8/4/06, States
Stumble Privatising Social Services, http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=131960)
Advocates for the poor worry that putting too much responsibility in the hands of profit-motivated
companies could endanger the vulnerable people the programs are intended to help. Federal rules require
state employees to make final decisions for some entitlement programs, but letting a private contractor
make the initial eligibility cut could have a profound effect on welfare outcomes, they say. Supporters of
privatization argue that antiquated state eligibility systems no longer are cost-effective, and say
improvements best can be accomplished by a high-tech, profit-motivated contractor with incentives to
operate efficiently. Texas policy-makers say their plan not only will save taxpayer dollars but modernize the
social services eligibility process, allowing people to apply for support over the Internet, by fax, through
call centers and at self-serve kiosks. Currently social services applicants must travel to their local social
service offices during business hours and wait in line to talk to a caseworker. Daniels, who left his post as
Bushs top budget advisor to run for governor in 2003, grabbed headlines this year when he privatized an
Indiana toll road, granting a 75-year lease to a foreign consortium for $3.8 billion. Most agree that the state
welfare eligibility process with long lines, limited office hours and error rates in the 25 percent rage -needs improvement. But advocates for the poor argue that the problems result from underfunding and
understaffing, not lack of expertise. The only people with experience in the complex and sensitive work of
determining welfare eligibility are state workers. Why would you hire a high-tech company to do that?
asks Stacey Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for the poor. Other
privatization critics argue that transferring public services to private companies has been plagued by
quality-of-service problems for the last two decades. The concept makes sense and state policy-makers
always are eager to save money, but in practice, privatization has failed more than it has succeeded, says
Mildred Warner, a privatization expert at Cornell University. In an analysis of privatization of state and local
services over the last 20 years, Warner concluded that the majority of projects failed because of
deteriorating quality of service. And in more than half the cases, the projects did not save taxpayer dollars,
she said.
No moral common good exists arguments that the free market will provide
for those in poverty are loose predictions and are nto morally motivated
Barry and Stephens 98 Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University and Associate
Professor Emeritus of Management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University [Bruce and Carroll U., Objections to an Objectivist Approach to Integrity
Academy of Management Review Volume 23, No. 1, pg 162-169, jstor]
I fully accept, however, that solidarity is desirable for and conducive to the stability of the welfare state,
although I will not venture an opinion as to whether it is necessary. I also realize that questions of
stability and legitimacy have a lot to do with each other (stability may for instance depend upon
the state's beingperceived as legitimate) but I still insist that the two questions should be kept distinct
analytically. Needless to say, in an all-things-considered judgment, the question of what makes the
welfare state function (a question of which stability is a part) will have to be addressed but that
is not what I do here . Besides, it is hardly a question best dealt with by philosophers. I will concentrate
on the normative question of legitimacy2. One thing to note here is that for solidarity to do anything at all
for the legitimacy of a certain state arrangement it has to be solidarity on a state wide level. "Those very
sentiments of loyalty and solidarity" mentioned above are sentiments for all people within the same state.
When the existence of, or the likelihood of, such sentiments is made a component of
legitimation, a picture is called to mind of a consensus oriented society with a
substantially moral common good that commands everyone's allegiance . The unreality of
this picture aside, integrating such sentiments in the legitimation of the welfare
state is to make the strength of the justice claims of the less fortunate
Page 236 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
dependent upon the moral motivation of the more fortunate. I do not accept
that. Legitimation requires moral argument, not loose predictions about what
people may or may not be morally motivated
Privatization Raises Death Rate

BBC News, 09 (1/15/09, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7828901.stm)
The researchers examined death rates among men of working age in the post-communist countries of
eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2002. They concluded that as many as one
million working-age men died due to the economic shock of mass privatisation policies. Following the break
up of the old Soviet regime in the early 1990s at least a quarter of large state-owned enterprises were
transferred to the private sector in just two years. This programme of mass privatisation was associated
with a 12.8% increase in deaths. The latest analysis links this surge in deaths to a 56% increase in
unemployment over the same period. However, it found some countries with good social support networks
withstood the turmoil better than others. Where 45% or more of the population were members of at least
one social organisation, such as a church group or labour union, mass privatisation did not increase
mortality. But Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were worst affected, with a tripling of
unemployment and a 42% increase in male death rates between 1991 and 1994.
Individual investors will be less profitable than the government ensuring the
failure of privatization
Anrig, vice president of policy at The Century Foundation, is the author of The
Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing, 04
(Greg Anrig, vice president of policy at The Century Foundation, is the author
of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing,
12/14/2004, Twelve Reasons Why Privatizing Social Security is a Bad Idea,
The Century Foundation)
Privatization advocates like to stress the appeal of "individual choice" and "personal
control," while assuming in their forecasts that everyone's accounts will match the
overall performance of the stock market. But studies by Yale economist Robert J. Shiller and others
have demonstrated that individual investors are far more likely to do worse than the market
generally, even excluding the cost of commissions and administrative expenses . Indeed,
research by Princeton University economist Burton Malkiel found that even professional money
managers over time significantly underperformed indexes of the entire market.
Moreover, a number of surveys show that most people lack the knowledge to make even
basic decisions about investing. For example, a Securities and Exchange Commission
report synthesizing surveys of investors found that only 14 percent knew the difference
between a growth stock and an income stock, and just 38 percent understood that when
interest rates rise, bond prices go down. Almost half of all investors believed incorrectly that
diversification guarantees that their portfolio won't suffer if the market drops and 40 percent thought that
a mutual fund's operating costs have no impact on the returns they receive.
While predictions vary
significantly about how investment markets will perform in the decades ahead, it's safe to say that
any growth in individual accounts under privatization will be significantly lower than what
the overall markets achieve.
Privatization Not Efficient
Towns, Ranking Democratic member, 97 (Rep. Edolphus Towns, Ranking Democratic Member, 11/4/97,
Social Services Privatization: The Beneftis And Challenges To Child Support Enforcement Programs,
Hearing before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform and
Oversight House of Representatives) [Sohn]
Page 237 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Privatization is the shifting of activities or functions from the governmental sector to the private sector
through vouchers, contracts or joint ventures. Before we begin that shift, we should ask whether the
activity is uniquely governmental; whether privatization would improve the economy and efficiency of the
activity and whether there is some reason to transfer a revenue stream from public to private hands.
According to the Urban Institute, there is no evidence that private service delivery is more effective than
public service delivery. The effectiveness of any service delivery depends on the same key factors that the
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight have always considered: authority, accountability, and
clarity. The General Accounting Office found that privatization in the social service arena may be difficult to
achieve because of a lack of qualified bidders. In addition to possible contractor inexperience, there may
also be a problem with governmental inexperience in developing contract specifications, reviewing
contractor bids, negotiating bond and performance issues and monitoring overall outcomes. Mr. Chairman,
I hope that we consider those findings today and determine if those problems still exist.
Privatization Creates Disaster

Lantos, US Congressman, 97 (Tom Lantos, US Congressman, 11/4/97, Social Services Privatization: The
Beneftis And Challenges To Child Support Enforcement Programs, Hearing before the Subcommittee on
Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight House of Representatives)
[Sohn]
Mr. Chairman, many of my friends on the other side of the aisle tend to view government as a disaster and
they are all too eager to solve a problem by turning it over to the private sector. Is Medicare too
expensive? Bring in private-sector HMOs. Irritated by the IRS? Let's hire private companies and sign a
contract. But back in California, we have learned an important lesson: The private sector can create some
spectacular boondoggles of their own at the expense of the taxpayer. California's experience with
contracting out government services to the private sector involves a Fortune 500 Corporation, a big pot of
tax dollars, and a computer system that is stuck in an endless loop of delays, cost overruns, and excuses.
CORPORATIONS RUNNING THE PRIVATIZED ECONOMY ARE ANALOGOUS TO BIG GOVERNMENTS
Henig, political science professor, 90

(Jeffrey R. Henig, political science professor, 1990, Privatization in the United
States: Theory and Practice, Political Science Quarterly)
The first of these themes involved the analogy between government and private
monopolies. Characterizing government as a public monopoly ACCOMPLISHED THREE THINGS. FIRST,
IT Made criticisms of big government more accessible and acceptable to a mass public
that already had internalized the association between monopoly and inefficiency,
unresponsiveness, and waste. SECOND, IT gave criticisms of big government an anchor in
traditional microeconomic theory at the very time that the assumption that economists
could provide an objective and scientific underpinning for public policy was on the rise.
THIRD, it made an important step toward expanding the hegemony of economic theory.
Economists previously had based their claim to expertise upon the distinctiveness of the
economic sphere; the analogy
Page 238 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****THE USFG*****
*****Courts*****
**Social Reform / Movements**
Judicial rulings fail to spur social movements on their own
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 2009 [University of Chicago political science and law professor,
law degree from University of Michigan, PH. D. from Yale. Romancing the Court. Boston
University Law Review, l/n, NS]
In other words, for judicial opinions to foster democratic accountability there must be public and elite
support, pre-existing groups and resources committed to the issue, a committed leadership, and a
predisposed target audience. When all these conditions are present, law can, but not necessarily will, make
a difference. McCann puts it this way: Even under the most propitious circumstances . . . the contributions
of legal maneuvers to catalyzing defiant collective action will be partial, conditional, and volatile over
time. 82 McCanns analysis suggests that demos prudential dissents are neither necessary nor sufficient
for mobilizing social movements. They are not necessary because if there is an active social movement in
place then no judicial help is needed. They are also not sufficient because without a preexisting
movement and the other factors McCann identifies, such dissents will accomplish nothing. Indeed, Guinier
provides two examples of successful mobilization without demosprudential dissents. She describes an
extremely well-organized and successful movement to restore voting rights to ex-felons in Rhode Island.83
She postulates that, [a] dissent from the Supreme Court could help in such an effort,84 but activists in
Rhode Island did not need it. Similarly, she tells the story of how social movements in Missouri defeated an
attempt to enact a very strict voter identification bill,85 also without the help of demosprudential opinions.
Courts cant produce social reform 3 reasons

Rosenberg, Gerald N. 2009 [University of Chicago political science and law professor,
law degree from University of Michigan, PH. D. from Yale. The Hollow Hope. University
of Chicago Press, p 10, l/n, NS]
The view of courts as unable to produce significant social reform has a distinguished pedigree reaching
back to the founders. Premised on the institutional structure of the American political system and the
procedures and belief systems created by American law, it suggests that the conditions required for courts
to produce significant social reform will seldom exist. Unpacked, the Constrained Court view maintains that
courts will generally not be effective producers of significant social reform for three reasons: the limited
nature of constitutional rights, the lack of judicial independence, and the judiciarys inability to develop
appropriate policies and its lack of powers of implementation.
Page 239 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Courts Good: Generic**

Judicial supremacy key to maintaining constitutional unity and rights of
minorities.
Whittington in 7 <Keith E. (William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Princeton University), Political foundations of
judicial supremacy: the presidency, the supreme court, and constitutional leadership in U.S. history, 2007>
There are a number of justifications for judicial supremacy, and these justifications tend to overlap with the more political
justifications for judicial review. For some, judicial supremacy is essential to preserving the rule of law and
preventing constitutional anarchy . Thinking particularly of the competing constitutional assertions of the state governments,
this was Daniel Websters concern when he asked his congressional colleagues, [C]ould anything be more preposterous
than to make a government for the whole Union, and yet leave its powers subject, not to one
interpretation, but to thirteen, or twenty-four, interpretations? Instead of one tribunal, established by and
responsible to all, with power to decide for all, shall constitutional questions be left to four and twenty
popular bodies, each at liberty to decide for itself, and none bound to respect the decisions of others? He
doubted whether the government would be capable of long existing under such circumstances. For others,
the value of judicial supremacy is not in its capacity to provide authoritative legal settlements, but in its capacity to provide
substantively desirable legal settlements, but in its capacity to provide substantively desirable legal outcomes. The judiciary alone
serves as a forum of principle within the American constitutional system, capable of focusing on questions of justice free from the
din of the battleground of power politics. For still others , judicial supremacy is regarded as a permanent and
indispensable feature of our constitutional system because the Court alone functions as a
countermajoritarian institutions securing the liberties of individuals and political minorities . Unfettered by
political interests or popular prejudices, the judiciary can penetrate to the true meaning of the Constitution and the
subtle requirements of its principled commitments. Some questionsquestion of justice and rightsare
too important to be left in the hands of legislative majorities or the people themselves. Judicial
supremacy insures that they are not.
Not adhering to precedent kills Court legitimacy

Hansford and Spriggs in 6 <Thomas G. (Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, Merced),
James F. (Professor of Political Science, Professor of Law, Fellow in the Center for Empirical Research in Law, Washington University in
Saint Louis), The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court, 2006>
As a result of the norm of stare decisis, the Court can incur legitimacy costs by negatively interpreting a vital
insititionalized precedent. If instead of following a highly institutionalized, bedrock precedent (i.e., a highly
vital precedent) the Court chooses to treat the precedent in a negative manner, then the new policy set by
the Court may be perceived as being less legitimate . In other words, just as there are greater legitimacy benefits to
following a particularly vital precedent, there are potentially greater legitimacy costs to overruling or otherwise
undermining a precedent that is highly vital . There will be less of a legitimacy cost, on the other hand, when the Court
negatively interprets a precedent that is not particularly institutionalized or authoritative.
The vitality of a precedent, therefore, determines the extent to which the justices bear a legitimacy cost when negatively interpreting
the precedent. The more vital a precedent is, the greater the cost that results from treating the precedent
negatively. The ideological distance between the justices and the precedent has no effect on the costliness, in terms of legitimacy,
resulting from negative treatment. This argument can be represented as: legitimization of new policy=-b 8(V).
Undermining the Constitution causes extinction

Henkin Atlantic Comm Qtly 88 (Columbia, 1988, (, Spring)
Lawyers, even constitutional lawyers, argue "technically," with references to text and principles of
construction, drawing lines, and insisting on sharp distinctions. Such discussion sometimes seems
ludicrous when it addresses issues of life and death and Armaggedon. But behind the words of the
Constitution and the technicalities of constitutional construction lie the basic values of the
United Stateslimited government even at the cost of inefficiency; safeguards against autarchy and
oligarchy; democratic values represented differently in the presidency and in Congress, as well as in
the intelligent participation and consent of the governed. In the nuclear age the technicalities of
constitutionalism and of constitutional jurisprudence safeguard also the values and concerns of civilized
people committed to human survival.
Page 240 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Hollow Hope / Courts Bad**

The Supreme Court Prevents democracy
Zinn, historian, 2005
Howard Zinn, The Progressive, Its Not Up to the Court, http://progressive.org/mag_zinn1105
the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias
against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become
dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture--the media, the
educational system--tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except
who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the
most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most
important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting,
engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy Sheehan's
Still, knowing
dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to 1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving 100,000
people, is more crucial to the future of American democracy than the mock hearings on Justice Roberts or
the ones to come on Judge Alito.
Link- Environment. The Courts were only able to help the environment once
the other branches had acted.
Rosenberg, Gerald N. University of Chicago political science and law professor. The Hollow Hope: Can
Courts Bring About Social Change? 1993. 271.
The decades of the 1960s and 1970s witnessed attempts to change much of American society. Among
these attempts was a movement to protect the environment. Part of that movement, viewing courts as the
crucial institution capable of producing change, focused on litigation. Making explicit analogies from the
civil rights movements use of the courts, early environmental litigators explicitly aimed to contitutionalize
a right to a healthy environment. In later years, after a great deal of congressional legislation,
environmental litigator went to court aiming to broadly interpret and strictly apply these legislative
attempts to protect the environment. In this overview, I argue that while the attempt to
constitutionalize a right to a healthy environment could not overcome the constraints of

the judicial system, once the other branches acted, litigation was able to contribute to
environmental protection when one of the four conditions were present . That is, when
other actors added incentives or costs, courts were effective. Similarly, when market forces
supported court decisions, litigation helped. Finally, litigation made a difference when those officials
necessary for implementation were willing to act and use courts as cover.
Controversial Supreme Court decisions spur confusion, accomplishing nothing.

Delgado, University Distinguished Professor of Law & Derrick Bell Fellow, University of Pittsburgh School of
Law; University Professor of Law Designate, Seattle University, 08
Richard Delgado, Northwestern University Law Review, A COMMENT ON ROSENBERG'S NEW EDITION OF
THE HOLLOW HOPE 10/08
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?
docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T7110308857&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey
=29_T7110308860&cisb=22_T7110308859&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=7350&docNo=1
A second, closely related, mechanism deals with words and meaning. Suppose, as a
hypothetical example, that the Supreme Court one day announces a new approach to
pupil assignment rules. Separate but equal educational facilities no longer satisfy the
requirements of equal protection. n27 Instead, public school authorities may not use race
as a criterion for assigning students to schools, especially if they intend to produce
separate schools for white and black children.
Questions immediately arise as to what the Supreme Court meant. Does the ruling apply
only in the South? n28 Must school districts bus children to achieve racial balance, or
Page 241 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
may they rely on remedies that operate on the [*151] basis of school choice? n29 What
about segregation resulting from housing patterns and neighborhood preferences? n30
Suppose, in the wake of the ruling, most of the white parents move out of a city and take up residence in
all-white suburbs? n31 Does the ruling apply to public accommodations, swimming pools, and movie
theaters, or just to schools? What about singles ads in newspapers and separate high school proms?
Immediately after a law-reform ruling like Brown, public authorities will confront a host of
questions like those just listed. And because the new ruling appears to go against the
grain, authorities, even those with good will, likely will conclude that the Supreme Court
could not have meant that. n32 In the end, the surprising new ruling will end up meaning
very little. n33
The Supreme Court undermines minority rights movements causing tension in
American communities and dependence on flawed legislation.
Williams, news analyst with NPR News, 09
Affirmative action dies in multi-racial U.S. August 7, 2009
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/affirmative-action-dies-in-111147.html
So,
why now? More often than not, it is the American left that gets lost in absurd
fantasies about race in this country. They pretend there has been no progress in recent
decades, even when they see the rise of a black middle class and witness the election of
a mixed-race president and the likely confirmation of a Hispanic woman to the Supreme
Court. But today, it is the right wing and its supporters on the high court who are making
stuff up. They pretend that the nation is already so transformed that a colorblind America
is a reality and that affirmative action is superfluous, so much so that white employees in
a city fire department an arena long dominated by Irish- and Italian-Americans need
help from the Supreme Court to get a promotion.
Litigation distracts time and money from successful grassroots movements
Stephen Carter, Professor of Law @ Yale, Michigan Law Review, ln, 92
Rosenberg goes beyond the assertion that litigation strategies rarely if ever produce significant change. He
argues, correctly" at they are often counterproductive, for they can distort perceptions about where
resources are needed (pp. 339-42). The particular case of abortion, Rosenberg notes that "reliance on
the Court seriously weakened the political efficacy of pro-choice forces. After the 1973
decisions, many pro-choice: activists simply assumed they had won and stopped if pro-choice
activity. ...The political organization and momentum that had changed laws nationwide
dissipate in celebration of the Court victory" (p. 339). The result, of course, was that pro-choice
forces abandoned the political arena to pro-life forces --and then professed surprise when prolife forces
won important electoral victories. The current broad public support for at least some abortion rights has
arisen largely because of the more recent decision of pro-choice forces to return to the grass roots --the
place, Rosenberg tells us, where real social changes take place (p. 341).
Courts merely join movements- they dont produce social change

Devins, 92
Associate Professor of Law and Lecturer in Government, College of William and
Mary, REVIEW ESSAY: Judicial Matters: The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring
About Social Change? By Gerald N. Rosenberg. California Law Review, LN
Rosenberg convincingly shows that courts cannot do it alone. Congress, the White House, the states, and
interest groups also play a pivotal role. State efforts to legalize abortion before Roe, congressional and
administrative efforts to eliminate dual school systems, and the civil rights and women's movements
highlight a remarkable inventory of non-judicial influences identified by Rosenberg. The Hollow Hope also
does an extraordinary job of demonstrating that numerous landmark Supreme Court opinions were little
Page 242 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
known and even less discussed at the time of decision. In fact, Rosenberg's evidence of the paramount role
played by nonjudicial forces is one of the strongest to date.
The Hollow Hope then offers abundant support for a more modest, more accurate, and equally important
thesis: the Supreme Court works within and hence both influences and is influenced by a
larger culture of political and social interests. While severe problems in analysis still
remain, this rearticulation accomplishes Rosenberg's principal objective of sobering
those who endorse an active judicial role.
Court rhetoric prevents the mobilization of the public, short circuiting personal
autonomy.
One way to understand this mechanism is by means of a device that narrative theorist Jean
Stefancic and I have called the "empathic fallacy." n34 A counterpart of the "pathetic
fallacy," familiar from literary theory, the empathic fallacy is the mistaken belief that one
can change another's beliefs and attitudes through words alone . In literature, the pathetic
fallacy holds that nature is like us with moods, feelings, and intentions that we can read and understand.
The poet, seeing rain, writes "The world weeps with me." n35
The empathic fallacy, which we coin, holds that narratives are of relatively slight use in
dispelling pre-existing ones. A reader confronted with a new narrative--a black heroine, for example,
when she has come to believe that blacks are lascivious and lazy, the opposite of heroic--will disbelieve it,
or else pronounce the present case an exception. We are, in a sense, our stock of narratives. n36 These long
held narratives form the basis against which we judge and interpret new ones, such as ones about
intelligent African Americans; brave, resourceful women; energetic, hardworking undocumented aliens; or
loving parents who are gay or lesbian. Unless the new [*152] narrative is unusually clever,
calculated to resonate with another that we already hold, we tend to reject it as

outrageous, extreme, or wrong. n37
Supreme Court opinions are, of course, narratives--stories--and thus subject to both
mechanisms. Over the course of history, a few Supreme Court opinions have contained
such memorable language ("Poor Joshua," n38 "There is no caste here" n39) that they have moved
significant numbers of readers and hastened reform. Rosenberg correctly notes their rarity ,
although he would be wrong if he maintains that the number is zero.
CONCLUSION
Rosenberg's new edition, then , soberly reminds reformers not
to place undue reliance on

courts and litigation. If dispossessed groups wish to combat unfair practices and laws,
the legal profession may offer them symbolic victories, but little more. To secure real
gains, they will need to explore other avenues, including storytelling and literature,
electoral politics, and the oldest remedy of all--self-help and resistance to illegitimate
authority. n40
Civic Engagement is key to democracy
Fretz, Director, Service-Learning Center, Naropa University, 04
Page 243 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
(Eric, Director, Service-Learning Center, Naropa University, "Teaching Liberty

and Practicing Deliberative Democracy in the Classroom," 2004, The Campus
Compact Reader, Winter, http://www.compact.org/reader/winter04/article2- 1
.html)
Introduction: In the past decade, many American citizens have joined a choir of voices lamenting the
demise of public life in the United Spates. The common chorus goes like this: Americans have
forgotten how to be citizens in a democracy and architects of public life. Our democratic
imagination is blunt, and public life in the United States is dying a slow death. Civic engagement,
the hallmark of American democracy, is in rapid decline. According to the Committee for the
Study of the American Electorate, less than 50% of eligible voters participated in the 1996
election and since the 1960s, voter participation has declined by more than 2.5%. Close
to 80% of the population ignores local elections. The percentage of Americans who
regularly attend public, school or political meetings is at all-time lows, and we seem
willing to trust our government only in times of extreme threat to the republic. The general
consensus seems to be there's not too much to be done about these problems of public
apathy. A 1995 New York Times ICBS News poll revealed that 59% of the people polled could not point to
one elected official they admired, and 79% believed the government is "run by a few big interests looking
out for themselves" (Boyte, "The Work of Citizenship" 4). Increasingly, Americans see local and
federal government as entities that are separate from their own interests and needs. We
have lost a sense of Abraham Lincoln's vision at the fields of Gettysburg when he declared "that this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Page 244 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**AT: Hollow Hope / Courts Good**

Civil obedience follows legislation- social change is a product of congressional
law.
Civil disobedience might appear to be a narrow exception to the rule that law generally
shapes behavior. n14 But the civil disobedient breaks the [*149] law openly,
nonviolently, and prepared to suffer the consequences . n15 Although one could think of it
as illustrating law's inefficacy, civil disobedience occurs rarely enough that it does not
shake our faith in the system. And because the violator is prepared to accept
punishment, it is scarcely a frontal challenge to that system as a whole .
The same is true for cases in which a minority group believes the law is both unjust and
unlikely to change anytime soon. Then the group may seek actively to frustrate
enforcement. Anti-snitching campaigns in the black community or efforts by Latino
organizations to provide sanctuary or supplies to undocumented immigrants crossing the
desert on foot are recent examples. n16 But even here, the law exhibits a kind of
efficacy--the group seeking to nullify it has to go through great efforts and incur
considerable risk to do so.Everyday experience with cases like these, then, conveys the
impression that law "really works." How could Rosenberg seemingly maintain the
opposite?
Lawsuits can facilitate social movements
Nagin The Yale Law Journal Company, 08
Tomiko Brown Nagin, "One of These Things Does Not Belong": Intellectual Property and Collective Action
Across Boundaries 7/08
Ultimately, Kapczynski wants to achieve even more. She seeks to theorize how legal concepts mediate
the interpretative frames that socio-political mobilizations , such as A2K, deploy to assert their
interests. Kapczynski's discussion of framing theory advances the scholarly conversation about law and
popular mobilizations in a crucial way: it helps to bury "zero-sum" propositions about law's effects on social
movements. n2 Those with a zero-sum view imagine law as a blunt instrument, either
breathing life into or taking it away from social movements . Other scholars have offered a
more satisfying account of law's impact on social movements, one that emphasizes that even [*282]
failed lawsuits can facilitate movements' cultural and political agendas . But, as I have
previously argued, even these scholars sometimes duplicate the zero-sum theorists' tendency to ascribe
far too much agency to the law, n3 a supposed "master frame" that animates activists' each and every
move.
Kapczynski posits a more dynamic model of interaction between law and social mobilizations. IP law and
legal concepts are constitutive, but not the center of the universe, in her analysis. She considers the
internal dynamics of the A2K mobilization on its own terms, and ascribes tremendous agency to the
activists, who manipulate law to great effect. Kapczynski's "gravitational pull" thesis deftly illustrates her
conception of IP law as an important, but interactive and dialogic, instrument of meaning. Frame theorists
claim that collective actors use frames for diagnosis, prognosis, and motivation. Legal concepts can be
Page 245 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
deployed in a variety of ways within the framing process, Kapczynski argues, occupying
architectural, discursive, and strategic roles . A2K activists have manipulated legal concepts to
serve their interests, she shows. But so, too, have corporate actors. In fact, some of the article's most
engaging passages explore not the A2K mobilization, but how IP industries articulated and advanced their
goal of expanding IP protection in the marketplace of ideas. n4
Court decision can be transformativeits proven by the fact that Brown

affected far more than just public schools
John Kincaid, Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and Director of
the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government, Lafayette College, Easton, PA. Fellow and
former Executive Director (1988-1994) of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations,
Washington, D.C.; Editor, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, St. Louis-Warsaw Transatlantic Law Journal,
1995 St. LouisWarsaw Trans'l 13 3, 1995, p. 147
Lastly, the federal courts, especially the U.S. Supreme Court, have played important
roles in national standard-setting since 1954 when the high Court struck down state laws
permitting racial segregation in public schools. n33 By relying on the Fourteenth
Amendment to apply the U.S. Bill of Rights to state and local action, the Court has
virtually transformed race relations as well as standards of practice in many state and
local government institutions, such as schools, libraries, jails, prisons, and mental -health
facilities.
Court decisions are insufficient in changing public opinion

When Brown v. Board of Education came down, did Americans begin thinking about and
acting toward blacks differently? By and large they did no t; Rosenberg provides impressive
evidence on this point. n17 When the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, did a woman's
access to abortion services improve? Again, no; social disapproval did the work that an
explicit legal prohibition formerly did, so that women desiring abortions were little better
off than before. n18 And we find the same in other areas where law-reform advocates
secure a breakthrough victory. n19 Rulings like those upholding same-sex marriage were
soon rolled back by narrow construction, administrative foot-dragging, or delay resulting
in little progress for the "victorious" group. n20
Judicial victories do not have a catalytic effect
Michael McCann, professor of political science at the University of Washington,
Social Movements and America Political Institutions, ed. Costain and
McFarland, 1998, p. 205
The movement-centered approach urged here tends to interpret this latter aspect of legal "consciousness
raising" somewhat differently than many characterizations by legal scholars . Judicial victories (or
other legal actions) do not "reveal" injustice to oppressed groups so much as improve
the chances that such injustices might be effectively challenged by movement action in
and out of the courts (McCann 1994). Moreover, formal legal action alone rarely is likely
to generate this "catalytic" or "triggering" effect on movement constituents (Rosenberg
1991). Only when concerted efforts are made by movement leaders and organizations to publicize such
Page 246 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
evolving opportunities and to use legal resources for movement-building purposes is successful organizing
likely (McCann 1994). :1
Courts mobilize social change wage discrimination rulings prove

Howard Gillman, Law Professor, 1999 (THE SUPREME COURT IN AMERICAN POLITICS, p. 72)
Perhaps the best documented responses to judicially created opportunities and catalysts
to action involve the mobilization of political interest groups and social movements . Stuart
Scheingold demonstrated decades ago that Court actions could be resource in mobilizing
activity in a variety of ways, including activating and organizing core constituent groups
members as well as realigning support from third parties . My own research on the politics of
gender as pay equity (or comparable worth) reform provided a detailed account of this process. The very
reform strategy its ::If was conceived by union and civil rights lawyers responding to emerging Court ruling
that demonstration of race- or ,ex-based discriminatory impact could establish a judiciable claim under the
1964 Civil Right Act. Wage discrimination claims were filed in federal courts during the 1970s in an attempt
primarily to develop new case law, but in many lo(:al contexts such lawsuits also became key resources for
organizing women into unions or activating grassroots involvement among the already organized. This
activity increased dramatically in local and state venues around the nation after the 1981 Court finding of
sex-based wage discrimination against female prison guards in Co. of Washington v. Gunther. In short, the
movement was conceived, born, and developed as a formidable political force from opportunities and
resources created by federal court, and especially Supreme Court, rulings. Parallel accounts have been
provided for a variety of both women's rights, animal rights, and the right of physically and mentally
disabled.
Symbolic legal support to rights claims advance social movement

Michael McCann, professor of political science at the University of Washington,
Social Movements and America Political Institutions, ed. Costain and
McFarland, 1998, p. 208
Finally, the symbolic normative power of rights claims themselves should not be
discounted. This point links Scheingold's (1974) "myth of rights" and "politics of rights" analysis. Because
citizens in our society are responsive to (legally sensible) rights claims, defiant groups often can
mobilize legal norms, conventions, and demands to compel concessions even in the
absence of clear judicial (or other official) support. This power of legal discourse has several related
and indistinguishable dimensions, including: abstract appeals to the moral sensibilities of dominant groups;
more concrete appeals to the interests of dominant organizations in maintaining cooperative relations with
victimized groups, such as workers or consumers; and, perhaps, most important, indirect appeals for moral
censure from the general public regarding the actions of specific powerful groups. The latter factor of
stigmatizing publicity distinguishes somewhat the potential impact of legal action in high-visibility social
struggles from that in everyday disputes. Formal legal actions by movements threaten to
transform disputes by mobilizing not just judges as third -party intervenors but also a
variety of social advocacy groups, nonjudicial state officials, and broader public
sentiment or voting power through the catalytic dynamic discussed in the last section. In other
words, litigation often provides a powerful means for, in Schattschneider's (1960) terms, " expanding the
scope of conflict" in ways that enhance the bargaining power of disadvantaged groups
and raise the perceived risks of hard line opposition from their foes.
Even losses in the Courts lay the groundwork for political success
Richard Gambitta, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University in Texas at San Antonio,
Governing through Courts, 1981, p. 276-77.
A court defeat or victory is a single episode in the litigation process , quite as it is in the policy
process. Concentration on the impact of those episodes should not blind us to the functions performed by
the litigation itself. These latter need examination and explication as well. Space limitations prevent a full
discussion here, but a few items may be listed, as an outgrowth of my research on Rodriguez, that may
provide a beginning. First, litigation provides access to influential government arenas where
Page 247 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
those without political power in majoritarian institutions can raise issues of concern, explain
their contentions and political grievances, and receive an attentive hearing on the merits
of their cause (Scheingold, 1974). Second, through the auspices of the court, including the vehicles of
discovery and subpoena, answers may be secured to questions that might otherwise be
ignored by bureaucrats, elites, private persons, and corporations. Gochman secured answers to
extensive interrogatories detailing the extent of educational disparities in Bexar County and in Texas. At
that time, these vehicles provided not only an expeditious and efficient method of securing that
information, but perhaps the only one as well. Third , litigation is a means of publicizing an issue,
of catching the attention, and perhaps the sympathies, of various segments of the
population. Periodically, with increased frequency after the lower court victory, headlined or featured
articles would appear in newspapers and magazines reporting the information that the litigants had
acquired. For a five-year period, the magnitude of the inequality resulting from the Texas school finance
policy appeared in the press. Fourth, the litigation process can legitimize a political issue,
regardless of the final judicial outcome. The lower court victory in Rodriguez especially increased
the legitimacy of the Edgewood cause. And the five to four Supreme Court decision did not return that
cause to its original state. Fifth, litigation has the potential to mobilize and solidify political
support for an issue. It can do so for the defendant as well as the plaintiff, but if one has little
active support and few resources to begin with, this function generally proves of positive
worth. It did so in Rodriguez. Most importantly, litigation, as mentioned earlier, often contributes to the
establishment of a legislative agenda. Significant lawsuits can recast the nature of a debate, whether or
not they are ultimately victorious in court. In Rodriguez, earlier legislative dialogue on reform focused on
increased foundation support, not on equalization. Subsequently, both topics were salient considerations.
The lower court decision has established school finance reform as a legislative priority. Litigation can
facilitate debates that otherwise may not occur, thus setting in motion, at times, the process of policy
change, as it did in all three school finance cases. In a sense, litigation can be viewed as a political
campaign. The success of any campaign needs to be measured not only by the vote
registered in the final election or court decision, but also by the impact that the
campaign has on current and future public policy. Like an independent political campaign
challenging the status quo, litigation that seeks policy change often raises issues that
incumbent legislators have traditionally refused to address. Also, it may distribute unfamiliar
information on the operations of a particular system, publicize certain abuses resulting from the
implementation of ongoing policies, and attempt to recast public and governmental debates, forcing a
legislative agenda that might lead to reform. Moreover, a lower court victory, like an early primary victory,
may change the course of public policy and affairs even though that early win is never repeated and is
subseqently reversed.
Social success requires a shift in ideology that the Courts and individuals must
achieve together.
If judicial rulings are relatively ineffective in changing social values and practices in
highly contested areas such as school desegregation, abortion, environmentalism, and
same-sex marriage, what accounts for this failure?
I believe that the answer has to do with two related mechanisms. I call the first the reconstructive paradox.
n21
This theory holds, essentially, that the greater a social evil--say, women's subordination or
black slavery--the more massive the social effort required to eradicate it. n22 Moreover,
because the belief or practice is so deeply embedded, it is invisible to many. n23
Furthermore, the massive social effort necessary to alter a historical social practice will
Page 248 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
inevitably collide with other social values--property rights, settled expectations, the
southern way of life, etc.--that are widely held. n24 This effort will require shifts in spending and
changes in the way we relate to one another.
These efforts for social change, by contrast, will be out in the open, where they will spark sharp resistance
and the accusation that the reformers are totalitarians, moving too fast, imposing costs on innocent
people, reviving old grudges, and the like. n25 These considerations will enable the opposition to feel
righteous and believe that the reformers sacrifice real liberty and security for a nebulous goal. For these
reasons, social reform and reconstruction will strike most, at first, as dubious, premature, dangerous, and
wrong.n26
Rosenbergs hollow hope analysis is flawed, court decisions polarize citizenry

in exceptional ways.
Epstein ,Henry Wade Rogers Professor Northwestern University School of Law,
91
Lee Epstein, Washington University-St. Louis review,
THE HOLLOW HOPE: CAN COURTS BRING ABOUT SOCIAL CHANGE? 91
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/rosenber.htm
As Rosenberg knows, the key precedential cases were brought to the Court by interest
groups or movements. According to Greenberg's account in the JUDICIAL PROCESS AND
SOCIAL CHANGE, for example, the LDF sponsored the litigation needed to achieve
victory in Brown; it was the group's persistence and not "luck," that weakened "the
remaining legal constraint." I think this is an important link, but one Rosenberg largely
overlooks.
Another quibble I have is that some of his analyses are too casual. Those on public opinion
immediately come to mind. Because he does not examine trends in survey data in a rigorous
way, his observations tend toward the pedestrian. Here is what he writes about public
opinion on abortion: "there was clearly no rapid or large change in American's support of
abortion after the Court's decision" (p.238). He may be correct on an aggregate, first
blush, level, but he misses an important point brought to light in Franklin and Kosaki's (APSR,
1989: 751-777) intriguing study: Roe did have the effect of polarizing the citizenry in an
unprecedented way
Judges are seen by the public as essential to social change
Stephen Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Yale University.
B.A. 1976, Stanford; J.D. 1979, Yale. -- Ed., Michigan Law Review, 90 Mich. L.
Rev. 1216, May 1992, p. 1216-1217
Since the pioneering work of Robert A. Dahl, most theorists have viewed the Court as one of
many actors in the development of national policies on a variety of issues. n3 The
implication is that the Justices are serious players in the game of societal transformation .
Some scholars, Alexander Bickel to the fore, have been more cautious, suggesting a Court of limited ability
to make changes. n4 Bruce Ackerman, for example, has compared the Court to a group of brakemen sitting
in the last car of a train, able to make it stop but not to make it go. n5 Yet in the popular image -- the
one enshrined by the political rhetoric of left [*1217] and right alike --the Justices ride
right up in the engine and choose which track to take.
Courts cant solve broader womens rights even precedent setting decisions
fail because courts lack the essential tools to solve for alt. causalities
Neal Devins (Associate Professor of Law and Lecturer in Government, College of William and Mary)
1992: Judicial Matters: The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? California Law Review.
Lexis
The Hollow Hope's assessment of abortion and women's rights, while less detailed and less systematic,
reaches similar conclusions. Indeed, Rosenberg uses identical metaphors, speaking of the Court as
Page 249 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
"join[ing]," "not creat[ing]," "a current of social change and a tide of history" (p. 265). Moreover, like his
analysis of civil rights, Rosenberg sees courts as trying to play a leadership role but failing: "As with civil
rights . . . the Court is far less responsible for the changes that occurred than most people think" (p. 201);
"advocates of women's rights have 'won' quite a number of legal cases" (p. 212), but "precedentsetting decisions in women's rights have produced little because courts lack all the essential
tools required of any institution hoping to implement change" (p. 227).
Roe v. Wade, rather than being characterized as a watershed, is seen as solidifying a "widespread, vocal,
and effective" pro-choice lobby (p. 184). That forty-six state laws were invalidated under Roe is
downplayed; highlighted, in its stead, are statistics showing that the rate of legal abortions rose more
dramatically the two years before Roe (300%, from 193,500 in 1970 to 586,800 in 1972) than the two
years after Roe [*1035] (52%, from 586,800 in 1972 to 898,600 in 1974) (pp. 178-80). Rosenberg also
minimizes Roe's impact by arguing that nonjudicial market mechanisms were critical in effectuating the
decision. Specifically, had Roe demanded that abortions be performed in hospitals, the widespread refusal
of hospitals to perform abortions (only 17% of public and 23% of private hospitals perform abortions)
suggests that the case's impact would have been negligible (pp. 189-201).
Rosenberg's examination of "women's rights" is also critical of the Court. Noting that the gap between
men's and women's earnings has stayed constant since 1955, that litigation has not affected the wage
structure, that most employment is sex-segregated, and that the ABA Committee on Judicial Selection
typically gives better ratings to men than women, Rosenberg deems court action in this area
inconsequential (pp. 207-12). The crux of the problem, instead, is a long list of social ills, including
domestic violence, disproportionate household work, inadequate child support, and biased laws (pp. 21226).
Rosenberg is wrong bad theory and no reason why congress and the
executive do provide change
David Schultz (University of Minnesota, Vice President, Minnesota Civil Liberties Union) and Stephen E.
Gottlieb (Cleveland-Marshall School of Law) 1996: Legal Functionalism and Social Change: A
Reassessment of Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Journal of Law and
Policy. Lexis
Certain deficiencies in Rosenberg's approach do limit the value of his conclusions about functionalism.
Functionalism is a theory about how law and its interpretation by courts influence society. Rosenberg is
unable to address questions of influence fully because he uses inappropriate methods and because he
ignores the most important aspect of judicial influence -- the power of courts to redefine structures and
expectations. Admittedly, whatever their mode of influence, judges are not always able to effectuate their
goals. Rosenberg claims that such failures illustrate the ultimate impotence of the courts. Nonetheless, he
fails to explain how he can conclude, at the same time, that the legislature and the executive are effective
institutions even though these bodies face implementation difficulties comparable to those which, for
Rosenberg, illustrate that courts are ineffective agents of change. Finally, Rosenberg fails to inquire
whether results would be different if courts did not seek to effect change. Without answering this question,
Rosenberg cannot compare the relative effectiveness of various government branches or definitively
conclude that courts do not influence society.
Perm on the counterplan solves the DA to be effective, the court must work
with other branches of government
Policy. Lexis
Despite the deficiencies in Rosenberg's analysis, his work still offers important contributions to the ongoing
discussion of functionalism. We conclude that Rosenberg's analysis actually demonstrates that the Court is,
indeed, an effective institution. When we realize that the Court is but one branch of government,
which, like every other branch, must work with others to effect its goals, Rosenberg's claim that
courts can effect change in combination with others is in reality an important affirmation of judicial efficacy
and, ultimately, of the functional role of law.
Page 250 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Courts solve social change massive swings in public opinion dont matter,
minor changes in assumptions overtime build up and influence actors
Policy. Lexis
Rosenberg's inquiry is flawed from the outset because he fundamentally misperceives the nature of
influence and which evidence properly indicates its presence. Influence need not be manifested as
blatantly as Rosenberg suggests it must be, but it may involve subtle changes in assumptions and minor
shifts among coalitions. Similarly, Rosenberg's theory of causation fails to recognize that major changes
most often unfold over extended periods of time and that people may not respond to a particular event
immediately. If Rosenberg is to provide sufficient support for his theory, he must expand his inquiries far
beyond their current limits and reestablish them upon a different and improved foundation. Rosenberg
assumes that the influence of any event may be adequately measured by noting direct responses to it:
actors may acknowledge its influence, or their reactions may betray its direct effect on their decisions. n81
Yet it is also likely that they will attempt to mask this influence. They may, for instance, wish to give the
impression that they have been right from the beginning. Politicians are not big on footnotes. n82 Just as the
origins of reform may be masked, so too advances in reform need not be indicated by wild swings in public
opinion. Politics is often a game of inches. The civil rights movement broke out in a country where
candidates were considered "safe" if they gained 55% of the vote, and a large percentage of districts were
not safe. n83 Even the expectation of small changes in public opinion could have a significant impact on
political actors. Often, this "swing vote" was held by blacks. Rosenberg thus errs in assuming that the
Court could only influence policy by engendering massive swings in public opinion; altering the views of
only a few may have an explosive impact in such an atmosphere. n84 In this political environment, the mere
fact that Brown altered the law of the land could have had significant impact itself. It was not even
necessary that anyone be converted to the cause of desegregation. Some of those who disagreed with the
Court might have become convinced that the rule of law was more important than continued support for
segregation. Even such limited and tepid support for Brown could have supplied the necessary margin of
political victory to reformers in certain districts.
Social change doesnt need to be seen, court decisions simply need to

challenge current assumptions to provide for change elsewhere
Policy. Lexis
Even if Brown actually engendered opposition to segregation itself, such opposition need not have been
open and active. Further, the decision need not even have gained a visible and prominent place in public
or elite discussion. Game theory teaches that merely altering signals to indicate that additional choices are
available may suffice to induce significant change in a situation where players previously doubted the
availability of alternatives. n85 Brown need only have challenged the assumption that there was no option
but loyalty to the segregationist status quo. n86 Not only did Rosenberg entirely fail to address this
possibility, but his insistence upon a purely statistical approach disables him from adequately analyzing
this important possibility. Manifestations of power and influence cannot be adequately investigated with a
purely quantifiable approach, as Dahl's attempt to do so indicates. n87 This means that assessments of
influence may require historical or other indices of impact.
Judicial decisions can change assumptions not only by opening new options for opposition, but also
through their power to grant legitimacy to certain claims and to redefine norms of institutional action .
Undoubtedly, by changing the constitutional rule, Brown opened new doors for resisting segregation
through actions at law. But it did more. It invalidated arguments in favor of segregation, both by excluding
them from the courtroom and by stigmatizing their use in public debate. n88 It also opened an avenue for
changing the law elsewhere, as courts and others applied the newly approved desegregationist argument
in other situations. n89
Page 251 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
The Hollow Hope theory is wrong Rosenberg misrepresents the efficacy of the
lower courts in court decision enforcement
Policy. Lexis
Rosenberg also fundamentally misunderstands the nature of judicial policy making and policy making in
general. His approach evaluates judicial and legislative policy making under different standards and, as a
result, unreasonably elevates legislative and executive influence over that of courts. When viewed in
light of the true nature of the policy making process, Rosenberg's analysis actually
demonstrates that the Court is an effective agent of social change.
Rosenberg paints an unfairly impotent picture of the Supreme Court, in part, because he refuses to
examine the work of lower courts. The Supreme Court generally does not implement the rules it develops,
but relies upon lower courts to apply its rules in particular cases. Lower courts are like street-level
bureaucrats or administrative agencies undertaking the enforcement work of Congress or a legislature. n103
The policy implementation literature stresses that once Congress passes a law, the real implementation
and battles over enforcement occur as officials seek to ascertain and implement what Congress intended.
n104
An effective analysis of Supreme Court influence cannot disregard the application of its decisions by
inferior tribunals. How closely were important Supreme Court decisions followed, and how often were they
relied upon? Were these decisions applied in new situations and extended to other areas of the law? Were
lower courts amenable to claims under these rules, or did they consistently resist their implementation?
Who won and who lost, and how was this changed by decisions of the Supreme Court? How did new found
success or failure in litigation affect policy in other arenas? By refusing to pursue this rich line of inquiry
and preferring to reign his inquiry within an arbitrary time period, Rosenberg's analysis is severely
impoverished and his conclusions are brought into question.
Rosenberg fails to take into account problems with implementation at the

Congressional level
Policy. Lexis
While Rosenberg may have forsworn systematic analysis of the process through which Court decisions are
implemented, he did not forswear all reference to the process. Rosenberg argues that biased judges and
obstructionist interest groups placed such monumental obstacles in the path of judicial efficacy that the
courts could not be labeled "dynamic" institutions, at least when compared with other bodies like
Congress. n105 Yet Rosenberg's analysis seems to embrace a double standard. n106 He makes no reference to
the obstacles legislatures face in implementing policy. State and federal officials may do much to interfere
with effective implementation, n107 and interest groups effectively can close down the legislative arena for
years. n108 Rosenberg notes none of these obstacles. He seems far more eager to ascribe change to forces
other than the Court on the basis of purely post hoc argument. n109 He also fails to restrain his inquiry into
the role of other institutions and phenomena within the same strict temporal limits as he did the inquiry
into judicial efficacy. n110 In short, there may be no institution that lives up to Rosenberg's "dynamic" model.
His failure to focus equally on the obstacles faced by various institutions brings his exaltation of Congress
as the ultimate agent of social change into significant question.
Courts are important the Hollow Hope fails to take into account that the
judiciary works with and results in the action of other branches of government
to enforce decisions.
Neal Devins (Associate Professor of Law and Lecturer in Government, College of William and Mary)
1992: Judicial Matters: The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? California Law Review.
Lexis
[*1067] Courts matter. They matter a lot. Sometimes their orders set in motion market mechanisms
which guarantee their effectiveness. n199 Sometimes the threat of judicial action prompts either settlement
or legislative initiative. n200 Their opinions influence legislative deliberations n201 and change the status quo.
n202
Occasionally, they trump agencies and interpose their normative views into the law. It may be that
Page 252 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
these influences sometimes result in unwise policy decisions and sometimes exceed the proper judicial role
in our system of separated powers, but they are judicial influences nonetheless.
The Hollow Hope unduly discounts these judicial contributions. Courts are given inadequate credit for what
they do, as well as too much blame for what they do not do. n203 While Rosenberg does a masterful job of
showing that courts do not effect change alone, he goes too far in refusing to recognize that the judiciary is
actively involved in a partnership with elected government. His repeated broadsides at the judiciary sound
a message of judicial irrelevance rather than one of limited governmental partnership. n204
Rosenberg asks too much of court decisions he implies there is intent where
there isnt justices rely on enforcement at the local level
Policy. Lexis
Not only does Rosenberg fail fully to explore the nature of judicial and legislative policy implementation,
but he also fundamentally misunderstands the nature of those portions of judicial decision making which
he does explore. By demanding that the Court elicit broad acquiescence to the principles of its decisions if
it is to be deemed effective, Rosenberg demands of courts results that litigants and judges rarely intend.
Generally, their aims are far narrower. It has long been disputed in the public policy literature what
relationship the intentions of actors should play to the standard by which their success in policy
implementation is measured. n111 Judicial decisions may have effects beyond what litigants or judges
subjectively intend, but it seems unreasonable consistently to hold courts to a standard they rarely seek to
reach. Such an approach seems to constitute little more than assigning intent to actors with no more
evidence that they entertained such an intent than that a decision has, years later, come to stand for a
principle of social reform. n112 Merely bringing a case and having it heard may be all litigants actually seek.
n113
Others may wish to overturn a particular law without intending to restructure social policy across the
nation. n114 Furthermore, the Court may consciously avoid direct and immediate judicial coercion, as in
Brown, where the Court ordered local officials themselves to adopt remedial measures. n115 Even the "all
deliberate speed order" of Brown II was not a fully complete remedial decree: the Justices still chose to rely
on local officials for implementation. n116 The Supreme Court did not clarify implementation orders until
after 1964 and into the 1970s. It was only in Green v. County School Board n117 and Swann v. CharlotteMecklenburg Board of Education, n118 decided after the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 ESEA Acts, that the
Court demanded particular affirmative steps toward desegregation. n119 It was during this time period that
some of the most pronounced changes in integration occurred. n120 Perhaps, then, the cases that ought to
be examined are the cases in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Rosenberg's ten year time frame should
be adjusted accordingly. As Nathan Hakman, one of our constitutional law mentors, used to say, "Courts
first decide cases and not causes." Rosenberg has entirely missed this simple truth.
Finally, Rosenberg's definition of what constitutes the "significant social reform" that he seeks to examine
is dangerously imprecise. n121 How many people must be affected for reform to be significant? What types
of people? How much must change before reform has "occurred"? All these questions are left open, and
the indeterminacy of this phrase undermines the force of Rosenberg's arguments throughout. n122
Rosenbergs claims arent warranted- groups he says lose hope are activist
lawyers
Malcolm M. Feeley, professor, School of Law, University of California, 1992
REVIEW SECTION SYMPOSIUM The Supreme Court and Social Change
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?
collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/lsociq17&type=Text&id=753
Although he draws on many sources and quotes many of them at length, Rosenberg is not at all
systematic in his effort to locate those reformers and other observers whose hopes he
finds hollow. Perhaps he views it as unnecessary; after all, these views may be so commonly held that
it is impossible to locate a school of proponents. But to say that he has not clearly identified this
group does not mean that he has not identified anyone. By my rough count, he mentions 42 advocates of
the "dynamic court" whose hopes he concludes are hollow.'0 (The inclusion of several of these people
might be challenged because he mentions them only in passing or only briefly quotes from them.) Of this
Page 253 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
list nearly half are activist lawyers and another quarter are judges and law professors.
The rest are a smattering of political scientists, journalists , and others whose professions I
cannot identify. But with respect to the frequency of cita- tions and the length of quotes, the focus is
overwhelmingly on activist lawyers and judges. In essence, he contrasts the wishes, desires, and hopes of
these reformers with subsequent social policy developments related to important Supreme Court
decisions.
So far as I can tell, this group of reformers is an ad hoc collection of
activists (and their friends) who exaggerate claims about their own efficacy.
That there is a huge gap between their views and subsequent policies is hardly surprising. Imagine such a
study of sports teams, contrasting coaches' preseason rhetoric with the teams' performances during the
season ("This team has a legitimate shot at the championship; on a good day it can beat anyone"-yet
the team finishes three games out of the cellar). Or imagine someone reporting that there is a huge gap
between candidates' campaign pronouncements and policies after election. Would anyone complain
that the coaches had hollow hopes or that the information about the candidates is newsworthy? I suspect
that no one other than a few sports writers, or opposition candidates, would find it worthwhile to take
such rhetoric seriously. Certainly no one would take it as a disinterested diagnosis of the strength of the
team or the candidate.
Yet this is more or less what Rosenberg has done; he has taken the
rhetoric of the intensely partisan at face value and then shown that performance falls
short of rhetoric. What he does not do is offer any reason-convincing or not-why
observations of this group should be taken so seriously. I emphasize this because his book is so
relentless. Each case study follows a similar format: each begins with a mobilization of quotes by
reformers which are then followed by a piling on of data to show that they were wrong. But Rosenberg
never pauses to ask what the views of these reformers signify or why they are privileged voices to be
taken so seriously.
In cases of lost hope, the court didnt actually act on the social change- hollow
hope is a myth
In each of these case studies-and others not mentioned here- Rosenberg concludes that the Court
was weak because the goals of the reformers were not met. But as I have tried to show,
the Court never even attempted to do what he observes it did not do . It is hard to know
what to make of such observations. At best it is myth debunking, although if so, we need to know
more about the myth than he tells us. He promises to explicate this myth with his second
provocative metaphor, "flypaper." But, as we shall see, he-does not keep the promise.
Rosenberg and followers exaggerate the power the court has to lose hope
Who is attracted to the Court and why? A substantial number of people attribute exaggerated
powers to the courts. It would be interesting to know who they are. Unfortunately Rosenberg does
not explore this group systematically. At the outset of each case study he marshals quotes from a
variety of sources revealing that a number of prominent people have had great expectations from
litigation. But he provides no sustained discussion as to how he selected those to be
quoted, or who they are-why their views matter. One way to summarize his argument is
as follows: "A lot of people think the Court is really powerful, but my study
reveals that it isn't." Even if he is correct, and I am impressed with the data he has marshaled, his
study is at most a successful effort at debunking an ill-defined myth than it is in explaining the nature of
Page 254 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
the Court's powers or the pervasiveness and significance of the myth.

A more sociological and
theoretically informed study would have used the myth-the "hollow hope"-as the beginning of inquiry
rather than the conclusion. It would have gone beyond myth debunking and asked, Who holds this
"hollow hope"? Why do they persist in holding a belief that is so patently false? What functions does the
myth serve? What is the nature of the flypaper Court? What functions does it serve? Throughout the
book, Rosenberg raises such questions, but he never addresses them.
Indeed, his brief concluding
chapter, "The Fly Paper Court," is a dis- appointment. The metaphor promises to explore the seductions of
the Court and those attracted to it. Yet it only reiterates his point that those who place their faith in the
Court as an engine of social change are misguided. This, of course, is an important point, but the
question is, Why are so many people then attracted to the Court? We know why flies are attracted to
flypaper; flypaper is aromatic and flies are dumb. But the people Rosenberg identifies who are attracted
to litigation are not so dumb; they are prominent lawyers, journalists, and public officials. How can they
be so misguided?
One can also ask, Is the metaphor apt? Certainly the metaphor is powerful: The
Court attracts would-be reformers only to entrap them in a futile struggle. But flypaper is designed for this
purpose. Is the Court? Is the Court responsible for trapping would-be reformers? Or has someone else
fostered the myth? And is it in fact as dysfunctional as Rosenberg argues?
Whatever the case, the
anomaly Rosenberg has identified-the deep belief in a powerful Court coupled with a finding of abject
weakness- should have been a central problematic in the study. To conclude that the Court is like
flypaper that entangles would-be reformers in a fruitless enterprise is to pose a problem,

not conclude the analysis. Thus the unasked and unanswered questions: Who fosters the myth of the
dynamic court? Who maintains it? What social functions does it serve? Rosenberg's book would have
been far more satisfying had he pursed such questions.
Turn: Court action encourages further litigation and strategy- Brown proves
David S. Meyer, Professor of Sociology and Political Science and Steven A.
Boutcher, Doctoral Candidate in Sociology, University of California, March
2007, Signals and Spillover: Brown v. Board of Education and Other Social
Movements http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS
%2FPPS5_01%2FS1537592707070077a.pdf&code=0953f61b8fdb83aea22b52fd
9ff5084a
Next, we can consider emulation . Civil rights activists success in using the courts led a
range of other interests to adopt litigation strategies, and indeed, even the organizational structure of the NAACP and its Legal Defense Fund. OConnor, for example, describes
pressure from board members of the National Organization for Women (NOW) to create a subsidiary
directed to litigate on behalf of womens rights. 39 Baker, Bowman, and Torrey report that the feminist
movements concern with discrimination against women, and inequality between women and men, led
them to adopt the NAACPs approach as the only obvious model . . . . . following the NAACPs example,
liberal feminists worked within the system to achieve change by focusing on gaining equal opportunity for
women as individuals. 40 They report that NOW deliberately copied the methods,
structures, and funding techniques of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and concentrated,
like that organization, on the courts as an instrument of change through litigating cases
raising constitutional claims. 41 Costain notes that members of Congress made the connection between women and blacks, and copied legislative provisions for civil rights as
well.42 The successful example of litigation, and the simple story about social change
implicit in a judicial pronounce- ment, encouraged the strategy , and groups sought to frame
themselves as like African Americans in some way, usually as a distinct group that suffers discrimination.
Activists organized to provide for equal protection under the law, the same standard
articulated in Brown, regardless of the nature of their constituency.43 The model was
most easily adopted by other ethnic minorities and women, but it spread to consumers,
disabled people, anti-war activists, crusaders against poverty , and even animal rights and
environmental activists. Handler reports that the war on povertys legal services program, started in
1967, was explicitly modeled on the NAACP and the Legal Defense Fund, 44 as was the Envi- ronmental
Page 255 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Defense Fund, also founded in 1967.45 In these cases, as with the NAACP, dedicated organizations raised
money to hire lawyers to file litigation to achieve their political goals, to win political visibility, and to raise
more money. The iconic status of the Brown decision, in which the Supreme Court reversed a long-
standing precedent and articulated a clear vision of individual rights that mandated,
although it did not effect immediate change in laws and policies, provided an incredible temptation for
environmental groups. If the Court could find a right for equal access to education, perhaps it could also
find a Constitu- tional right to a clean environment. 46
Social movements will continue even if they dont win- resources, need to fight
opposition
David S. Meyer, Professor of Sociology and Political Science and Steven A.
Boutcher, Doctoral Candidate in Sociology, University of California, March
2007, Signals and Spillover: Brown v. Board of Education and Other Social
Movements http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS
%2FPPS5_01%2FS1537592707070077a.pdf&code=0953f61b8fdb83aea22b52fd
9ff5084a
Second, some social movement organizations have extensive resources invested in the
pursuit of social change through litigation. Activists are committed to social change , but
they are also bound to support the survival of their organizations, and to make best use of the tools
and expertise they have. Social movements comprise multi- organizational fields,
including groups that specialize in litigation . In order to sustain the flow of resources into these
groups, they must maintain an identity distinct from their allies, and continue to offer the
promise of victory.58 Continued litigation fills a distinct organizational niche
within a social movement, and makes use of well-established organizational
expertise; even in the absence of social change, it is an organizational
survival strategy. Third, like organizations, individuals have investments in particular identities and
tactics. Lawyers committed to social change employ familiar tactics and make use of the skills they have.
The choice of the legal system as a venue for political action reflects not only beliefs, but educational
and professional investments that support those beliefs. Its easy to imagine the cause lawyer doubting
the effectiveness of shifting his or her skills and efforts to an alternative political venue. Finally,
advocates of social change continue to litigate at least partly because their opponents
do. When an oppos- ing group seeks to pursue its interests through the courts, it
virtually forces its opponent to do the sameor risk leaving a potentially important front
in the political battle undefended .59 Groups can try to respond to their opponents by bringing
alternative cases to the legal system, ones with more favorable facts or district judges; minimally, they
can file amicus curiae briefs in opposition to other advocates As long as either side sees the
courts as a potentially relevant institution, numerous groups will continue to

channel their efforts there. Clearly, efforts to pursue social change through the
courts continue against long odds of success.
Page 256 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
*****Congress*****
**Social Reform / Movements**
Congress is the most effective agent for solving societal problems
Dodd, Lawrence 2001 [Lawrence Dodd is a Professor at the University of
Florida, Published in Congress Reconsidered, 7th Edition, Edited by Lawrence
C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, Washington, D. C., CQ Press, pages 389414. Re-Envisioning Congress: Theoretical Perspectives on Congressional
Change.]
What we know at this point is that we have adjusted our governing perspectives during these decades and
that, despite the bitter partisan battles that have come with the experimentation and shift, and to some
extent because of them, our society is as prosperous and productive as ever. We also know one other
thing: that Congress, the parties, and the electorate are capable of reassessing governing strategies,
experimenting with new ones, learning innovative approaches, and addressing societal problems. To
appreciate this capacity, we must attend to the conceptual lenses through which we examine Congress
and craft multiple theoretical perspectives that can aid us in looking beyond momentary personalities and
short-term stalemate to see the dynamic, historical processes at play. In doing so, we must bring to
Congress the common-sense judgment we bring to daily life, taking care to focus on the motives and
strategic behavior of participants in the foreground, on the shifting background contexts, and then
ultimately on the critical ways in which the ideas that participants hold about politics and society shape
their strategies and actions. As we do so, crafting social choice theories to analyze the foreground, social
structure theories to interpret the background, and social learning theories to comprehend the role of
ideas, we see an overall pattern that no one of our theories could fully illuminate, and that helps us
understand how Congress can constructively respond to societal problems. Through these multiple lenses,
we see the contest for governing power that ensures partisans will highlight societal problems as they
challenge for control of Congress. We see the dynamic societal changes that generate new citizen
demands and policy challenges. And we see the coming of a new generation of legislators, social activists,
and engaged citizens who push Congress to experiment with fresh ideas, address the pressing policy
challenges, and solve societal problems.
Page 257 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Centralization / Government Bad**

The affirmatives acceptance of centralization prevents social movements by
discouraging individual actionthe result is extinction
Papworth 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World
Review, Peace Through Social Empowerment, "Primary Causes,"
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp14.html)
It is simply this; that our primary problem is not war, or the environment, or population pressures, nor the
squandering of the planet's finite resources, nor the alienation from life of many millions of people; THE
PRIMARY PROBLEM IS THAT OF SIZE, size developed on such a scale as to disempower people and which
makes their moral judgements irrelevant to the passage of events. If we ignore that and simply focus our
energies on particular abuses then, however commendable our objectives and our efforts, we are dealing
with the effects of the abuses of power and ignoring their causes. It was Einstein who remarked 'You
cannot solve a problem with the mindframe that has created it'. In saying as much he was pointing to the
core of our problem; a 19th century mindframe which accepts, without question or challenge, giant
centralised states and economic entrepreneurship global in its scope, which together have created a
doomsday scenario for the human race. No body can be healthier than the cells of which it is comprised. If
the cells of small-scale community life are debilitated or non-existent in the body politic then what we are
confronted with is a form of social and political leukaemia, a destroyed immune system which cannot
prevent multitudinous forms of life-threatening malignancy, such as monster global wars, from flourishing.
We are not going to solve the problems of the 21st century with the mind-frame of the 19th. Social
empowerment, involving the deliberate creation of an organic, multi-cellular structure and process of our
political and economic institutions, is today the only realistic path to enduring peace and to any genuine
social progress.
Voting negative challenges the inevitability of centralization and opens up

local communities for action
Papworth 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Peace Through Social
Empowerment, "Primary Causes," http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp14.html)
Supposing then our reform movements changed tack? Supposing they tackled the problem of giantism and
of excessive size in order to restore control of affairs back in citizen hands? And suppose all these reform
and protest organisations joined hands to do so? What then would be involved? They would be agents of
the most thoroughgoing and peaceful revolution the world has ever seen. A revolution not to capture
power but to dissolve it. To dissolve it into people's hands where it rightly belongs in the manifold
neighbourhoods, villages, parishes and human scale political structures throughout the world. They would
be putting paid to the absurd notion that the citizen can have a meaningful voice or influence in political
parties or in governments so enormous as to make it inevitable that power will be in the hands of those
who are controlling things at the centre, a control which ensures that they control the party conferences,
agendas, policies, candidate lists and so on. So persuasive is the power of established practice, and the
powerful propaganda that accompanies it in asserting the natural and inevitable validity of our current
institutions, that it requires a real effort of mind to recognise that far from being natural or inevitable they
are neither. They are based in fact on quite unsustainable assumptions and not least of these assumptions
relates to current scheming and plotting (it really is nothing less) to unite Europe under one Brusselsdominated Government.
Decentralization Solvency - Seeking institutional solutions while failing to

question the assumptions that underlie such institutions will inevitably fail
Papworth 02 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Cut the Cackle,"
Fourth World Review, http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwr118.pdf )
When confronted with a crisis of epic proportions, it might be thought that it would evoke
a concern of like degree, that if it was so obvious that something was quite
Page 258 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
fundamentally wrong with our political and economic arrangements we would be posing
no less fundamental questions about them. We are not. We are sedulously avoiding any
serious attempt to probe the assumptions on which those arrangements are based,
instead we are continuing to seek solutions which leave those assumptions untouched,
and therein lies the roots of the modern crisis. What we need to think we instinctively
regard as unthinkable, and the most imposing peak of this untouchable realm of our own
minds relates to the size and scale of our institutions.
No net benefitthere is only a risk the CP alone solves best.
Federal action coopts local movements
Papworth 01 (John, Editor @ Ecologist + editor of Fourth World Review, Bringing Up the Local Issues, The
Ecologist, June, http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp3.html)
We now have 'national' schemes and ministries for health, education, welfare and other essentially local
matters. The evidence abounds and grows that these bodies are increasingly wasteful and inefficient,
where they are not indeed riddled with the maggot of corruption, and not least of course they operate on
organisational parameters which make a mockery of democratic principle. Somehow the illusion has been
fostered, for example, that people who have devoted their lives to clambering to the top of the greasy pole
are better qualified to ordain how children should be educated than are the parents and their local
committees. So our public prints are loaded with otiose speculation about 'national' examination standards
and results, and about the content of 'national' educational curricula; meanwhile, in rural areas, large
numbers of children are bussed to giant 'comprehensive' schools where they learn about computers and
nothing about how to grow food. Local government, instead of being a power in its own right but working in
tandem, where necessary, with national government, is now the pawn of the latter, which is making a
mess of the whole works. It is time to cry halt to the assault on freedom involved in all this centralisation;
time to restore the power and the spirit of local power, responsibility and commitment of genuine local
government as a precondition of a healthy democratic way of life.
Centralization and individualism are zero-sumthe growing power of

centralized power necessarily decreases the significance of individuals
Papworth 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Peace Through Social
Empowerment, "Introduction," http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp11.html)
As any political (or other) unit grows in size, the significance of the individual proportionately declines. If
you are a member of a 500 strong community, in the governance of its affairs your membership and your
morality matter simply because your membership is both morally and statistically significant. They will
matter even more if you are deeply concerned, since a large number of people in any community are
generally, because of age or disposition, unable or unwilling to care. But if your political unit numbers 500
million your significance is reduced from 1/500th to 1/500 millionth! Yet despite this shrinking of your
significance to proportions so minute as to be infinitesimal, the power of the unit itself has increased to
quite staggering proportions: Where then is that power located? It is of course at the centre. The price of
your diminished power is the tribute you pay to the swollen octopus of power at the centre.
The centralization of power in the center of an organization inevitably trades

off with the individual.
Papworth 05 (John, Senior editor of the Ecologist, baker, and founder of the Fourth World Review,
Village Democracy)
To enlarge the scale of such relationships to a giant mass is to effect a near total transformation
of reality. For example, the workings of a modern mass political party, which may number
millions, becomes an entity where the morality factor has largely been supplemented by that of
power. Whatever moral objectives an individual may seek to pursue by joining a large mass
Page 259 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
organisation, his relationship with it can only be a power relationship. This is fundamental to his
reasons for becoming a member at all; he is seeking, after all, to change the way power in
society is used, but his individual power is emphatically unequal to that of the central controlling
mechanisms. It is in fact power he surrenders by the mere fact of becoming a member.
The same power cannot be in two places at the same time, either a member has it , as
in his bowls club by the small size of the club, where his membership is a significant factor in
controlling such power as it may deploy, or he doesn't, as in a mass political party where he is
an insignificant cog in a massive wheel controlled by others at the centre. The mere fact of
enlarged size makes size itself an assault on the democratic ethic as a matter of course.
Perm fails- power cannot reside in two places at once.

Papworth 5 ( John, Senior editor of the Ecologist, baker, and founder of the Fourth World Review,
Village Democracy)
Current thinking in any case takes no account of an essential prerequisite for the successful working of any
federation. History is eloquent that if the members of a federation are significantly unequal in size and
strength it will only be a matter of time before the bigger members dominate it. This proved the case in
'Germany', which, after its formation by Bismark, soon became dominated by Prussia and in the USSR,
which was dominated by Russia. What ensues is not so much a federation as an empire under the
dominance of the most powerful member. It is noticeable that in the USA and in Switzerland, two of the
most successful federations in the record, no single member is strong enough to dominate the rest. This
does not of course resolve the problem of the power drives of any federation when it gets big enough to dominate other federations,
as the USA does today. We can anticipate the prospect of China, or India, achieving a degree of power to rival that of the USA,
especially when the power of the latter inevitably declines. But this does not resolve the problem of war so much as open up the
prospect of even bigger global wars between rival federations. Hence any projects for a world federation will need to involve a
massive scaling down of the big powers that now dominate world affairs so that the members achieve some approximation of parity
in terms of size and strength. The same power cannot be in two places at the same time; either people
have power in their hands or they don't. Either giant governments and corporations have it in
their hands or they haven't. Nevertheless the dream of some such international authority continues to
shine like a beacon in the eyes of many pacifists and peace lovers, as well as being vaguely acknowledged
as a good thing by a great many other people. The fact is that they have no grasp at all of the
power realities involved or that any such body would be only too to likely make peace-lovers
and their ideals its first victims. But then, an anxious enquiring voice will be heard to venture, 'Won't
largely self-governing local communities or bioregional provinces sometimes want to make war on other
neighbouring communities?'
The perm cannot solve. The endorsement of a mass movement, no matter how
well meant, will inevitably lead to a loss of individual power.
Papworth, Albery, and Sale 1 Senior editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth World Review,
Director of the Middlebury Institute, Founder of the institute for Social Inventions (John, Kirpatrick,
Nicholas, Common Sense, http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/commonsense2008.pdf)
We cannot expect to transform the bureaucratic and market dominated subversion of democracy now
prevalent overnight. So often we are not even in contact with our neighbours, and in seeking change we
tend to immerse ourselves in mass political bodies - themselves part of the disease rather
than its cure, or in good causes such as campaigning for peace, or for the homeless, or to save the
rain forests, where concerned people tend to find themselves in a moral ghetto largely talking to each
other. A new approach to secure neighbourhood power implies a need to focus on the neighbourhood and
on its problems and possibilities for both local and wider social transformation. No body can be healthier
than the cells of which it is comprised. We cannot begin to do this if we are not in contact with our
neighbours and this means we need to explore and adopt such measures as enable us to form and
maintain working community relationships. Mass anonymity is its own form of mass powerlessness. Power
cannot be in two places at once. If centralized government controlling a mass electorate has the
power, then the citizen in no way has it or, on such a basis, can have it.
Page 260 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Centralized power inevitably trades off with the local.

Papworth and Sale 1 Senior editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth World Review, AND
Director of the Middlebury Institute, and Albery, Founder of the instiute for Social inventions, 01(John,
Kirkpatrick,Nicholas, Common Sense,
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/commonsense2008.pdf)
Over the last century or more there has been a sedulous transfer of the power of local villages,
parishes and neighbourhoods to the ambit of central government. The measures involved have been
presumed to be justified on the grounds of efficiency and economy. Neither has been justified by events.
Numerous services heretofore often conducted on a voluntary basis by dedicated, public-spirited local
citizens have been taken over by salaried officials appointed by the central government, with a number of
consequences which has helped to create a gratuitous social tragedy of ever widening dimensions. It is a
tragedy which has been accentuated by the emergence of new forms of power in commerce,
communications and transport which have also been deployed on a non-local basis and which have
served even more to divorce the citizen from any real control over many of the many factors that now
dominate citizen life. Two centuries ago an average villager had a distinct element of control over his
school, medicine, police, entertainment, dress, cookery, food production, transport, shopping, welfare and
social provision. Today such control has passed from citizen hands into the hands of powerful central
bureaucracies appointed by the central government or into the hands of no less powerful commercial
concerns. This process has often been justified by reference to the extension
Central government action discourages individual movements to solve the

problem because they posit problems as out of our control
Papworth 02 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Cut the Cackle," Fourth
World Review, http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwr118.pdf)
Over half a century ago an Austrian professor of economics asserted, If anything is wrong it is because it
is too big. Perhaps an oversweeping statement, but all experience since simply confirms it. Too big. Just
that. So government is too big, banks, shops, farms, industries and fisheries are too big, and even more
imposingly unthinkable, nations are too big. Why? Because giantism has made them unmanageable in
keeping the peace or in ensuring economic justice and stability; the forces dominating them are out
of control and producing effects we are powerless to prevent or to alleviate. This despite the
ballot box and freedom of speech. Too big is the problem of the modern world and the challenge
confronting us all is to reduce the size and scale of things so as to enable us to control them. Nobody
would want a pair of shoes which was too large, so why do we tolerate far more important matters which
suffer the same defect? We need to challenge that deep-rooted assumption in our minds that making
things bigger makes them better when we are living in a crisis which howls with evidence indicating the
contrary; evidence indicating that the small is generally better, far more stable, responsive,
beneficial, controllable, peaceful and prosperous.
The government is the root cause of problems

Papworth 95 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Small is Powerful, The
Monster, page 2-3, 1995)
We need to see that in any mass form of society (i.e., one in which empowered local communities just do not exist), these powerful
forces have little difficulty in deploying their abundant resrouces so as to secure an almost unlimited degree of acquiescence to their
standards and values of a vast mass of uncritical, and all too often uncaring, individuals- who nevertheless have the power to vote.
Ordinarily nature provides an abundance of leadership in every kind of community which will take the
initiative in tackling its problems; but when communities as such cease to exist, as centralized forms of
power come to exercise a dominance over the affairs of the mass, such localized leadership
loses the mainspring of its capacity to act; it no longer has a stage, one might say, on which it can
perform. It is this factor of negated or subjugated leadership which gives added signifncance to the
proliferating number and variety of protest, reform or campaigning groups which today are such a marked
feature of public life. An empowered community would not find itself faced with such groups for the simple
reason that the conduct of its affairs would reflect the wishes of its members as a matter of course. Its
leaders, instead of founding or joining some national movement, would be largely running the local show;
but since there is no local show to run, if matters as coffee mornings, jumble sales, or discos to raise funds for table tennis tables for
teenagers are excluded, what role is there left for it to play in matters which will help to determine its character, its use of local
Page 261 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
So that what we are now observing is a form of government which,

because of the nature of the behind-the-scenes forms of power which sustain it and because of the values
these forces are concerned to promote, is compelled to act in accordance with those values (which a mass
electorate has been manipulated into adopting as its own), is creating a multitude of problems which
the more public spirited elements are being driven to seek either to reform, combat or negate .
So that in a very real sense we are in the grip of a process of government of the people and supposedly for
the people which is creating problems, often of crisis proportions, which under a system of
government by the people would scarcely arise at all.
resources or the general quality of life?
Decentralization solves democracy and poverty

Kauzya 05 - The Chief in the Division for Public Administration and Development
Management, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (John Mary,
Decentralization: Prospects for Peace, Democracy, and Development, September
2005, http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021510.pdf, K.
Ward)
As part of the efforts to promote the participation of the people in the decision-making processes
as well as the development activities, the policy of devolution of power and authority to subnational governments (generally referred to as decentralization) is increasingly adopted and
applied in many countries as one of the tenets of good governance. This is based on the
premise that decentralized governance provides a structural arrangement and a level playing
field for stakeholders and players to promote peace, democracy, and development. Many
countries are promoting decentralized governance as a measure for democratization, people
empowerment and poverty reduction. However, the efforts in this regard are not moving at the
same pace, with the same political conviction, using equally competent capacities, and with the
same success. Some countries have gone beyond political hesitation and put in place policies of
decentralization but they lack the requisite capacities for the implementation. Others are still
politically hesitant, not sure of the role of decentralized governance in democratization, people
empowerment, and poverty reduction.
The government is the root cause of environmental destruction, wars, and

economic upheavals
Papworth 95 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Small is Powerful,
The Monster, page 10-11, 1995)
Hence to assert that our societies are out of control is surely to assert something too patent to be gainsaid;
and that they are out of control because they have overreached themselves and have become too big is no
less obvious. Too big, both in terms of the private and public institutions within each state and also in
terms of the size of the states themselves; too big to be able to respond to the moral judgements of the
generality of their members, in the way in which responsive human scale communities are able to evoke
as a matter of course; in consequence our societies are in effect running amok in terms of environmental
destruction, social despoliation, the squandering of the earths finite resources, economic upheaveals, a
propensity for massive wars and even in terms of an uncontrolled proliferation of human numbers.
The centralization of power inevitably leads to global destruction.

Papworth, Senior editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth World Review, and Sale 1
Director of the Middlebury Institute, and Albery, Founder of the instiute for Social inventions
(John, Kirkpatrick, Nicholas, Common Sense,
One overall consequence of this lack of citizen control is control by boardroom moguls pursuing purely
short-term pecuniary gains as obliged by company law and the shareholder primacy system in some
countries. It is a deployment of power, undemocratic, irresponsible, pervasive and importunate,
which has come to act on a global scale and helped to create the current ever deepening global crisis that
now dominates all human life. It is a crisis which is destroying significant elements of the life support
systems of the planet, vast proportions of irreplaceable reserves of finite resources and involving a
Page 262 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
wholesale degradation of the quality of life at numerous levels. Not least it has set in train a number of
forces which betoken the most catastrophic consequences, whether in terms of another global war,
environmental collapse or social disintegration, which ought now to be the central concern of all
public policy considerations. It is a crisis which can only have ensued from a grotesque distortion of the
decision-making power within human societies and can only be resolved if that distortion is corrected so
that such power is effectively in the hands of the people in their neighborhood communities.
Individual engagement in democracy is key to preventing a collapse
Watson 04 Assistant Professor of sociology and gerontology coordinator @ Stephen F. Austin

State University (J.B. Watson, A Justification of the Civic Engagement Model, p. 73-74, Service
Learning: History, Theory, and Issues)
The civic engagement of ordinary citizens with voluntary associations, social institutions, and
government in local communities is a central feature of strong democracies. Further, a
fundamental feature of democratic governmental structure is its relationship to civil society,
defined as "voluntary social activity not compelled by the state" (Bahlmueller, 1997, p. 3).
Through voluntary participation in civil society associations at the local and regional level,
citizens pursue activities that potentially serve the public good. Through this rudimentary civic
engagement, citizens learn the attitudes, habits, skills, and knowledge foundational to the
democratic process-(Patrick, 1998). Unfortunately, in 1998 the National Commission on Civic
Renewal (NCCR) highlighted the declining quantity and quality of civic engagement at all levels
of American life. A number of other studies concur on the decline of involvement in civic
activities (Bahlmueller, 1997; McGrath, 2001; Putnam, 1995). This concern about the nature and
extent of civic engagement in the United States has impacted the debate on the proper role of
higher education in a democracy. Higher education institutions, as transmitters of essential
elements of the dominant culture, struggle with the development of mechanisms to socialize the
next generation about democratic values. A national debate has emerged on the higher
education response to this perceived need for revitalizing constructive democratic engagement,
building civil society, and increasing citizen participation in government at all levels. Colleges
and universities have responded with a number of civic engagement initiatives, including
university-community partnerships, empirical studies of political engagement, community-based
(collaborative) research, and the development of new (or expanded) service-learning programs
(Jacoby 2003).
Decentralized government is key to development of democracy
Rosenbaum 99 Director of the Institute of Public Management at the Florida

International University (Allan, Democracy, Governance, and Decentralization,
1999, http://www.fiu.edu/~ipmcs/articles/dgd.htm, K. Ward)
In general, decentralized government can be a very important element in the facilitation of an
active and lively civil society. The more decentralized government is, and the stronger local
governance capacity is, the more opportunities - in essence, the more arenas - are provided for
the emergence of civil society institutions. In fact, very often it is the existence of local
governance, combined with the emergence of local civil society institutions , that truly creates the
pluralism that is so central to democratic institutional development . In that regard, local
governments can and have played crucial facilitating roles in the development of vibrant civil
societies. Local government policy and administrative practice can profoundly impact upon the
capacity for civil society to emerge and play a role in governance. Likewise, the actions of local
political leaders can either be supportive of or create major impediments to civil society
development.
Page 263 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Localization is a pre-requisite to solving democracy
Papworth 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Peace
Through Social Empowerment, "Primary Causes,"
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp14.html)
Our prospects of countering the evil forces promoting the global crisis and of making any significant
progress are bleak indeed if we do not grasp that if people have no real power to enable their moral
judgements to be reflected in the general life processes of their own communities, if they do not
themselves control their social structures, their schools, post office, bank, police, hospital, transport and
their welfare services; if they have no local power to determine these matters, if they do not have their
own locally elected representatives to sit, with others similarly elected, on boards which govern matters of
wider import, including public utilities such as water, gas, electricity and not least, governing the content
of radio and television, they have no effective power at all. The very structures disempower them and it is
a mere abuse of language to describe any such process as democratic. Democracy, we should never cease
to hold, does not mean government of the people, nor government for the people, both are essentially
totalitarian concepts, it means government by the people. All else is claptrap and delusion.
Localized efforts are key to solve war and democracy
Papworth 02 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Cut
the Cackle," Fourth World Review,
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwr118.pdf)
To talk of the need for a new party is the old fashioned giantist approach; what we need is thousands of
new locally-based independent political parties up and down the country! And in the world at large millions
of them. The pressing need of the moment is for a political and economic programme they could adopt
which affirms at every level the imperative need for the human scale as a prerequisite for the effective
working of democracy. And the programmes? Each local neighbourhood party will decide its own as a
matter of course, which does not mean they would not promote a common series of principles which serve
their common interests. Such principles would relate at the national level to fundamental provisions for
liberty, freedom and independence, involving of course a complete rejection of any association with the
European Community. But cut the cackle all along the line; currently discussion is non-stop about what
government policy should be on a host of matters which have been removed from local control. Our
millions of new parties will assume as a matter of right the power to establish their own elected regional
bodies to run services where such co-operation with other communities may be needed such as specialist
hospitals, colleges, police, radio and TV, transport, utilities, banking and investment. This is a programme
of liberation, a programme to get government off peoples backs and into their own hands. Such a political
structure would at last enable peoples wishes to prevail on the issues of war, ecological sanity and
economic justice. Across the world people would insist on the most rigorous controls on armaments
production, where it was permitted at all, and of associated scientific research. At last the questions of war
and peace would not be matters of power-brokering and diplomacy in the hands of giant states but moral
questions of right and wrong in the hands of people. The centralization of power kills democracy, by
concentrating decision making beyond the reach of the average citizen. Papworth, Sale, and Albery 1
Senior editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth World Review, Director of the Middlebury
Institute,, Founder of the institute for Social inventions, 01(John, Kirkpatrick,Nicholas
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/commonsense2008.pdf) of the franchise, but again what is
evident is an increasing decline of citizen influence or capacity to control as giant political parties, subject
to their own highly centralized bureaucracies, ordain their workings and their general policy direction.
What emerges from this process is not one in which the citizen is able to express preferences which party
or government then seeks to effect, rather it is a matter of policy decisions by powerful centralized bodies
to which the citizen has no effective response except to assent. It is a process which gives enormous
powers of patronage to party leaders and even more to heads of government and it is one quite
incompatible with the spirit and practice of the democratic ethos. Such patronage is a powerful weapon in
the hands of those who deploy it to secure subservience to their wishes rather than concurrence with the
wishes of the citizen.
Page 264 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Decentralization promotes democracy
Kauzya 05 - The Chief in the Division for Public Administration and Development Management,
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (John Mary, Decentralization:
Prospects for Peace, Democracy, and Development, September 2005,
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021510.pdf, K. Ward)
Viewed in this light, political decentralization (being a process of transferring decision making
power and authority) becomes a strong vehicle for championing local diversity and local
autonomy. Through it, local interests are articulated, and local socio-cultural systems are
strengthened. Decentralization provides a structural and institutionalized venue through which
local people can participate and exert more influence in the formulation and implementation of
policies and the determination of their development in general.4 If it is taken that democracy
means the rule of the people, then political decentralization, by facilitating participation of the
people in decision-making, promotes democracy.
Decentralization promotes democracy
Kauzya 05 - The Chief in the Division for Public Administration and Development Management,
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (John Mary, Decentralization:
Prospects for Peace, Democracy, and Development, September 2005,
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021510.pdf, K. Ward)
When political decentralization is understood in the preceding sense, then it becomes clear that
it can be a vehicle for promoting democratic participation. In fact, one would not see any value in
political decentralization if it was not linked to the promotion of participation of local people or
their representatives in the process of decision-making and implementation. In a general way,
what is difficult about using political decentralization to promote democratic participation is not
in understanding the linkage between the two but rather how to, through the process of
decentralization, create structures that inspire as well as energize local people, and facilitate
their participation in the decision-making and implementation process.
The government is the root cause of civic disengagement
Papworth 95 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Small is
Powerful, The Monster, page 4-5, 1995)
In posing such questions let us be clear how the argument is shaping. We are noting that society
at large is afflicted with an increasing number of problems in almost every aspect of its affairs;
we are suggesting that these problems taken together point to a general cause or causes from
which they stem and that one aspect of those causes relates to the fact that our affairs are
conducted on a mass basis rather than on a localised, empowered community basis. We are also
saying that the mere existence of the mass form of society affirms the existence of a majority
which is ignorant of any serious consideration of its problems and which is for the most part
indifferent to any need to resolve them, and that this mass unconcern is the material which
dominant forces are able to manipulate to achieve ends which are sharply at variance with the
general interests of society; in so doing they are prompting governments to pursue courses
which cannot fail to multiply problem areas which, in turn prompts the emergence of protest or
reform groups of people who are informed, who do care about the general well-being of society
and who, in empowered communities, as distinct from the mass form of society, would be the
natural leaders who would be harkened to and followed by their neighbours. To this it needs to be
added that the problems which now beset our societies are so numerous, as well as enormous,
as to constitute an overall crisis of a magnitude which is no only causing the everyday workings
of the social order to malfunction but which now threatens its prospects of survival as the
sedulous process of social disintegration which is thus created gathers momentum.
Page 265 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
A mass democracy is an oxymoron. As the size of a political unit increases the moral
judgement of each of its members because unimportant.
Papworth 6 Senior editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth World Review (John, The
Fourth World Review, The ABC's of Politics II,No 136, pg 2
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwrp137.pdf)
In terms of democratic comprehension
power entities such as India, the USA, China, Russia,
Germany, France, Britain etc. are simply a repudiation of any possibility of democratic practice . Democracy
is a moral concept implying a condition of human freedom, and morality in turn is wholly
a function of human relationships, which is why the numbers of humans involved in asserting and
upholding moral principles is all important. Numbers of a size that enables each persons moral
judgement and decision to be significant must be limited if such decisions are to be
operative. The mere existence of giant multi-million states, especially when power is
concentrated in single centres, is an effective repudiation of any possibility of democratic
practice. A mass democracy is an oxymoron . The centralization of power ensures that
economic interests will triumph over those of the individual, killing democracy Papworth, Senior
editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth World Review, 01, (John, The Fourth World Review, The
Community Revolution. Nos 109 &110) Radical activists really must wake up here. The sheer scale
and degree of centralised power of most governments puts them effectively beyond the reach of
any prospect of citizen control; but governments are not, in any case, any longer masters of their
own house. That office is now decisively in the hands of a mere score or so of globally operating
boardrooms. In this light, however commendable it may be for radical activists to stage street
protests or to petition governments to remedy this or that abuse, there is a need, more urgent than ever before, to define
what we are protesting for and the kind of world we are seeking in which to live, one which rejects greed for
profit or power as a motivating principle and one which restores power to the people. It is an objective which must imperatively reject
any form of mass organisation, precisely the form which has robbed people of power and enabled boardroom greed to
achieve its dominance; it is one that commands imperatively a human-scale approach, one which enables personal decision-making
again to become meaningful and vibrant. Revolutionary politics today is community politics, and its weapons are not guns and
violence but clarity of thought and ever persistent peaceful persuasion.
Inefficiencies of the federal government are inevitable this is an inherent

characteristic in federal enterprise tradition resulting in corruption and
misallocation
Rothbard 04 Founder Center for Libertarian Studies, Doctor of Philosophy in

Economics, Distinguished Professor at the University of Nevada (Murray N. the Myth
of Efficient Government Service.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. 3-18-04. http://mises.org/story/1471)
The well-known inefficiencies of government operation are not empirical accidents, resulting
perhaps from the lack of a civil-service tradition. They are inherent in all government enterprise,
and the excessive demand fomented by free and other underpriced services is just one of the
many reasons for this condition. Thus, free supply not only subsidizes the users at the expense of
nonusing taxpayers; it also misallocates resources by failing to supply the service where it is
most needed. The same is true, to a lesser extent, wherever the price is under the free-market
price. On the free market, consumers can dictate the pricing and thereby assure the best
allocation of productive resources to supply their wants. In a government enterprise, this cannot
be done. Let us take again the case of the free service. Since there is no pricing, and therefore no
exclusion of submarginal uses, there is no way that government, even if it wanted to, could
allocate its services to the most important uses and to the most eager buyers. All buyers, all
uses, are artificially kept on the same plane. As a result, the most important uses will be slighted,
and the government is faced with insuperable allocation problems, which it cannot solve even to
Page 266 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
its own satisfaction. Thus, the government will be confronted with the problem: Should we build a
road in place A or place B? There is no rational way by which it can make this decision.
Healthcare is the epitome of overcentralization. It's current practice denies the

power of local communities, whilst sacrificing quality healthcare for profits.
Papworth 5 ( John, Senior editor of the Ecologist, baker, and founder of the Fourth
World Review, Village Democracy)
A further factor here is the role of drugs and drug companies in a national service. One medical
authority has declared that 'In Europe and the USA the drug companies now control the medical
profession. To a large extent doctors have become the marketing arms of the pharmaceutical
industry. The same author asserts many widely used drugs are dangerous and often do more
harm than healing. What stands out is that most drugs are excessively overpriced and that their
cost, as well as the costs of medical equipment and mundane ancillary items such as bandages,
plays a quite disproportionate role in health care budgets. A local health service would be free to
break out of the current constraints imposed by giant drug companies. Local labour could be
employed to make equipment and such items as bandages at a fraction of the prevailing
charges, and the way would also be open to employ natural traditional remedies from local
services such as herb gardens. There is a pronounced tendency to dismiss remedies based on
natural ingredients as being so much hocus pocus; it is an attitude which ignores how much
more hocus pocus there is in the promotion of high powered products of the giant
pharmaceutical companies. The size of their advertising budgets is a key pointer here; the whole
emphasis of the industry is not on healing but in making money, often in ways which are none
too scrupulous with regard to the long term effects of repeated use. What is noticeable about a
national service is its disregard of positive health promotion. It is really a National Sickness
service. Very few people have any detailed understanding of how their bodies work and are
generally ignorant of the needs of their respiratory, digestive, excretory and other organs; it is
this ignorance which enables advertisers to persuade them to purchase highly flavoured,
devitalised and chemicalised items masquerading as food on such a regular basis as to make one
form of ill health or another inevitable. Most of the shelves in most food stores today are
institutionalised assaults on any attempt to provide a proper health service; a locally run service
would be aware of the relationship between this factor and the effect on its health budget and be
concerned to promote locally-produced chemical-free food and to make people aware of the true
conditions of bodily health. Helping people to understand you cannot buy good health, you can
only Jive it, and a genuinely democratic local health authority would be a front runner in
promoting the ways decent health can be attained. It may well be asserted, indeed it frequently
is, that village people are apt to make mistakes with their limited knowledge and that these can
carry a heavy cost in terms of both money and resources, mistakes which experts with their
greater knowledge can avoid. this of course is only too true. Inadequate supervision of local
building operations may prompt a contractor to install drainage pipes of smaller than specified
dimensions, or to use sub-standard construction materials and so on, practices which only come
to light after a lapse of time and when invoices have been finally processed.
The centralization of power inevitably trades off with local power and results in gross inefficiency
and a destruction of the value of life, turning case. Papworth 1 Senior Editor of the
Ecologist and Founder of Fourth World Review, (John, Common Sense, Afterword
http://www.cesc.net/radicalweb/scholars/papworth/afterword.html )
And the damage the boardroom brigands have done to work is reflected in what the politicians
have done to our social structures. Local government once involved the energies, dedication,
commitment and genuinely altruistic spirit of service to the community of a high proportion of
local people. Today a kind of Fabian fascism has brushed all this aside as being of no account.
Instead of members of a local community hospital or welfare committee being involved in the
Page 267 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
day-to-day running of local institutions, organising fetes and celebrations to raise funds and
keeping the show on the road; doing it in ways which gave their lives meaning, status and, again
that word, fulfilment, they are now relegated to the role of voting fodder in the mass political
charade. We now have 'national' schemes and ministries for health, education, welfare and other
essentially local matters. The evidence abounds and grows that these bodies are increasingly
wasteful and inefficient, where they are not indeed riddled with the maggot of corruption, and
not least of course they operate on organisational parameters which make a mockery of
democratic principle. Somehow the illusion has been fostered, for example, that people who
have devoted their lives to clambering to the top of the greasy pole are better qualified to ordain
how children should be educated than are the parents and their local committees. So our public
prints are loaded with otiose speculation about 'national' examination standards and results, and
about the content of 'national' educational curricula; meanwhile, in rural areas, large numbers of
children are bussed to giant 'comprehensive' schools where they learn about computers and
nothing about how to grow food. Local government, instead of being a power in its own right but
working in tandem, where necessary, with national government, is now the pawn of the latter,
which is making a mess of the whole works.
The concentration of power makes populism inevitableall social movements

will regress to ineffectiveness because of their demands for universality
Papworth 6 Senior editor of the Ecologist, baker and founder of the Fourth World
Review (John, The Fourth World Review, The ABC's of Politics III,No 138-139, pg 4
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwrp138%26.pdf)
A tennis club member can communicate on the clubs concerns with his fellow club member,
perhaps in the club room bar or on its notice board; multi-million members of an electorate are
dependent on communicating on their common concerns, if at all, through mass newspapers or
TV programmes. But the power of such communication is not in the members hands, it is in the
hands of those who own or control such means. On the basis of the personal nature of the
relationships that prevail, the club member is in a position to exercise a significant measure of
influence on its policies and programmes, the ordinary member of a mass electorate has none: If,
by excessive wealth or talents, or of oratory or authorship, he can exercise significant influence
he is not an ordinary member. In the tennis club the natural leaders and spokespersons
communicate with their fellow members by the ordinary force of moral suasion, the member the
mass is not a communicator to any significant degree at all, he is a recipient. This means that
the moral force of his views inevitably becomes at a discount since they are subservient to the
governing, determining and manipulating forces at the centre. These forces control the levers of
power in the pursuit of money or power concerns which may be, as commonly they are, at
variance with the interests of the citizen or indeed the basic moral concerns of civilisation. The
moral implications of this, however carefully disregarded, are frightening; such moral force as
may be given leadership in the tennis club will naturally appeal to what is best in people. Where
mass leadership may be at stake it can only do so successfully by appealing to the most general
propensity; the proportion of the highest common factor gives way to the promotion of the
lowest common denominator. The mass society becomes inevitably an embodiment of
institutionalised vulgarity. The aff can't solve without the alternative. All reform movements are
doomed fail so long as governmental power remains centralizaed. Papworth 5 ( John, Senior
editor of the Ecologist, baker, and founder of the Fourth World Review, Village Democracy) For generations
the reformist agenda of policy change has held the stage on the assumption that if enough
support can be garnered it will impel the necessary policy changes, meanwhile the general crisis
of our civilisation has continued to deepen until today it overshadows the entire human
adventure. The reformist agenda, whether for peace, for economic sanity or for much needed
changes on many pressing problems is simply a diversion from the guts of the problem. That
agenda has failed, and that failure stems from a single cause, that the scale of government or of
economic activity has become so large as to be beyond any citizen capacity to exercise the
control needed to make it work for the general interest. If we are serious about the need for
Page 268 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
change we need to recognise the sheer irrelevance of postulating high-minded moral goals when
there is no form of power available to achieve them. We need to create those new forms of
power, forms which put power where in democratic terms it belongs, in the hands of concerned
citizens. The modern experience, and much ancient wisdom, is eloquent that for democratic
power to be effective it must be locally based in local community hands. To that goal all serious
political effort needs to be directed if moves for change are to have any prospect of success.
Decentralization of power is key to solving the population crisis.

Papworth, Albery, and Sale 1 Senior editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth
World Review, Director of the Middlebury Institute, Founder of the institute for Social
Inventions(John, Kirpatrick, Nicholas, Common Sense,
The largely unconscious biological mechanisms, which control numbers in the animal world were
also operative in human societies until quite recent times. They operated on the basis of
decisions made consensually (and frequently instinctively) in small groupings. Today there is a
need for those responses to be reinforced by a conscious process of reasoning; instead we have
largely destroyed the small communities, which were their basis. This is the real cause of the
population crisis. No small self-governing community threatened to be swamped by its own
numbers would fail to do something to prevent it if it had the power to do so. We declare that the
need for base power in our village societies is imperative if the crisis in human numbers is to be
resolved. No government of a mass society can solve this problem except by means, which are
totalitarian and an assault on human dignity. Community responsibility for community affairs is a
precondition for the control of community numbers. It follows that community power is a
precondition for community survival.
We can't provide a blueprint for the world of the alternative. Doing so would
only further the domination of centralized power.
Papworth, Albery, and Sale 1 Senior editor of the Ecologist and founder of the Fourth
World Review, Director of the Middlebury Institute, Founder of the institute for Social
Inventions (John, Kirpatrick, Nicholas, Common Sense,
To draw up a plan or a blueprint for the creation of a humanscale non-centralised global order
would be as foolish as it would be futile. If the principle of the human scale is accepted then
clearly each human scale community will be concerned to work out its own way of life, in
accordance with its own judgements. Any suggestion of acting in accordance with a centralised
plan would be the extension of a disease rather than the application of a remedy. People will only
act in accordance with a principle if they understand and accept the principle itself and to that
end a major and multifaceted drive to educate and to generally promote the principle of the
human scale is now a task of the utmost urgency.
While small communities might take
sometimes take reprehensible action, their limited size ensures that the scope of negative action
will be limited, but the positive action's is not. Papworth 1 Senior editor of the Ecologist and
founder of the Fourth World Review (John, The Fourth World Review, The Community Revolution.
Nos 109 &110, http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwr109%26.pdf ) There is
a tragic failure here to grasp some quite elementary factors relating to the political process; that,
for example, affairs conducted on a small scale may well produce small-scale horrors, whereas
when conducted on a giant scale they produce giant horrors. There is an equal failure to grasp
that when affairs are conducted on a small, local scale they are capable of producing, as indeed
they have done, glory unlimited in every sphere of human creativity, whereas on a giant, mass
scale, the chief orientation of modern life of the last century or more, we have produced the first
ugly civilisation in the human record.
Page 269 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Their evidence is biased- the media will use it's control of information to
maintain its hold on power
Papworth 5 ( John, Senior editor of the Ecologist, baker, and founder of the Fourth World
Review, Village Democracy)
Two questions arise here; how can the media avoid using its immense power to cultivate and
project the values which sustain its overall quest? How can it avoid conditioning the public
consciousness to accept the mores of profit-seeking as a supreme social objective? Life in
modern so called developed societies is dominated by the continuous and highly skilled
propaganda of advertising in its promotion of an exaggerated emphasis on the acquisition of
material goods, and the use of such services as travel, as an ultimate purpose of living. It does
this regardless of the social consequences or indeed of any other consequences except its own
enrichment. So the non-stop promotion of car ownership will ignore the effects on global
warming, its effects on distorting and often destroying social relationships and community
structures, on family life, on the deliberate run-down of finite resources such as oil and the
consequent impoverishment of future generations, on the high rate of accidents;2 on the
distortion of priorities in relation to public rail services, the extension of the working day by car
commuting, with its concomitant of stress of mind and body and, not least, the perpetual ordeal
of noise, stink and poisoned air suffered by millions who live alongside busy urban roads.
Centralization is being broken down in the status quo-technology allows

individuals to reach large audiences
Lee 07 Affiliate of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University [Timothy
B. Yochai Benkler and the Libertarian Center. The Cato Institute. 7-19-07. http://www.cato-atliberty.org/2007/07/19/yochai-benkler-and-the-libertarian-center/]
I found Jonah Goldbergs follow-up contribution particularly interesting. He points out that much
of what was wrong with the progressive movement of the early 20th century was due to its
infatuation with centralizing institutions that were ascendant at the time: the army, heavy
industry, and later, large-scale scientific endeavors like the Manhattan Project. Bigness and
centralization were in, and intellectuals believed that the entire country should be governed in a
similarly hierarchical fashion. Goldberg thinks liberals will just discard the economic argument for
central planning and move on to another one: public health, the environment, whatever. But I
wanted to point out that there are also some liberals who are adopting a more appropriately
skeptical attitude toward central planning itself. One reason to think the 21st century is going to
be more libertarian than the 20th is that the defining technology of our generation, the Internet,
is radically decentralizing. After a century in which our cultural and economic lives were
dominated by large, vertically-integrated corporations, were entering an era in which
decentralization and disintermediation are the dominant trends. Instead of producing
components in house, they develop networks of independent suppliers, knit together by
sophisticated supply chains. And instead of vertically-integrated media companies like the New
York Times and NBC, were increasingly moving toward a world in which writers, musicians, and
other creators can reach their audiences directly.
Page 270 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Centralization Good / States Bad**

Furthering the neoliberal agenda justifies genocide and extinction.
Santos, Director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, 20 03
(Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Collective Suicide?, Publicado na Folha de Sao Paulo em 28 de Marco de
2003, NM, http://www.ces.uc.pt/opiniao/bss/072en.php)
According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it
should try to save humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction,
committed in the name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social
and political reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism,
with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the
period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and
many other colonial wars. This is how it was in Stalinism, with the Gulag and in Nazism,
with the holocaust. And now today, this is how it is in neoliberalism, with the
collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world
system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and
sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new
illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the western
illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it
Federal devolution to the states exacerbates neoliberalism
Boyer, Clinical Assistant Professor of Dept. of Science and Technology Studies at Resselaer
Polytechnic, 2006
(Kate Boyer, Editorial Board of Antipode, Reform and Resistance: A Consideration of Space, Scale and
Strategy in Legal Challenges to Welfare Reform, NM)
Welfare reform has been marked by a downward transfer of decisionmaking power
regarding the content and administration of welfare policy from federal, to state and
local governments as well as the private sector (devolution). With this change has also
come a shift in the level at which services themselves are provided, such that for- and notfor-profit organizations as well as faith-based groups now compete with the public
sector for funds (Boyer, Lawrence and Wilson 2001). Devolution expresses the goals of a
broader neoliberal agenda by enabling both inter-locality competition and, especially,
privatization. By transferring some of the responsibilities that were once under the
auspices of the federal government downward and outward to the private sector,
devolution can be seen as an expression of hollowing out some of the responsibilities
of the federal government under neoliberalism described by Jessop (1999).
Devolutionary policies can lead to a full blown neoliberal shift
Williams and Mooney, Prof of Social Justice at Keele University and Senior Social Policy Lecturer at
the Open University in Scotland, 2008.
(Charlotte Williams, Decentring Social Policy? Devolution and the Discipline of Social Policy: A
Commentary,
NM,
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?
type=1&fid=1897768&jid=JSP&volumeId=37&issueId=03&aid=1897760)
We are nonetheless faced with considering both the tensions and possibilities devolution
portends for the discipline: to reflect it uncritically as an exercise in the technocratic
pragmatism of the neo-liberal agenda is one possibility, or to engage with it as part of the
expanding the social policy imaginary approach (Lewis, 2000). We contend that devolution
represents a potential paradigmatic shift for the discipline if we engage with it as a new
dimension in the rethinking story of contestation, conflicts and struggles over welfare
arrangements, delivery and outcomes, through the forging of new arenas of analysis,
new methodologies and concepts in a multi-nation, neo-liberal UK.
Page 271 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Policies passed to the state reinforce neoliberal ideologies

UAAR, Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, 1997
(Volume 48, State Devolution in America: Implications For a Diverse Society edited by Lynn A. Staeheli, Janet E.
Kodras, and Colin Flint, NM)
local states are left with less control to position themselves within a volatile global
economy, even as the national stale passes off additional responsibility for them to
attempt this (Peck & Tickell, 1994>. Devolution of the national state does open new
"regulatory spates" for local initiative, and the geographic consequences of this
particular mode of restructuring will reflect the relative capacities of local states to
respond, as discussed above. But these regulatory spaces will be constrained in all places by
competitive pressures imposed by global capital and reinforced by neoliberalism in the
First,
national slate (Peck, 1993). The accelerating global mobility of capital accentuates fine distinctions between place* (Harvey. 1989)
and exerts "economic discipline- on locale* to conform to its demands (Harvey. 1985). The ensuing rivalry for investment among local
states will require reducing the regulatory role previously played by government, while the taxes that underwrite governmental
assistance will he kept to a minimum to ensure the area's boundaries. National stales increasingly operate within a global economy
that they are unable to control (Clark & Dear, 1984) as nation-based fordist production, regulated by the Keynesian welfare stale,
yields to globally extensive posttordisr production, emancipated through deregulation by the neoliberal state (Jessop. 13; Peck &
Tickell, 1994). The neoliberal restructuring of the national slate, taking the particular forms of devolution and privatization in the
United Slates, passes greater responsibility onto heal states, which are even less capable of exerting power within a globalized
economy. Finally, despite the prospect of migration for some individuals, civil society remains the most place-bound and locally
dependent- due to material, familial, and emotional tics to community (Bey non & Hudson, 1993; Cox & Mair. 1988). David Harvey
interconnected trends
globalization of capital, devolution and privatization of the state, and localization of civil
societyshift power increasingly toward capital (Offe. 1985; Peck, 1995; Storper & Walker, 1989),
(1989) nails the point; "Labor power has to go home every night" (p. 19) These
an asymmetrical power relation termed "glo-calization" by Swyngcdouw (1992).
Devolution to the states reinforces low-income disparities

Boyer, Clinical Assistant Professor of Dept. of Science and Technology Studies at Resselaer
Polytechnic, 2006
(Kate Boyer, Editorial Board of Antipode, Reform and Resistance: A Consideration of Space, Scale and
Strategy in Legal Challenges to Welfare Reform, NM)
In spite of the benefits devolution might offer as a laboratory for policy innovation at
the state level, there are concerns about the potential for the downward transfer of
decision-making power to intensify inequality of access to opportunity between different
places (Cashin 1999; Karger 1991). Benefit levels vary widely between states, and are not
calibrated to cost-of-living differences between states or between different areas within a
state. We also find considerable unevenness in what it means to be on welfare from state to state. As
research from the Applied Research Center suggests, as of 2001 welfare recipients in Minnesota
were allowed to earn wages to supplement cash benefits, while clients in California were
sanctioned and even imprisoned for doing the same (Gordon 2001). In this sense
devolution is of a piece with neoliberal polices and practices which work to fix
disenfranchised peoples in place to their detriment. According to Andrew Herod and Melissa
Wright, such policies: localize poor peoples at a supposed time of growing planetary
spatial integration of capital flows, goods and services, information, and wealthy people.
Apparently, despite the one-world rhetoric of neoliberalism, some people face
tremendous obstacles in linking their worlds and becoming fully-fledged citizens of the
global village about which we hear so much (Herod and Wright 2002:12) These critiques
suggest that devolution has the potential to exacerbate, rather than redress,
gendered, racialized, and place-based disparities in access to social and
economic opportunity.
Page 272 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
Devolution to the states destroys political influence for the low-income

Winston, 2003
(Pamela Winston, Welfare Policymaking in the States The Devil in Devolution, NM, p. 3)
The 1996 welfare law raises additional questions about our commitment to political self-determination.
Devolution of welfare policy also may be making it more difficult for poor familiesor
groups that represent them to have a role in shaping the policies that most affect them
if, in fact, it is harder for them to participate effectively in the states and localities than in the nation's
capital. Americans commonly support the idea that parents should have a voice in
education policy, old people should have influence on the shape of Medicare and Social
Security, and business organizations should effectively express their views about
regulation. These groups may not always get what they want, but it is regarded as entirely legitimatein
fact, necessarythat they have a role in the policymaking process in our pluralist system. If the effect
of devolution, however, is to send welfare policymaking to political spheres where
representatives of poor families are weakest, it will further diminish their political voice.
Passing jurisdiction to the states increases governmental control over
individuals
Peck, phD at University of Manchester, 2001
(Jamie Peck, Workfare States, NM, Guilford Press)
The political implications of this are nontrivial. While the politics of workfare advocacy have assumed an
increasingly aggressive, generic, and transnational form, for the most part anti-workfare politics remain defensive,
particularized, and localized. Indeed, explicit objectives around the weakening, division, and localization of sources of
political opposition are often reflected in welfare-restructuring strategies. It seems that once the national
defenses of welfarism have been breached, the path is opened decisively to downscale
residual welfare and emergent workfare functions. This involves reregulation not only at
the state and local scales but also at that of the individual bodies of welfare recipients
given the preoccupation in U.S. reforms, for example, with regulating the reproductive as
well as the productive lives of welfare recipients, through such measures as the denial of
aid to teen parents, "man in the house" rules, leamfare, family caps, and so forth. This downloading of risks
and regulator)' responsibilities to the level of the individual is also evident in workfares
labor-regulatory functions, because as the epitome of supply-side policymaking it seeks
to make a virtue of individualized, "flexible" labor relations. The ideology that frames
these programs, indeed, is rooted in the notion of independence through wage labor.
Devolutionary policies increase the stigmatization placed on the poor
Winston, 2003
(Pamela Winston, Welfare Policymaking in the States The Devil in Devolution, NM, p. 3)
The 1996 welfare law raises additional questions about our commitment to political self-determination.
Devolution of welfare policy also may be making it more difficult for poor familiesor groups that
represent them to have a role in shaping the policies that most affect them if, in fact, it is harder for
them to participate effectively in the states and localities than in the nation's capital. Americans commonly
support the idea that parents should have a voice in education policy, old people should have influence on
the shape of Medicare and Social Security, and business organizations should effectively express their
views about regulation. These groups may not always get what they want, but it is regarded as entirely
legitimatein fact, necessarythat they have a role in the policymaking process in our pluralist system. If
the effect of devolution, however, is to send welfare policymaking to political spheres

where representatives of poor families are weakest, it will further diminish their political
voice. Certainly poor people are no longer regarded as a group with legitimate political
grievances, as they were briefly during the New Deal and the Great Society. Most Americans do not
appear to think a great deal about poor people, and when they do, it often is with pity or
Page 273 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
disapproval. Neither, however, are Americans in general likely to be entirely comfortable with the
prospect that in a range of jurisdictions the perspectives of low-income families may have virtually no
influence on the design of policies that are vital to their well-being."
Devolutionary policies inherently bring destabilization and kills solvency

The mainsireaming of workfarist discourse and practice, of course, hardly ever occurs by way of quantum shifts in
policy. Instead, change is typically more incremental and more complex. The course of workfare politics has run
differently in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, as powerful legacies of path-dependency remain
alongside revealing convergences in rhetoric and practice. So this is not, nor is it ever likely to be, a story of simple
convergence toward a unitary workfarist model, but an uneven process of mutually referential adjustment. In this
context, PRWORA retains a talismanic significance, as a truly radical moment of reform. As Rodgers (2000: 5) puts it,
"PRWORA completely changes the philosophy of welfare policy ." While this may
understate some important continuities with past U.S. practice, it quite correctly draws
attention to the potentially phase-shifting consequences of work enforcement by way of
devolution to the states. The variegated and competitive local reform dynamic that this
entails threatens to leave the postwelfare United States in a perpetual state of
destabilization and experimentation. This, in turn, facilitates a continuation of the
cafeteria-style reform process established under the waiver regime, broadening and
deepening the workfarist repertoire and creating the basis for further rounds of fastpolicy transfers. Facilitated by an increasingly technocratic and essentialist evaluation literature, plus the earnest
endeavors of consultants, this fast-policy regime has taken on an internationaland in an important sense interlocal
character (see Jessop and Peck, 2000; Peck and Theodore, 2001).
State policies are inefficient implementation differences

local political struggles usually reflectthough are not

determined bythe local form of work-fare strategies . Where workfare slots are located in the public
There is an important sense, then, in which
sector, the strategy is exposed to the threat of unionization; where workfare relies on nonprofit-sector placements,
then the obvious line of resistance is to choke off the supply of places through social-sector campaigning and lobbying;
where workfare is oriented to wage employment in the external labor marketin many ways its tendential form
resistance is rendered difficult due to the diffuse and individualized nature of this strategy, but may take the form of
boycotts, unionization drives, or research-based campaigns. At the very least, different workfare strategies
call for different forms of local political response; they are also differentially vul nerable to
disruption, reform, and implementation failure at the local level, depending on their
(inherently unpredictable) interactions with lo cal political, economic, and institutional
structures. And, of course, the geography of oppositional politics also reflects the uneven
terrain of preexising political forces and resources at the local level . In Baltimore, for example,
responses to workfare have been shaped by previous patterns of activism around the city's "Living Wage" campaign.
Devolution inherently makes policies less equal

UAAR, Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, 1997
(Volume 48, State Devolution in America: Implications For a Diverse Society edited by Lynn A. Staeheli, Janet E.
Kodras, and Colin Flint, NM)
Devolution refers to the transfer, or decentralization, of government functions from

higher to lower levels of the federal hierarchy . As a transformation internal to the state that alters the
scale of activities, devolution redefines government responsibilities for regulating civil society, transfers authority
across levels and administrative units of government, redraws the map of government costs and benefits, and changes
accessibility and entitlement to government services. In shifting responsibilities and resources to lower tiers in the
federal hierarchy, the national government still retains authority to set the direction for change, as "this complex
subnational reconstitution of state power and regulatory structures is occurring within a set of political, discursive, and
institutional parameters established by (or mediated by) the nation-state" (Peck, 1996, p. 3). Devolution is an
inherently spatial process of state changefirst, because the American federal structure
Page 274 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
is a hierarchical organization of territorially demarcated governments, and sec ond,

because the uneven development of different local states generates dissimilar initiatives
in response to devolution according to local needs, perceptions, and abilities.
Enforcing neoliberalism causes endless wars
Hardt and Negri, Professor of Comp. Lit. at Duke and Anarchist Intellectual,
2004,
(Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude, NM, p.176-178
Big government actually never went away, but certainly it has become 'more clearly
evident in recent years, especially since September 11, 2001 .' The various military and
legal projects for global security led primarily by the United States since that date, for
example, are oriented in part toward stabilizing and guaranteeing the global economic
order. In some respects, after September 11 the private forms of authority over the global economy, such
as the new Lex mercatona, along with all the mechanisms or international trade and the macroeconomic
equilibria that.make them possi-, J>le, went into crisis. The dominant nation-states had to
intervene to guarantee all levels of economic interactionsfinancial transactions, in surance relationships, air transportation, and so forth . The crisis gave a quick reminder of just
how much capital needs a sovereign authority standing behind it, a truth that rises up into view every time
there are serious cracks in the market order and hierarchy. The big government that guarantees
market order must be in pan a military power. Capital occasionally has to call on an army
to force open unwilling markets and stabilize existing ones . In the early nineteenth century, for
example, British capital needed the British military to open up the Chinese market with its victory in the
Opium 'War. This is not to say, however, that all military actions are explained by specific economic inter ests. It is not adequate to think, for example, that the U.S.-led military ac-i dons in recent decades
Afghanistan and Iraq, much less Somalia, Haiti, and Panamawere primarily directed at a specific
economic advantage, such as access to cheap oil. Such specific goals are secondary. The primary link
between military action and economic interest exists only at a much more general level
of analysis, abstract from any particular national inter est. Military force must guarantee
the conditions for the functioning of the world market, guaranteeing, that is, the divisions
of labor and power of the global political body . This effort is paradoxical, however, because the
relationship between security and profits cuts two ways. On one hand, the deployment of state
military power is necessary to guarantee the security of the global markets but, on the
other hand, the security regimes tend to raise national borders and obstruct the global
circuits of production and trade that had been the basis of some of the greatest profits .
The United States and other military powers must discover a way to make the interests of security and
economic profits compatible and complementary. We should be clear that the newly prominent need for a
big government to support the economy, especially since September 11, does not represent in any way a
return to Keyncsianism. Under Keynesianism the nation-state supported the stability and growth of the
economy by providing mechanisms to mediate the conflicts and interests of the working class and in the
process expanded the social demand for production. The forms of sovereignty we see now, on the
contrary, reside completely on the side of capital without any mediatory mechanisms to negotiate its
conflictual relationship with labor. It is interesting in this regard how ambivalent the position of capital is
when risk is the dominant characteristic of economic activity and development, and indeed of all social
interaction. The world is a dangerous place, and the role of big government and military
intervention is to reduce risks and provide security while maintaining the pres ent order.>
/W ?8
Neoliberalism makes poverty inevitable

Hardt and Negri, Professor of Comp. Lit. at Duke and Anarchist Intellectual,
2004,
(Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude, NM, p.277-280)
Page 275 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
After recognizing the extent of poverty in the world today, one has to recognize also its
uneven geographical distribution. In each nation-state, poverty is distributed unequally
along lines of race, ethnicity, and gender. In many countries throughout the world, for
example, there are significantly higher rates of poverty among women than men, and
many ethnic minorities, such as the indigenous populations throughout the Americas ,
have significantly higher rates of poverty. Local and national variations in the rate of poverty, however, are
dwarfed by the inequalities of wealth and Dovcrtv on a global scale. South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
account for about 70 percent of the global population living on less than a dollar a day, up from about 60
percent ten yean ago. The average income of the richest 20 countries is thirty-seven times greater than
the average in the poorest twentya gap that has doubled in the past forty years. 68 Even when these
figures are adjusted for purchasing powersince some basic commodities cost more in rich countries than
in poorthe gap is astonishing. The construction of the global market and the global
integration of the national economies has not brought us together but driven us apart,
exacerbating the plight of the poor. There are millions of specific expressions across the world of
indignation and generosity with respect to die poor, often through courageous ^crs of charity and selfsacrifice. Nonprofit, and religious charity organizations provide enormous assistance for those in need, but
they cannot change the system that produces and reproduces poverty. It is impressive, in fact, how so
many people who begin in volunteer charity work pass to activism and protest against the economic
system.fry. Some protests against the systemic reproduction of poverty, such as the Jubilee Movement
International, focus on the fact that foreign debt obligations serve as a mechanism that keeps the poor
countries poor and their populations hungry.69 It is clear that no matter what economic policies they enact
the poorest countries cannot repay their current foreign debts or even keep up with interest payments,
perpetuating an inescapable cycle of misery. Furthermore, many claim that these debts were incurred
originally through dubious or illegitimate means. It is always the same story: debt serves as a legal
mechanism of enslavement.70 The difference here is that this logic of bondage is applied not merely to
the individual indentured worker or even to a specific racial group or indigenous population (where the
assumption of a civilizing mission is the basis of debt) but rather to entire nations. ; In more general terms
many economic grievances against the global system arc based on the assumption that the inequalities
and injustices of the global economy result primarily from the fact that political powers are less and less
able to regulate economic activity. Global capital, the argument goes, since its movement and reach
extend well beyond the limits of national space, cannot be effectively controlled by states. Many labor
unions, particularly in the dominant countries, protest the fact that the mere threat of the mobility of
capitaldie threat, for example, of moving production and jobs to another country where state regulations
anoVor labor costs are lower and more favorablecan convince states to abandon or temper their own
regulatory powers. States conform to and even anticipate the needs of capital for fear of
being subordinated in the global economic system. This creates a son of race to the
bottom among nation-states in which the interests of labor and society as a whole take a
backseat to those of capital. Neoliberalisrn is generally the name given to this form of
state economic policy. Neoliberalism, as we claimed in part 2, is not really a regime of
unregulated capital but rather a form of state regulator that best facilitates the global
movements and profit of capital. Once again in the era of neoliberalism, it might be
helpful to think of the state as the executive committee assigned the task of
guaranteeing the long-term well-bring of "collective capital The fundamental task of the
neoliberal state, fron this perspective, like all forms of the capitalist state, Is to regulate
"capitalist development in the interest of global capital itself.
Even single policies risk a huge ideological shift empirically proven
Williams and Mooney, Prof of Social Justice at Keele University and Senior Social Policy Lecturer at
the Open University in Scotland, 2008.
(Charlotte Williams, Decentring Social Policy? Devolution and the Discipline of Social Policy: A
Commentary,
NM,
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?
type=1&fid=1897768&jid=JSP&volumeId=37&issueId=03&aid=1897760)
There may be considerable disagreement as to the extent to which devolution represents

a significant departure in terms of divergent policymaking . It is a simple enough task to point to
policy differences such as free personal care for the sick and elderly or the student fees policy in Scotland,
Page 276 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
or free prescriptions and the abolition of school league tables in Wales. Some would argue the differences
are marginal to the overarching continuities ensured by Labour-dominated administrations (at least prior to
the May 2007 elections) across the devolved polities, and the quiet manipulation of the policy strings by
civil servants in Whitehall (Hudson and Lowe, 2004). It is clearly important to view devolution within the
context of the New Labour modernising project and as a product of its wider socio-economic and neoliberal agendas. The devolved Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland are part of this mission. However, it
can be argued that the devolved nations open up new sites of struggle and contestation,
new processes and practices which challenge the ideological and geo-political
boundaries of the British Welfare State, and this encapsulates a significant shift which impacts
on the central concerns of the discipline . Interestingly, Clarke, writing within a transnational frame,
draws our attention to these very limits of neo-liberalism in practice as it forms an interface with particular
geopolitical and cultural entities, when he says this philosophy may encounter diverse forms of
resistance and refusals to go with the flow(2004: 9).
Page 277 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
**Separation of Powers**
Collapse of constitutional balance of power risks tyranny and reckless
warmongering
Redish Professor of Law and Public Policy and Cisar Law Clerk 1991 Martin, at
Northwestern, Elizabeth, at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, 41 Duke L.J.
449, p. 472-3
In any event, the political history of which the Framers were aware tends to confirm that quite often
concentration of political power ultimately leads to the loss of liberty. Indeed, if we have begun to take the
value of separation of powers for granted, we need only look to modern American history to remind
ourselves about both the general vulnerability of representative government, and the direct correlation
between the concentration of political power and the threat to individual liberty. The widespread violations
of individual rights that took place when President Lincoln assumed an inordinate level of power, for
example, are well documented. Arguably as egregious were the threats to basic freedoms that arose
during the Nixon administration, when the power of the executive branch reached what are widely deemed
to have been intolerable levels. Although in neither instance did the executive's usurpations of power
ultimately degenerate into complete and irreversible tyranny, the reason for that may well have been the
resilience of our political traditions, among the most important of which is separation of powers itself. In
any event, it would be political folly to be overly smug about the security of either representative
government or individual liberty. Although it would be all but impossible to create an empirical proof to
demonstrate that our constitutional tradition of separation of powers has been an essential catalyst in the
avoidance of tyranny, common sense should tell us that the simultaneous division of power and the
creation of interbranch checking play important roles toward that end. To underscore the point, one need
imagine only a limited modification of the actual scenario surrounding the recent Persian Gulf War. In
actuality, the war was an extremely popular endeavor, thought by many to be a politically and morally
justified exercise. But imagine a situation in which a President, concerned about his failure to resolve
significant social and economic problems at home, has callously decided to engage the nation in war,
simply to defer public attention from his domestic failures. To be sure, the President was presumably
elected by a majority of the electorate, and may have to stand for reelection in the future. However, at this
particular point in time, but for the system established by separation of powers, his authority as
Commander in Chief to engage the nation in war would be effectively dictatorial. Because the Constitution
reserves to the arguably even more representative and accountable Congress the authority to declare war,
the Constitution has attempted to prevent such misuses of power by the executive. It remains unproven
whether any governmental structure other than one based on a system of separation of powers could
avoid such harmful results. In summary, no defender of separation of powers can prove with certitude that,
but for the existence of separation of powers, tyranny would be the inevitable outcome. But the question is
whether we wish to take that risk, given the obvious severity of the harm that might result. Given both the
relatively limited cost imposed by use of separation of powers and the great severity of the harm sought to
be avoided, one should not demand a great showing of the likelihood that the feared harm would result.
For just as in the case of the threat of nuclear war, no one wants to be forced into the position of saying, "I
told you so."
Lack of separation of powers causes nuclear war

Forrester Professor @ Hastings College of the Law Ray, 1989 University of
California August The George Washington Law Review 57 Geo. Wash. L. Rev.
1636 Presidential Wars in the Nuclear Age: An Unresolved Problem.
Abramson, Wherever President Goes, the Nuclear War 'Football' is Beside Him, Los Angeles Times, April 3,
1981, at 10, col. 1 (copyright, 1981, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted by permission). On the basis of this
report, the startling fact is that one man [person] alone has the ability to start a nuclear war. A basic
theory--if not the basic theory of our Constitution--is that concentration of power in any one person, or one
group, is dangerous to [humankind]mankind. The Constitution, therefore, contains a strong system of
checks and balances, starting with the separation of powers between the President, Congress, and the
Supreme Court. The message is that no one of them is safe with unchecked power. Yet, in what is probably
the most dangerous governmental power ever possessed, we find the potential for world destruction
lodged in the discretion of one person. As a result of public indignation aroused by the Vietnam disaster, in
Page 278 of 279
Julian Switala
I
Cant Touch This
which tens of thousands lost their lives in military actions initiated by a succession of Presidents, Congress
in 1973 adopted, despite presidential veto, the War Powers Resolution. Congress finally asserted its
checking and balancing duties in relation to the making of presidential wars.
Page 279 of 279

Framework Evidence - Julia Switala

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Framework Evidence - Julia Switala

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Julian Switala

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

* * * * * Written by Julian Switala * * * * *

!!!USE THE DOCUMENT MAP VIEW FUNCTION!!!

!!!MINIMIZE EVERYTHING IN THE DOCUMENT MAP FIRST!!!

A LOT of the cards overlap and can be reasonably placed in different

And given how LD works, youll probably be successful just by reading

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

* * * * * TABLE OF CONTENTS * * * * *................................................2

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

*****MORALITY GOOD / BAD*****...................................................158

George Kateb, Professor of Politics, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 19 92, p. 9

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Moral obligation to protect liberty

Freedom comes before all other impacts

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Compulsory violate rights

Coercion is immoral denies individuals the capacity develop as moral agents.

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Evaluate freedom first it is critical to both prosperity and fairness

Richard L. Stroup (professor of economics at Montana State University) 1987: REFLECTIONS ON

Freedom outweighs without freedom, we are all reduced to the level of

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Coercion restricts rights and destroys individual agency.

People can be denied their autonomy by being starved, deeply impoverished, or

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

By coercion we mean such control of the environment or circumstances of a person by

Utilitarianism doesnt trump the impact of coercionindividuals cant be

(Tibor, PRIVATE RIGHTS AND PUBLIC

Every invasion of liberty must be rejected failure to do so leads to massive

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

government programs that came before.

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Tibor Machan, PRIVATE RIGHTS & PUBLIC ILLUSIONS, 1995, p. 68-9.

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

not immortality but

Coercion is the root cause of military conflict

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Coercion causes tyranny.

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

**Property Rights Good**

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

Mega LD Backfile Part

Cant Touch This

MORALITY GOOD / BAD...................................................158

Property Rights Good

Rights Come First

AT: Positive Rights Good

AT: Util Protects Rights

AT: Coercion Bad