Framework File

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

***Framework File*** The Under View- Our Framework........................................................................................................................................2 Extend Affirmative Choice...................................................................................................................................................3 Extend Predictable Limits.....................................................................................................................................................4 Extend Predictable Limits.....................................................................................................................................................5 Extend Topic Education........................................................................................................................................................6 Extend Topic Education- Coercion.......................................................................................................................................7 Extend Voting Issue..............................................................................................................................................................8 Role-playing Good- Democracy...........................................................................................................................................9 Role-playing Good- Education...........................................................................................................................................10 Role-playing Good- Political Sphere (Kulynych)...............................................................................................................11 Consequentialism Good......................................................................................................................................................12 Consequentialism Good......................................................................................................................................................13 AT: Representations First....................................................................................................................................................14 AT: Ontology First..............................................................................................................................................................15

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

1

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

The Under View- Our Framework A. Interpretation: Debate is about deciding if the resolution is right or wrong; since the affirmative can only win by proving its right through endorsement and defense of a topical example, the negative can only win if it proves a competitive policy option is preferable to the plan.

B. Reasons to prefer: 1.) Affirmative choice – the affirmative is obligated to speak first and also has the burden to prove the status quo should be changed so it gets to pick the framework. If the negative prefers a different framework, they must present it in the 1NC or else comply by ours because deferring to later speeches hurts the 2AC and 1AR and eliminates the 1AC.

2.) Predictable limits – the resolution is objective and decides who gets to say what. The burden of rejoinder mandates that they disprove the desirability of our topical plan. Alternatives or discursive charges that lie outside topic literature discourage clash and disadvantage the affirmative

3.) Topic education – prefer it to general education because annual changes ensure deep knowledge through focused research. Policy comparison is most real-world and switching sides fosters full expression of resolution arguments.

C. It’s a voter Debate is a game so fair parameters is biggest voter. Rules and competition insulate debate from questions of personal conviction so that we can compare options relevant to the resolution. Presenting arguments in the wrong forum is a reason to reject the team for skewing equity of time and competition.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

2

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Extend Affirmative Choice Extend our affirmative choice standard – speaking first gives the affirmative the right to pick the framework for making this decision. You should default to the 1AC interpretation. This is also key to preserving the importance of the 1AC. Timothy M. O’Donnell (Director of Debate University of Mary Washington) 2004 http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/DRGArtiarticlesIndex.htm AFC preserves the value of the first affirmative constructive speech. This speech is the starting point for the debate. It is a function of necessity. The debate There are several reasons why the affirmative should get to choose the framework for the debate. First,

must begin somewhere if it is to begin at all. Failure to grant AFC is a denial of the service rendered by the affirmative team’s labor when they crafted this speech. Further, if the affirmative does not get to pick the starting point, the opening speech act is essentially rendered meaningless while the rest of the debate becomes a debate about what we should be debating about. History is instructive here. The brief and undistinguished life of both counter warrants and plan-plan have amply demonstrated the chaos that results when the negative refuses to engage the affirmative on its chosen starting point. In this light, AFC may even be viewed as a “right” similar to the affirmative’s right to define. Although there are several reasons why the affirmative ought to have the right to define, the most persuasive justification recognizes that with the responsibility of initiating the discussion on the resolutional question comes a concomitant right to offer an interpretation of what those words mean. Of course, it is not an exclusive right because the

negative can always challenge the interpretations. Nevertheless, the affirmative’s interpretation carries a certain presumption that is accepted as “good for debate” unless proven otherwise. The rationale for AFC follows a similar line of thinking. The affirmative should be able to choose the question for the debate because they are required to speak first.

1AC is necessary for time equity and clash. Timothy M. O’Donnell (Director of Debate University of Mary Washington) 2004 http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/DRGArtiarticlesIndex.htm Second, AFC ensures competitive equity. Leaving the framework open to debate puts the affirmative at a significant competitive disadvantage. When the negative has the option of changing, or even initiating, the framework discussion, the first affirmative constructive speech is rendered meaningless. This hurts the affirmative for two reasons. First, it gives the negative a two-to-one advantage in constructive speech time for making framework arguments. Second, the first affirmative framework choice (or lack there of) locks the

affirmative into defending their opening speech act against an entirely different framework from the one it was designed to address. Not only does AFC solve these problems, it also gives every debater an opportunity to have debates in the framework of their choosing. Allowing the first affirmative constructive speech to set the terms for the debate ensures that teams get to choose to debate in their framework half of the time. For example, if one team wanted to have a policy debate, AFC would allow them to do so when they are affirmative. Similarly, if another team wanted to have a performance debate, AFC would give them a similar opportunity when they are affirmative. This means that every team would have an equal opportunity to have fulfilling and engaging debates on the issues they choose to discuss half the time.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

3

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Extend Predictable Limits Extend our predictable limits standard – the burden of rejoinder requires the negative to disprove the desirability of the plan as a policy option. There are an infinite amount of alternatives to the 1ac, the only predictable ground is policy alternatives to a policy proposal. You should default to the 1AC interpretation. There are limitless contexts or avenues through which they could purport to advocate the plan. Our interpretation limits debate to promote politically relevant dialogue and structured communication. Donald S. Lutz (Professor of Polisci at Houston) 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 39-40 Aristotle notes in the Politics that political theory simultaneously proceeds at three levels—discourse about the ideal, about the best possible in the real world, and about existing political systems.4 Put another way, comprehensive political theory must ask several different kinds of questions that are linked, yet distinguishable. In order to understand the interlocking set of questions that political theory can ask, imagine a continuum stretching from left to right. At the end, to the right, is an ideal form of government, a perfectly wrought construct produced by the imagination. At the other end is the perfect dystopia, the most perfectly wretched system that the human imagination can produce. Stretching

between these two extremes is an infinite set of possibilities, merging into one another, that describe the logical possibilities created by the characteristics defining the end points. For example, a political system defined primarily by equality would have a perfectly inegalitarian system described at the other end, and the possible states of being between them would vary primarily in the extent to which they embodied equality. An ideal defined primarily by liberty would create a different set of possibilities between the extremes. Of course, visions of the ideal often are inevitably more complex than these single-value examples indicate, but it is also true that in order to imagine an ideal state of affairs a kind of simplification is almost always required since normal states of affairs invariably present themselves to human consciousness as complicated, opaque, and to a significant extent indeterminate. t A non-ironic reading of Plato's Republic leads one to conclude that the creation of these visions of the ideal characterizes political philosophy. This is not the case. Any person can generate a vision

of the ideal. One job of political philosophy is to ask the question "Is this ideal worth pursuing?" Before the question can be pursued, however, the ideal state of affairs must be clarified, especially with respect to conceptual precision and the logical relationship between the propositions that describe the ideal. This pre-theoretical analysis raises the vision of the ideal from the mundane to a level where true philosophical analysis, and the careful comparison with existing systems can proceed fruitfully. The process of pre-theoretical analysis, probably because it works on clarifying ideas that most capture the human imagination, too often looks to some like the entire enterprise of political philosophy.5 However, the value of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of the General Will, for example, lies not in its formal logical implications, nor in its compelling hold on the imagination, but on the power and clarity it lends to an analysis and comparison of actual political systems. Among other things it allows him to show that anyone who wishes to pursue a state of affairs closer to that summed up in the concept of the General Will must successfully develop a civil religion. To the extent politicians believe theorists who tell them that pre-

theoretical clarification of language describing an ideal is the essence and sum total of political philosophy, to that extent they will properly conclude that political philosophers have little to tell them, since politics is the realm of the possible not the realm of logical clarity. However, once the ideal is clarified, the political philosopher will begin to articulate and assess the reasons why we might want to pursue such an ideal. At this point, analysis leaves the realm of pure logic and enters the realm of the logic of human longing, aspiration, and anxiety. The analysis is now limited by the interior parameters of the human heart (more properly the human psyche) to which the theorist must appeal. Unlike the clarification stage where anything that is logical is possible, there are now definite limits on where logic can take us. Appeals to self-destruction, less happiness rather than more, psychic isolation, enslavement, loss of identity, a preference for the lives of mollusks over that of humans, to name just a few possibilities, are doomed to failure. The theorist cannot appeal to such values if she or he is to attract an audience of politicians. Much political theory involves the careful, competitive analysis of what a given ideal state of affairs entails, and as Plato shows in his dialogues the discussion between the philosopher and the politician will quickly terminate if he or she cannot convincingly demonstrate the connection between the political ideal being developed and natural human passions. In this way, the politician can be educated by the possibilities that the political theorist can articulate, just as the political theorist can be educated by the relative success the normative analysis has in "setting the hook" of interest among nonpolitical theorists. This realm of discourse, dominated by the logic of humanly worthwhile goals, requires that

the theorist carefully observe the responses of others in order not to be seduced by what is merely logical as opposed to what is humanly rational. Moral discourse conditioned by the ideal, if it is to be successful, requires the political theorist to be fearless in pursuing normative logic, but it also requires the theorist to have enough humility to remember that, if a non-theorist cannot be led toward an ideal, the fault may well lie in the theory, not in the moral vision of the non-theorist.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

4

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Extend Predictable Limits Exploding predictable limits neutralizes the discursive benefits to debate and renders their advocacy meaningless – only our interpretation preserves the revolutionary potential of a deliberative activity Ruth Lessl Shively (Assoc Prof Political Science at Texas A&M) 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 180 if the ambiguists mean to be subversive about anything, they need to be conservative about some things. They need to be steadfast supporters of the structures of openness and democracy: willing to say "no" to certain forms of contest; willing to set up certain clear limitations about acceptable behavior. To this, finally, I would add that if the ambiguists mean to stretch the boundaries of behavior—if they want to be revolutionary and disruptive in their skepticism and iconoclasm—they need first to be firm believers in something. Which is to say, again, they need to set clear limits about what they will and will not support, what they do and do not believe to be best. As G. K. Chesterton observed, the true revolutionary has always willed something "definite and limited." For example, "The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what Thus far, I have argued that

was more important) the system he would not rebel against..." He "desired the freedoms of democracy." He "wished to have votes and not to have titles . . ." But "because the new rebel is a skeptic"—because he cannot bring himself to will something definite and limited— "he cannot be a revolutionary." For "the fact that he wants to doubt everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything" (Chesterton 1959,41). Thus, the most radical skepticism ends in the most radical conservatism. In other words, a refusal to judge among ideas

and activities is, in the end, an endorsement of the status quo. To embrace everything is to be unable to embrace a particular plan of action, for to embrace a particular plan of action is to reject all others, at least for that moment. Moreover, as observed in our discussion of openness, to embrace everything is to embrace self-contradiction: to hold to both one's purposes and to that which defeats one's purposes—to tolerance and intolerance, open-mindedness and close-mindedness, democracy and tyranny. In the same manner, then, the ambiguists' refusals to will something "definite and limited" undermines their revolutionary impulses. In their refusal to say what they will not celebrate and what they will not rebel against, they deny themselves (and everyone else in their political world) a particular plan or ground to work from. By refusing to deny incivility, they deny themselves a civil public space from which to speak. They cannot say "no" to the terrorist who would silence dissent. They cannot turn their backs on the bullying of the white supremacist. And, as such, in refusing to bar the tactics of the anti-democrat, they refuse to support the tactics of the democrat. In short, then, to be a true ambiguist, there must be some limit to what is ambiguous. To fully support political contest, one must fully support some uncontested rules and reasons. To generally reject the silencing or exclusion of others, one must sometimes silence or exclude those who reject civility and democracy.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

5

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Extend Topic Education Extend our topic education standard – yearly changes in the topic ensure focused in depth research. You should default to the 1AC interpretation. Our interpretation accesses the best standards for education A.) diversity – topical education forces changes in the discussion from year to year, their interpretation allows debate to become stagnant because teams can read the same aff no matter what B.)coercion – education about policymaking is necessary to prevent totalitarianism – their form of debate encourages suspicion of institutions that disavows political understanding and cedes control over powerful instruments to forces of evil C.) predictability - Switch-sided debate is by its nature more suited to political deliberation than intellectual interrogation *gender modified Mary Dietz, Professor of Polisci at Minnesota, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 117-8 Against this Vaclavian politics of truth, Ash

deploys the alternative formulation of "working in half-truth" in order to distinguish "the professional party politician's job" from the intellectual's, especially as it is "reflected, crucially, in a different use of language" (1995, 35). Here he amplifies what it means to work in the language of half-truth: If a politician gives a partial, one-sided, indeed self-censored account of a particular issue, he [or she] is simply doing his [or her] job. And if he [or she] manages to "sell" the part as the whole then he [or she] is doing his [or her] job effectively.... If an intellectual does that, he [or she] is not doing his [or her] job; he [or she] has failed in it. (1995, 36) Ash is anxious to insist that he is not casting the intellectual as "the guardian or high priest of some metaphysical, ideological or pseudo-scientific Truth with a capital T" (1995, 36). Thus, the difference between the role of intellectual and the role of the politician is not equivalent in any easy way to the epistemological divide between absolute Truth and relativism, or the metaphysical divide between objective reality and subjective experience. Whatever else they are, Ash's intellectuals are not Platonic philosopher-kings; although from the perspective of Platonic philosophy his politicians are surely sophists and rogues. The divide between Ash's truth-seeking intellectual and his partisan politician has rather more to do with the linguistic and ethical terrain on which they work, and not the upper ether of epistemology and metaphysics. If this terrain is organized along lines of "responsibility," then we might understand the divide between the intellectual and the politician as a matter of assuming, as Ash puts it, "qualitatively different responsibilities for the validity, intellectual coherence and truth" of speech in each of these irreducible domains (Ash 1995, 36, italics mine). *

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

6

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Extend Topic Education- Coercion Our interpretation solves – education through participation in policy debates is essential to check manipulation of the government by powerful private interests Donald S. Lutz, Professor of Polisci at Houston, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 36-7 that to the extent such a discussion between political theorists and politicians does not take place we damage the prospects for marrying justice with power. Since the hope of uniting justice with power was the reason for creating political philosophy in the first place, political theorists need to pursue the dialogue as part of what justifies their intellectual project. Politics is the realm of power. More specifically it is the realm where force and violence are replaced by debates and discussion about how to implement power. Without the meaningful injection of considerations of justice, politics tends to become discourse by the most powerful about how to implement their preferred regime. The position argued here is

Although constitutionalism tends to be disparaged by contemporary political science, a constitution is the very place where justice and power are married. Aristotle first taught us that a constitution must be matched to the realities of the political system—the character, hopes, fears, needs and environment of the people—which requires that constitutionalism be addressed by men and women practiced in the art of the possible.2 Aristotle also taught us that a constitution (the politeia, or plan for a way of life) should address the improvement of people toward the best life possible, which requires that constitutionalism be addressed by political theorists who can hold out a vision of justice and the

means for advancing toward it. The conversation between politician and political theorist stands at the center of their respective callings, and a constitution, even though it reflects only a part of the reality of a political system, has a special status in this central conversation. Although the focus of this chapter is on a direct conversation between theorist and politician, there is an important, indirect aspect of the conversation that should not be overlooked—classroom teaching. Too often the conversation between politician and political theorist is described in terms of a direct one between philosophers and those holding power. Overlooked is the central need to educate as many young people as possible. Since it is difficult to predict who will, in fact, hold power, and because the various peoples who take seriously the marriage of justice with power are overwhelmingly committed to a non-elitist, broad involvement of the population, we should not overlook or minimize our importance as teachers of the many. Political leaders

drawn from a people who do not understand what is at stake are neither inclined nor equipped to join the conversation. As we teach, we converse with future leaders. Perhaps not everyone who teaches political theory has had the same experience, but of the more than eight thousand students I have taught, I know of at least forty-nine who later held a major elective office, and at least eighty more who have become important political activists. This comes down to about five students per teaching year, and I could not have predicted which five it would be. The indeterminate future of any given student is one argument against directing our efforts at civic education toward the few, best students. A constitutional perspective suggests not only that those in power rely upon support and direction from a broad segment of the public, but also that reliance upon the successful civic education of the elite is not very effective, by itself for marrying justice with power in the long run.

This argument is an independent reason to vote negative Ruth Lessl Shively (Assoc Prof Political Science at Texas A&M) 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 186 To sum up the argument thus far, the ambiguists cannot support political contest unless they are willing to say "no" to—or to bring closure to—some activities, and unless they are willing to say "yes" to the rational rules of persuasion. Like all other democratic theorists, they must make some foundational assumptions about the goodness of self-determination, the preferability of reasons over force, and the evils of tyranny, among other things. All democratic visions presuppose that politics is about rational persuasion. Thus, talk of resisting or subverting all orders or all rational foundations is incoherent. At the very least, the foundations of rational persuasion must be rigidly upheld. It will not do, then, to say we simply need more contest or more "politics" and less rationality or foundationalism. It will not do to invoke contest as a kind of talisman against the need to make difficult judgments about good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, political actions. For inasmuch as the conditions necessary to

political contest require constant support and protection and inasmuch as we require constant education and improvement in upholding and effectively applying them, the conditions necessary to political contest require these judgments.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

7

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Extend Voting Issue This argument provides a-priori reasons to vote negative. You must use your ballot to ratify constraints on discourse to preserve a politically-enabling discussion Ruth Lessl Shively, Assoc Prof Polisci at Texas A&M, 2000 Political Theory and Partisan Politics p. 179 To put this point another way, it turns out that to be open to all things is, in effect, to be open to nothing. While the ambiguists have commendable reasons for wanting to avoid closure—to avoid specifying what is not allowed or celebrated in their political

vision—they need to say "no" to some things in order to be open to things in general. They need to say "no" to certain forms of contest, if only to protect contest in general. For if one is to be open to the principles of democracy, for example, one must be dogmatically closed to the principles of fascism. If one would embrace tolerance, one must rigidly reject intolerance. If one would support openness in political speech and action, one must ban the acts of political intimidation, violence or recrimination that squelch that openness. If one would expand deliberation and disruption, one must set up strict legal protections around such activities. And if one would ensure that citizens have reason to engage in political contest—that it has practical meaning and import for them—one must establish and maintain the rules and regulations and laws that protect democracy. In short, openness requires certain clear limits, rules, closure. And to make matters more complex, these structures of openness cannot simply be put into place and forgotten. They need to be taught to new generations of citizens, to be retaught and reenforced among the old, and as the political world changes, to be shored up, rethought, adapted, and applied to new problems and new situations. It will not do, then, to simply assume that these structures are permanently viable and secure without significant work or justification on our part; nor will it do to talk about resisting or subverting them. Indeed, they are such valuable and yet vulnerable goods that they require the most unflagging and firm support

that we can give them.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

8

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Role-playing Good- Democracy Public participation in policy discussions motivates rigorous testing of actual laws, keeping democracy alive. Christopher J. Peters (bigelow teaching fellow and lecturer in law) March 1997 “adjudication as representation” Columbia law review 97 colum. L. Rev. 312 Decisionmaking Through Reasoned Deliberation. - A final functionalist argument in favor of democratic government, one that relies to a great extent upon the previous three, is that it forces government decisions ultimately to be made not upon the basis of individual interests or "naked preferences" but through a process of reasoned deliberation, of interplay among a variety of ideas and viewpoints and eventual agreement on the best course of action. This argument from deliberation incorporates the ideas of allocation of power to interested individuals, diversity of interests, and participation of talented decisionmakers into a theory about the nature of both electoral and representative decisionmaking. The theory holds that antithesis ultimately produces a better consensus, that the

clash of differing, even opposing interests and ideas in the process of decisionmaking, because it forces proponents of each position to present reasoned arguments in favor of it, creates decisions that are better for having been subjected to this trial by fire. Thus better representatives are elected when the election is hotly contested, and better laws are enacted following vigorous parliamentary debate. Cass Sunstein is perhaps the most influential contemporary exponent of this theory of deliberative democracy. He states the argument this way: [A] large point of the system [of representative democracy] is to ensure discussion and debate among people who are genuinely different in their perspectives and position, in the interest of creating a process through which reflection will encourage the emergence of general truths. A distinctive feature of American republicanism is extraordinary hospitality toward disagreement and heterogeneity, rather than fear of it. The framers believed that a diversity of opinion would be a creative and productive force...... ... Public deliberation may reveal

the truth or falsity of factual claims about the state of the world or about the likely effects of policy proposals. Through confrontation among people who disagree, errors of fact may be revealed as such. n97 [*337] Sunstein's version of deliberative democracy draws upon the thought of the American Founders, who similarly believed in the power of discussion and deliberation in a representative democracy, n98 and of John Dewey, n99 who in his later writings strongly emphasized democracy's deliberative component. Dewey - who, as we have already seen, was fond of broad, quotable aphorisms about what "democracy is" - saw democracy as in part the method of "persuasion through public discussion carried on not only in legislative halls but in the press, private conversations and public assemblies." n100 It was "the substitution of ballots for bullets, of the right to vote for the lash ... [of] the method of discussion for the method of coercion." n101 The "democratic faith" was, for Dewey, a "faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies and conflicts as cooperative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself." n102 The process of

deliberation had to be more than merely a clash of competing viewpoints; it had to be characterized by reasons offered by either side, by "science" and "intelligence." n103 But when these conditions were present, deliberation produced better decisions not only from the legislature, but from the electorate itself: "The act of voting is in a democratic regime a culmination of a continued process of open and public communication in which prejudices have the opportunity to erase each other; ... [and] continued interchange of facts and ideas exposes what is unsound and discloses what may make for human well-being." n104

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

9

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Role-playing Good- Education Role-playing in a competitive format fosters deep and rewarding education. Christopher C. Joyner (prof. of International law at Georgetown) Spring 1999 “teaching international law: views from an international relations political scientist” ILSA journal of international & comparative law 5 ILSA J Int’l & Comp L 377 Confronting international law in practice is critical to achievement of the course objectives, and this is effectively done through a series of debates in a course that I teach on International law and United States Foreign Policy. Students try to WIN the games by garnering support from the rest of the class based on the merits and suasion of their legal arguments, although past experience indicates that clear winners are not often produced. The degree of success this exercise enjoys depends on two key factors: first, the willingness of students to assume their adopted roles with energy and, second, the extent to which student participants in the debates can learn and relate how, where, and why international law is [*385] integrated into the United States foreign policy decision-making process and can demonstrate the tensions between national security considerations and international legal constraints in formulating United States foreign policy. Taken in tandem, these two ingredients can produce a successful and unique learning experience that fosters a deeper understanding of the subject matter than would likely be attained through a lecture-format course.

Life-like policy simulations produce comparatively better education. Christopher C. Joyner (prof. of International law at Georgetown) Spring 1999 “teaching international law: views from an international relations political scientist” ILSA journal of international & comparative law 5 ILSA J Int’l & Comp L 377 By assessing the role of international law in United States foreign policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always measure up to international legal expectations; that at times, international legal strictures get compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts and principles of international law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and twisted in order to justify United States policy in various international circumstances. In this way, the debate format gives students the benefits ascribed to simulations and other action

learning techniques, in that it makes them become actively engaged with their subjects, and not be mere passive consumers. Rather than spectators, students become legal advocates, observing, reacting to, and structuring political and legal perceptions to fit the merits of their case.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

10

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Role-playing Good- Political Sphere (Kulynych) Role-playing is a form of defiant deliberative politics that reclaims the political sphere Jessica Kulynych, Asst Professor of Political Science at Winthrop University, Polity, Winter, 1997, n2 p315(32) When we look at the success of citizen initiatives from a performative perspective, we look precisely at those moments of defiance and disruption that bring the invisible and unimaginable into view. Although citizens were minimally successful in influencing or controlling the outcome of the policy debate and experienced a considerable lack of autonomy in their coercion into the technical debate, the goaloriented debate within the energy commissions could be seen as a defiant moment of performative politics. The existence of

a goal-oriented debate within a technically dominated arena defied the normalizing separation between expert policymakers and consuming citizens. Citizens momentarily recreated themselves as policymakers in a system that defined citizens out of the policy process, thereby refusing their construction as passive clients. The disruptive potential of the energy commissions continues to defy technical bureaucracy even while their decisions are non-binding. SHE CONTINUES… Consider, for example, a public hearing. When seen from a discursive legitimation perspective, deliberation and debate are about the sincere, controlled attempt to discern the best, most rational, least biased arguments that most precisely express an interlocutor’s ideas and interests. In practice, however, deliberation is a much less deliberative and much more performative activity. The literary aspects of debate – irony, satire, sarcasm, and wit – work precisely on the slippage between what is said and what is meant, or what can be said and what can be conceived. Strategies such as humor are not merely rational, but visceral and often uncontrollable, as is the laughter that is evoked from such strategies. Performative actions are not alternative ways of deliberating; rather they are agonistic expressions of what cannot be captured by deliberative rationality. As such, they resist the confines of that rationality and gesture toward places where words, arguments, and claims are not enough. Without an understanding of the performative aspects of political action, Hager cannot explain how citizens are able to introduce genuinely new and different “ways of perceiving and naming the world” into a realm where such epistemic standards are unimaginable. It is in the process of

acting as citizens in a technical bureaucratic setting, where citizen action is by definition precluded, that alternative, epistemic standards of evaluation become possible. Only when scholars recognize the performative will they be able to grasp the intricacies of contemporary political actions and the possibilities for an actually diverse and participatory democracy.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

11

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Consequentialism Good Political responsibility requires a consideration of consequences Jeffrey Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana University, Bloomington, Spring 2002, Dissent, 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 one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it

fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness. WHAT WOULD IT mean for the American left right now to take seriously the centrality of means in politics? First, it would mean taking seriously the specific means employed by the September 11 attackers--terrorism. 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 race and class, every ethnicity and religion. 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 complex and bloody world, it will sometimes be necessary to respond to barbarous tyrants or criminals, with whom moral suasion won't work. In 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 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. Most striking about the campus left's response to September 11 was its refusal to ask these questions. Its appeals to "international law" were naive. It exaggerated the likely negative consequences of a military response, but failed to consider the consequences of failing to act decisively against terrorism. In the best of all imaginable worlds, it might be possible to defeat al-Qaeda without using force and without

To be politically responsible is to engage this world and to consider the choices that it presents. To refuse to do this is to evade responsibility. Such a stance may indicate a sincere refusal of unsavory choices. But it should never be mistaken for a serious political dealing with corrupt regimes and political forces like the Northern Alliance. But in this world it is not possible. And this, alas, is the only world that exists.

commitment.

Nuclear war requires weighing consequences 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.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

12

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

Consequentialism Good Horrendous consequences justify escape clauses in absolute morality. G.E.M. Anscombe (Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University) 1993 Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber, p. 58-59 Whenever a defender of traditional morality protests that there are moral rules which, whatever the consequences, must not be broken, such as the rule prohibiting murder- the killing of the materially innocent-a natural reaction is to confront him with imaginary horror upon imaginary horror, and to inquire whether it would not be permissible, nay right, to commit murder if these horrors would be the consequences of his not committing it. And so it has come to seem natural to accept as much of utilitarianism as this: that no moral system can be philosophically acceptable

unless it is supplemented by an escape clause, to the effect that, in all cases of a choice of evils, if one of those evils is so great that incurring it rather than any of the others would be calamitous, and if it can only be avoided by taking a certain action, then that action is to be taken even if it is in breach of a precept of the system.

Extreme circumstances justify a utilitarian calculus. Jack Donnelly (Professor at College of the Holy Cross) 1985 The Concept of Human Rights, p. 58 But suppose that the sacrifice of one innocent person would save not ten but a thousand, or a hundred thousand, or a million people. All things considered, trading one innocent life for a million, even if the victim resists most forcefully, would seem to be not merely justifiable but demanded. Exactly how do we balance rights (in the sense of `having a right'), wrongs (in the sense of `what is right') and interests? Do the numbers count? If so, why, and in what way? If not, why not? Ultimately the defender of human rights is forced back to human nature, the source of natural or human rights. For a natural rights theorist there are certain attributes, potentialities and holdings that are essential to the maintenance of a life worthy of a human being. These are given the special protection of natural rights; any `utility' that might be served by their infringement or violation would be indefensible, literally

inhuman - except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances, the possibility of which cannot be denied, but the probability of which should not be overestimated. Extraordinary circumstances do force us to admit that, at some point, however rare, the force of utilitarian considerations builds up until quantity is transformed into quality. The human rights theorist, however, insists on the extreme rarity of such cases. Furthermore, exotic cases should not be permitted to obscure the fundamental difference in emphasis (and in the resulting judgements in virtually all cases) between utility and (human) rights. Nor should they be allowed to obscure the fact that on balance the flaws in rights-based theories and practices seem less severe, and without a doubt less numerous, than those of utility-based political strategies. Another way to read utilitarianism would be as an objection to the priority human rights grant to the individual over society and the state. How can we justifiably require the state to protect the interests of the few, as expressed in rights, against the interests of the many or the whole, as determined by utilitarian calculation? On what grounds can we say that individuals are to be protected in certain special ways and, in their specially protected spheres, be given the liberty to exercise their rights so as to override virtually all other considerations even, if necessary, stop the government dead in its tracks?

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

13

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

AT: Representations First Policy analysis should precede discourse – most effective way to challenge power Jill Taft-Kaufman, Speech prof @ CMU, 1995, Southern Comm. Journal, Spring, v. 60, Iss. 3, “Other Ways”, p pq The postmodern passwords of "polyvocality," "Otherness," and "difference," unsupported by substantial analysis of the concrete contexts of subjects, creates a solipsistic quagmire. The political sympathies of the new cultural critics, with their ostensible concern for the lack of power experienced by marginalized people, aligns them with the political left. Yet, despite their adversarial posture and talk of opposition, their discourses on intertextuality and inter-referentiality isolate them from and ignore the conditions that have produced leftist politics--conflict, racism, poverty, and injustice. In short, as Clarke (1991) asserts, postmodern emphasis on new subjects conceals the old subjects, those who have limited access to good jobs, food, housing, health care, and transportation, as well as to the media that depict them. Merod (1987) decries this situation as one which leaves no vision, will, or commitment to activism. He notes that academic lip service to the oppositional is underscored by the absence of focused collective or politically active intellectual communities. Provoked by the academic manifestations of this problem Di Leonardo (1990) echoes Merod and laments: Has there ever been a historical era characterized by as little radical analysis or activism and as much radical-

chic writing as ours? Maundering on about Otherness: phallocentrism or Eurocentric tropes has become a lazy academic substitute for actual engagement with the detailed histories and contemporary realities of Western racial minorities, white women, or any Third World population. (p. 530) Clarke's assessment of the postmodern elevation of language to the "sine qua non" of critical discussion is an even stronger indictment against the trend. Clarke examines Lyotard's (1984) The Postmodern Condition in which Lyotard maintains that virtually all social relations are linguistic, and, therefore, it is through the coercion that threatens speech that we enter the "realm of terror" and society falls apart. To this assertion, Clarke replies: I can think of few more striking

indicators of the political and intellectual impoverishment of a view of society that can only recognize the discursive. If the worst terror we can envisage is the threat not to be allowed to speak, we are appallingly ignorant of terror in its elaborate contemporary forms. It may be the intellectual's conception of terror (what else do we do but speak?), but its projection onto the rest of the world would be calamitous....(pp. 2-27) The realm of the discursive is derived from the requisites for human life, which are in the physical world, rather than in a world of ideas or symbols.(4) Nutrition, shelter, and protection are basic human needs that require collective activity for their fulfillment. Postmodern emphasis on the discursive without an accompanying analysis of how the discursive emerges from material circumstances hides the complex task of envisioning and working towards concrete social goals (Merod, 1987). Although the material conditions that create the situation of marginality escape the purview of the postmodernist, the situation and its consequences are not overlooked by scholars from marginalized groups. Robinson (1990) for example, argues that "the justice that working people deserve is economic, not just textual" (p. 571). Lopez (1992) states that "the starting point for organizing the program content of education or political action must be the present existential, concrete situation" (p. 299). West (1988) asserts that borrowing French post-structuralist discourses about "Otherness" blinds us to realities of American difference going on in front of us (p. 170). Unlike postmodern "textual radicals" who Rabinow (1986) acknowledges are "fuzzy about power and the realities of socioeconomic constraints" (p. 255), most writers from marginalized groups are clear about how discourse interweaves with the concrete circumstances that create lived experience. People whose lives form the material for

postmodern counter-hegemonic discourse do not share the optimism over the new recognition of their discursive subjectivities, because such an acknowledgment does not address sufficiently their collective historical and current struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice. They do not appreciate being told they are living in a world in which there are no more real subjects. Ideas have consequences. Emphasizing the discursive self when a person is hungry and homeless represents both a cultural and humane failure. The need to look beyond texts to the perception and attainment of concrete social goals keeps writers from marginalized groups ever-mindful of the specifics of how power works through political agendas, institutions, agencies, and the budgets that fuel them.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

14

MSDI 2007

Framework File Petit/Walters

AT: Ontology First Preventing widespread death through the aff takes precedence to ontological questioning Arnold I. Davidson, coeditor of Critical Inquiry, Assoc Prof of Philosophy, U of Chicago, Critical Inquiry, Winter 1989. p.426 I understand Levinas’ work to suggest another path to the recovery of the human, one that leads through or toward other human beings: “The dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face… Hence metaphysics is enacted where the social relation is enacted- in our relations with men… The Other is not the incarnation of God, but precisely by his face, in which he is disincarnate, is the manifestation of the height in which God is revealed. It is our relations with men… that give to theological concepts the sole signification they admit of.” Levinas places ethics before ontology by beginning with our experience of the human face: and, in a clear reference to Heidegger’s idolatry of the village life of peasants, he associated himself with Socrates, who preferred the city where he encountered men to the country with its trees. In his discussion of skepticism and the problem of others, Cavell also aligns himself with this path of thought, with the recovery of the finite human self through the acknowledgement of others: “As long as God exists, I am not alone. And couldn’t the other suffer the fate of God?… I wish to understand how the other now bears the weight of God, shows me that I am not alone in the universe. This requires understanding the philosophical problem of the other as the trace or scar of the departure of God [CR, p.470].” The suppression of the other, the human, in Heidegger’s thought accounts, I believe, for the absence, in his writing after the war, of the experience of horror. Horror is always directed toward the human; every object of horror bears the imprint of the human will. So Levinas can see in Heidegger’s silence about the gas chambers and death camps “a kind of consent to the horror.” And Cavell can characterize Nazis as “those who have lost the capacity for being horrified by what they do.” Where was Heidegger’s horror? How could he have failed to know what he had consented to? Hannah Arendt associates Heidegger with Paul Valery’s aphorism, “Les evenements ne sont que l’ecume des choses’ (‘Events are but the foam of things’).” I think one understands the source of her intuition. The mass extermination of human beings, however, does not produce foam, but dust and ashes; and it is here that questioning must stop.

It’s impossible to determine an answer to being – ontological questioning results in an infinite regress and total political paralysis Emmanuel Levinas, professor of philosophy, and Philippe Nemo, professor of new philosophy, Ethics and Infinity, 1985, pg. 6-7 Are we not in need of still more precautions? Must we not step back from this question to raise another, to recognize the obvious circularity of asking what is the “What is . .?“ question? It seems to beg the question. Is our new suspicion, then, that Heidegger begs the question of metaphysics when he asks “What is poetry?” or “What is thinking?”? Yet his thought is insistently anti-metaphysical. Why, then, does he retain the metaphysical question par excellence? Aware of just such an objection, he proposes, against the vicious circle of the petitio principi, an alternative, productive circularity: hermeneutic questioning. To ask “What is. . .?“ does not partake of onto-theo-logy if one acknowledges (1) that the answer can never be fixed absolutely, but calls essentially, endlessly, for additional “What is . . .?“ questions. Dialectical refinement here replaces vicious circularity. Further, beyond the openmindedness called for by dialectical refinement, hermeneutic questioning (2) insists on avoiding subjective impositions, on avoiding reading into rather than harkening to things. One must harken to the things themselves, ultimately to being, in a careful attunement to what is. But do the refinement and care of the hermeneutic question — which succeed in avoiding ontotheo-logy succeed in avoiding all viciousness? Certainly they convert a simple fallacy into a productive inquiry, they open a path for thought. But is it not the case that however much refinement and care one brings to bear, to ask what something is leads to asking what something else is, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum? What is disturbing in this is not so much the infinity of interpretive depth, which has the virtue of escaping onto-theo-logy and remaining true to the way things are, to the phenomena, the coming to be and passing away of being. Rather, the problem lies in the influence the endlessly open horizon of such thinking exerts on the way of such thought. That is, the problem lies in what seems to be the very virtue of hermeneutic thought, namely, the doggedness of the “What is . . .?“ question, in its inability to escape itself, to escape being and essence.

Give Them Nothing, But Take From Them Everything

15