R8 NEG V. HARVARD BS
CP
1NC BOSU CP
Text: the state governments of the United States should host simple majority voter
initiatives on the right to die and physician-assisted death.
Solves better—process of experimental federalism without mandating legalization
key
DuVivier 2007 – Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law (K.K.,
Oregon Law Review, “Fast-Food Government and Physician-Assisted Death: The Role of Direct
Democracy in Federalism”, 86 Or. L. Rev. 895, Lexis)
Conclusion
In establishing one of the first large-scale democracies in the modern world, the Founders appeased
states' rights advocates through the construct of federalism. Federalism blended national and local power by granting the
federal government limited enumerated authority and reserving to the states and the people some measure of decentralized authority over their affairs.
This diffusion of power helped legitimize the government and allowed for a robust democracy
that is more responsive and accountable to those governed.
One of the advantages of federalism is that states may act as laboratories for social experimentation allowing
the entire country to benefit from the influx of diverse ideas from a variety of sources. Innovation is an evolutionary process that works best when
experimentation is diffused. The
odds of finding creative solutions improve when multiple governments
are working on alternative options. Legislation that centralizes and limits experimentation can stifle progress in areas in which
there is no need for national uniformity.
The debate over physician-assisted death illustrates the key role citizen initiatives can
play in federalism by helping create state laboratories of experimentation to address controversial issues. Although polls show
that a majority of Americans support PAD, neither Congress nor a single state legislature has
enacted a statute legalizing it. All bills introduced on the topic have been snared in the pressure points of the
traditional legislative process.
These pressure points were incorporated into the traditional legislative process to filter out extremes and achieve compromise legislation that reflected
both majority and minority interests. However, minority
interest groups can sometimes avoid compromise and instead impose their
block all legislation in a controversial area.
Minority view religious groups have been using this pressure point mechanism in legislatures throughout the country by
sensibilities on the majority by strategically employing the pressure points to
enlisting a few influential legislators or requesting executive vetoes to block every single bill proposing to legalize PAD from successfully navigating
through the traditional legislative process.
[*972] These same minority interest groups have not had the same degree of effectiveness in the context of citizen initiatives. Outspending PAD
However, despite
outspending the PAD proponents by as much as six to one, the minority interest religious groups were
not able to prevent the majority of Oregon citizens from voicing their preference by enacting the only law
proponents has improved the odds of a minority interest prevailing in state legislatures and some initiative campaigns.
in the country that legalizes PAD.
Oregon alone was successful in passing a pro-PAD statute because the law was enacted by citizen
initiative. Some criticize citizen initiatives as "fast-food government" because they can circumvent the more time consuming traditional
legislative process. Yet, precisely because initiatives can avoid some of the shortcomings of the
traditional process, they are sometimes the best, or the only, choice for addressing controversial issues that cannot make
it through the legislative pressure points.
The Supreme Court has failed to recognize a constitutional "right to die," and Congress has
failed to pass specific legislation on the issue, so the debate over physician-assisted death has become an exemplar for the
role of citizen initiatives in allowing states to serve as laboratories in a federalism model. Oregon's
Act is initiative lawmaking at its best. A clear majority of Oregonians supported the law: they voted twice on the topic and on the
second vote, affirmed the law by a majority of approximately sixty percent. Furthermore, PAD is the type
of issue that most appropriately should be resolved at the local, as opposed to the
federal, level. It involves health, a traditional state concern. It is a highly personal, moral issue that does not directly
impact or infringe the rights of others. Furthermore, there is no commercial or other reason for national uniformity.
Fast-food chains thrive in the United States because they serve a need of the people. Sometimes fast-food fare is not good for us, but other times it can
really hit the spot. Although
the fast-food initiative process is imperfect in some contexts, Oregon's Death
illustrates that an initiative really can be the best mechanism for promoting
federalism. By allowing power to diffuse to the citizen level, Oregon citizens were able to achieve something that no state
with Dignity Act
legislature has been able to accomplish: the
assisted death.
creation of a state laboratory for social experimentation on physician-
Exclusive state action by voter initiative is key to refute criticisms of direct
democracy
Pratt 1998 – JD, PhD in neurophysiology, attorney specializing in health law at Davis Wright
Tremaine LLP in Portland, Oregon (Carol A., Oregon Law Review, “Efforts to Legalize
Physician-Assisted Suicide in New York, Washington and Oregon: A Contrast Between Judicial
and Initiative Approaches-Who Should Decide?”, 77 Or. L. Rev. 1027)
Despite evidence of the majority view, state legislatures have turned a deaf ear to [away from] proposed
legislation to legalize PAS, causing right to die activists to turn to the courts and voter initiatives. The
lack of legislative responsiveness to popular interests is not restricted to PAS and may, in fact, typify the new
legislative reality. According to John Hart Ely, legislatures have shifted from offense to defense, finding it "considerably easier
to block initiatives than to push them through." '483 This passivity is perceived to be motivated more by
survival, i.e., optimizing reelection by not taking on controversial issues that could inflame constituents, rather than
ideology.
If legislatures persist in avoiding a leadership role in tackling controversial issues, the buck gets passed, as
did the PAS "buck," to the courts and the electorate. Courts, however, also can avoid undesirable issues using doctrinal tools
appropriately referred to as the "avoidance doctrine." '485 The current Supreme Court, like state and federal legislatures, has
adopted a conservative, mini- malist approach, choosing to defer to the states on issues like legalizing PAS, 486 rather than crafting
sweeping federal constitutional law. While the Court's deference to the states should be applauded by states' rights advocates, this is
an empty victory if state legislatures, like Congress, are locked into a reactive, rather than proactive, mode and cannot respond to the
opportunity.
Thus, in the face of legislative and judicial minimalism and a prevailing states' rights
orientation, voter initiatives are likely to play an increasingly important role in state level law-making. Although
about half of the states authorize voter initiatives, voter initiatives have been soundly criticized by some legal com- mentators and
characterized as "resid[ing] at the margins of the formal American [law-making] process. "489 A scholarly discussion of the
constitutional and interpretive issues associated with voter initiatives, available elsewhere, 49 is beyond the scope of this Article.
Nonetheless, in many ways, Oregon's Death With Dignity Act is a counter-example to many of the
criticisms that are typically levied against direct democracy, in general, and voter initiatives,
specifically. As such, it is worth taking a brief look at why the Oregon Act might serve as a model for
both process and product.
Key to US and global democracy
Leduc 3 (Lawrence, Professor of Political Science – University of Toronto, The Politics of Direct Democracy: Referendums in
Global Perspective, p. 19-20)
The condition of democracy in the world today is cause for both optimism and concern. On the one hand,
democracy flourishes in more places than ever before. The transition to democracy in the nations of the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, parts of Africa, and much of Central and South America brought about what Samuel Huntington
(1991) has called a "third wave" of democratization around the globe. Yet not all citizens of the newly democratized nations
of the world see their experiment with democratic political institutions as an unqualified success. In many instances,
democracy has not delivered better living standards, economic prosperity, or even political stability and genuine reform. While
democratic institutions and norms have consolidated in countries such as Spain, Poland, and South Korea, they remain
fragile in many other nations. In the longer term, the survival of democracy in some of these new
environments will depend on the performance of democratic institutions and processes and on their citizens' ultimate
evaluation of that performance. Although democratic political institutions themselves are under no threat in the more
established democracies of the West, many citizens express varying degrees of dissatisfaction with the quality of their democracy.
The concept of a democratic deficit first found political expression in Europe when control over many areas of political life seemed to
be passing from national governments to the more remote and centralized (and inherently less democratic) institutions of the new
Europe. Subsequently, protests against "globalization" became commonplace in many of the developed countries of Europe and
North America, reflecting a perception on the part of many citizens that new economic regimes had brought with them a serious
decline in the effectiveness of traditional processes of democratic accountability. Steadily lower voting turnout in recent elections
in many countries provides additional hard
evidence that all is not well with democracy in the world
today.' Public opinion surveys in recent years have identified at least part of the explanation for this democratic malaise.
They disclose a widespread feeling among citizens that governments have become disengaged and remote
and that elections alone cannot guarantee sufficient choice or accountability. Elected officials are often seen
as unresponsive and out of touch, even in many countries with long-established and seemingly well-functioning democratic regimes.
Ordinary citizens feel an increasing sense of political powerlessness and express little trust in the ability of existing
political institutions to address their concerns.' But most critics of existing political institutions and practices seek to improve
democracy, not to replace it. They demand political processes that might allow for greater participation by the people and a sense
that governments can be made more responsive and accountable to the electorate.
In seeking ways to reduce these feelings of dissatisfaction and malaise, many reformers have begun to look favourably on political
institutions that were once associated with an earlier, simpler vision of democracy. Various devices, such as term limits,
recall of elected politicians, citizen initiatives, and referendums, have generated renewed interest in
numerous countries, states, provinces, and municipalities. In particular, the referendum, a long-established but sparingly used
method of deciding important and contentious political issues, has found new favour.3 Giving citizens the chance to
express their views directly on important political questions or providing them with additional
opportunities to intervene in the sometimes impenetrable processes of political decision making seems an obvious
remedy for the present democratic malaise. While the referendum may not be capable of resolving all of
democracy's problems, it does respond to at least some of the concerns expressed by many citizens in
contemporary democratic societies. This new interest in an old institution of direct democracy reflects the mood of the times.
Outweighs the aff
Carl Boggs, political scientist, USC, 2003 Imperial Delusions p. 82-4
The corrosive effects of the permanent war economy, along with the process of corporate colonization in general, have been
increasingly obvious since the 1970s. By the turn of the century American society had become probably
more depoliticized than at any time in many decades, which is ironic given worsening social problems as well
as the rapid growth of higher education and spread of the informational revolution. The vast majority of Americans felt
alienated from politics, disempowered, cut off from hopes for remedies to pressing challenges: corporate downsizing,
poverty, crises in education and health care, civic violence, environmental decay. Such disenfranchisement meant a decline of
citizenship, a profound erosion of civic culture that transformed democratic values and practices into something of a facade. As E.J.
Dionne comments: Americans hate politics as it is now practiced because we have lost all sense of the
public good. Over the last thirty years . . . politics has stopped being a deliberative process
through which people resolved disputes, found remedies, and moved forward. When Americans watch
politics now . . . they understand instinctively that politics these days is not about finding solutions. It is about discovering postures
that offer short-term political benefits.1 The American political system had severely atrophied, involving greatly reduced levels of
citizen participation, whether at the ballot box, in formal party activities, in the corridors of power, or in local community life. This
deepening antipolitical culture is not simply a matter of failed or corrupt leaders, weak parties and movements, or flawed structures;
it reflects long-term historical processes shaping every facet of daily life. Seen in this way, the depoliticization of American society is
in many ways a predictable mass response to a governing system designed to control public opinion, marginalize dissent, privatize
social relations, and reduce the intensity of popular involvement. As William Greider writes: "If citizens sometimes behave
irresponsibly in politics, it is the role assigned them. They have
lost any other way to act, any means for
influencing the governing process in positive or broad-minded terms."2 The political,
economic, and cultural impact of an oversized Pentagon system on all this cannot be overstated.
In this transformed setting—corporate, globalized, militarized—politics has degenerated into a mix of narrow interest-group
maneuvers, bureaucratic intrigues, and electoral rituals, even while corporate and military priorities remain largely
unchecked in a context where Empire takes on a logic of its own. While there is little that is novel about such
developments, taken together they have produced a truncated party system, passive citizenry, and trivialized public discourse that
does little justice to the historic norms of liberal democracy. In American society "politics" now constitutes the
domain of corporate and governmental elites whose overriding ambition is to perpetuate their
own oligarchical power and wealth. Nowhere has this phenomenon become more visible than in
the sphere of foreign and military policy. Political dialogue in the United States has degenerated into rhetorical flourishes tied
to abstract platitudes like "free market," "family values," "personal responsibility," "economic progress," and "peace" that in the end
have little do with either material welfare or public policy. In place of an active, engaged citizenry once associated with populism, the
civil rights movement, and feminism, for example, we find an atomized population increasingly devoid of civic trust, enmeshed in
private life (TV, computers, shopping malls, autos) that runs counter to a vibrant public sphere. The revival of social movements—
anti-globalization struggles begun in late 1999, a large and diverse antiwar movement in late 2002 and early 2003—seems to have
broken the consensual stillness, but the durability of these movements has yet to be established. Meanwhile, the corporations,
state, and military reinforce their hold over public life as their interests meet little in the way of
sustained challenges within or outside of electoral campaigns. If the system reproduces all the external trappings of
democracy, legality, and citizenship, it has become more repressive and antidemocratic in practice, more
emphatically so in the aftermath of 9/11. It works efficiently to subvert potentially significant expressions of political agency at the
mass level. Owing
in part to the workings of the permanent war economy, the most imposing
crisis in American society today is no doubt the crisis of citizenship, since without its resolution
the destructive path of American society is extremely unlikely to be reversed. The narrowing public
sphere is easy enough to identify—lower voter turnouts, a decreased sense of political efficacy, a waning popular trust in
government, a declining knowledge of issues, the erosion of the party system, the ideological convergence of elites. Predictably,
major social problems wind up suppressed or trivialized within what passes for public debate. This state of
affairs is marked by nothing short of the banality of politics itself: corruption, deceit, propaganda, false promises, empty rituals, the
power of money dominate the landscape. Enshrouded in the great myths of American democracy is a political system that responds
far more to wealth, bureaucratic power, and influence peddling than to local citizen initiative. While the procedural elements of
liberal democracy remain intact, vital areas of decision making (finance, corporate agendas, foreign policy)
remain the preserve of a small stratum of elites. The more that political activities like voting, candidate debates,
and legislative activity wind up detached from everyday social life, the more they seem to be trumpeted as necessary features of
democracy—and thus the more they obscure genuine popular concerns.
States will crack down on vaccination loopholes now—but it’s reversible if
conservatives get political fodder to retaliate
Krieger and Calefati 2015 (2/5, Lisa and Jessica, San Jose Mercury News, “Measles
outbreak: Vaccination exemption would end under proposed California law”,
http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_27458564/legislation-introduced-repeal-opt-outprovision-vaccination-law?source=infinite)
Vaccine exemptions have been available since 1961, when California first required all public school teachers and
students to be inoculated against polio. But there has been a surge in their popularity in recent years.
From 2000 to 2014, the rate of parents seeking exemptions tripled, from 0.77 percent to 2.5 percent -- or one in every 40 kids.
California is one of 19 states that allow exemptions based purely on parents' personal beliefs.
"An exemption is something we can only allow under the condition where it very rarely is
exercised," said Stanford University's David Magnus, a professor of pediatrics who directs the Center for
Biomedical Ethics. "The fact that there has been so much misuse means it is time to tighten things."
Politically, the well-to-do "all-natural" parents who have come to symbolize the anti-vaccination
movement in California simply don't have many political supporters in Sacramento, said Sherry
Bebitch Jeffe, a veteran political analyst at the University of Southern California.
Two potential Republican presidential candidates who have questioned forcing parents to get their children
vaccinated -- such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky -- are pandering to the sorts of antigovernment primary voters who could torpedo their chances of reaching a general election, Jeffe said.
But in California, so far no state lawmakers have publicly opposed the proposed legislation -- and there's
little reason to believe opposition will succeed in a solidly blue state like California, she said.
Still, state Republicans are treading carefully for now.
National mandates stoke alarmism—plan is painted as death panels
Smith 2009 (Peter, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, “Bowling for Death Panels: Euthanasia
Group Behind “End-of-Life” Counseling”, http://masscitizensforlife.org/lifesite-news-bowlingfor-death-panels-euthanasia-group-behind-end-of-life-counseling/)
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 20, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Although President Obama and liberal Congressional Democrats have
denounced claims that the health care reform establishes “death panels,” it does not help
reassure the American public that the nation’s foremost pro-euthanasia group is actively pushing “end-of-life counseling” as a
centerpiece of health-care reforms.
Compassion & Choices, a rebranding of the former Hemlock Society, aggressively lobbies to legalize euthanasia as a “human right” by means of
legislation and the judicial system. But the group has revealed that it is a major player behind incorporating a measure (sec. 1233) of the “American
Affordable Choices Act of 2009″ (HR 3200) that would pay doctors and medical professionals to offer “end-of-life” consultations every five years with
elderly patients or those suffering from chronic or terminal illnesses.
“As Congress debates health insurance reform, Compassion & Choices is leading the charge to make end-of-life choice a centerpiece of any program
that emerges,” the euthanasia society declares on its website. “We are working hard to reach our goal to make end-of-life choice a centerpiece of
national health insurance reform.”
An e-mail alert sent by the organization’s president Barbara Lee Coombs asked members to join in a telephone call-in with President Obama and faithbased groups asking them to “please encourage him to be vocal and steadfast in his support of the voluntary end-of-life consultation provision for
Medicare patients” if they had the opportunity to ask the President a question.
They’ve made no
secret that this is something they would like to replicate on a national scale,” said Dan Kennedy, CEO of
“Compassion & Choices was the number one organization behind pushing for assisted suicide in Washington State.
Human Life Washington in an e-mail to LifeSiteNews.com.
Since Oregon passed laws legalizing physician assisted suicide in 1997, two other states have also legalized assisted
suicide: Washington and Montana through the efforts of Compassion & Choices. In Montana, the euthanasia-promoting group had assisted suicide
foisted on the state through the edict of a district court; however Montana physicians and the Montana Medical Association refused to participate,
saying killing their patients violated physician ethics rooted in the Hippocratic Oath.
Although the White House and its allies in Congress have insisted that talk about sec. 1233 of HR 3200 would lead to “death panels” – a term coined by
former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to frame how involving government bureaucracy in health care would lead to low-quality care or denied care – has no
foundation in fact; but the reality is that euthanasia advocate Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) had a powerful impact upon shaping the legislation, which
Compassion & Choices has aggressively promoted.
“I’m certain that they see themselves as the go-to community organization that would partner with the Federal government in end of life counseling,”
said Kennedy. “Given that the President has made some disturbing statements on end of life economics, and has listened to their input on health care
legislation, we can’t pretend we don’t know what the end-game is.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an advocate of Oregon’s assisted suicide law, wrote the “Life Sustaining Treatment Preferences Act of 2009″ (HR 1898), which
is considered the primary source of the “advance care planning” sec. 1233 of the health-care reform bill, HR 3200. Both bills incorporate what the
euthanasia-promoting Compassion & Choices calls a “Physician Order for Life Sustaining Treatment” (POLST) and pay physicians to initiate
conversations with their patients about “the reasons why the development of such an order is beneficial to the individual and the individual’s family and
the reasons why such an order should be updated periodically as the health of the individual changes.”
Such advance orders not only include the establishment of living wills, and health-care proxies, but they also delineate for medical professionals under
what conditions a patient would wish to refuse treatment, including cardiac or pulmonary resuscitation, going to the hospital, using anti-biotics, and
even when to continue “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”
A number of analysts,
and not all conservative, have expressed concern that sec. 1233 could lead to senior
citizens being pressured into accepting lower quality care from a doctor who is reimbursed to talk with a patient about refusing
treatment.
In fact Obama himself has emphasized cutting medical costs through end-of-life counseling. In an April New York Times interview, Obama
mentioned how the “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for
potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.” Obama stated that the nation must have “a very difficult
democratic conversation” about dealing with those costs and advocated the creation of “some independent group that can give you guidance” on the
matter.
Such an independent group under HR 3200 would be a board for “Comparative Effectiveness Research” established under the executive branch, and
independent of Congressional oversight. But the White House is pushing for the creation of an Independent Medical Advisory Committee, also under
the sole direction of the President, that would have the power to completely rewrite Medicare reimbursements without input from Congress.
According to a new NBC News poll, Americans have become increasingly alarmed about the
proposed government involvement in the health-care of their loved ones. About 45 percent believe that the government will likely decide when to stop
care for the elderly, while 50 percent say it is not likely. 54
percent of respondents also believe the government reforms will lead
to a government takeover of health care, while 39 percent disagree.
Outweighs and turns case
Epps 2015 – contributing writer for The Atlantic, teaches constitutional law and creative
writing for law students at the University of Baltimore (2/6, Garrett, The Atlantic, “Cowpox and
the Constitution”, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/cowpox-and-theconstitution/385245/)
In the wake of the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland, states are re-examining how broad
school-vaccination exemptions should be. California currently permits parents to opt out if they have a “personal
belief” of any sort,but a new bill would allow only religious objections. A legislative committee in Mississippi—a national leader in
vaccination—recently refused to recommend loosening that state’s law, which permits
exemptions only for children with documented medical conditions that vaccination would make
worse. In the law of religious freedom, public health is clearly a “compelling” interest, and thus would allow states to refuse to exempt believers.
What’s fascinating about the current vaccination debates is how closely they mirror those of a century ago. For many anti-vaxers back then,
Willrich writes, “active opposition to ‘state medicine’ … was part of a larger social and cultural struggle
against the dramatic extension of governmental power into the realms of education, family life, personal belief, bodily autonomy, and
speech.”
The science behind vaccination is far more compelling today than it was then, and current vaccines are far safer than the smallpox jabs that triggered
riots around Europe in the 1800s. But there is now, as then, a strain of “enlightened,” alternative-medicine thought that regards vaccines as “poison,”
just as Henning Jacobson did. We
are also in the midst of a revival of radical libertarian ideology; fear
of “state medicine” underlies a lot of the opposition to the Affordable Care Act. (Remember “creepy Uncle Sam”
poking his head under the OBGYN drape, and the false claims that “death panels” would soon escort our
grandparents to the death chambers?)
No society can survive if it can’t prevent epidemics and infectious disease. That’s not
ideology; it’s simple history. Consider the tweeted reaction of Native American novelist Sherman Alexie to
today’s controversy:
[Coming from a people nearly wiped out by disease, I say, "Fuck you, you superstitious, selfish
anti-vaccination
assholes."]
That harsh truth—that society must respond collectively to epidemics—coexists uneasily with expansive notions of individual freedom. Vaccine
requires intrusion into our bodies, and the bodies of our children, for our own good and that of others. Americans find that kind of
paternalism jarring, but it is inescapable. Even a libertarian giant like Richard A. Epstein recently conceded that
“the Constitution’s various provisions protecting individual liberty must at times give way to government
control in response to health hazards.”
The same logic, I think, would extend to a federal vaccination program, if one became necessary. In 2012, during oral argument in the challenges to the
Affordable Care Act, Justice Stephen Breyer asked conservative lawyer Michael Carvin, representing small-business challengers, whether the federal
government could require vaccination if a plague was certain to kill half the population. “My answer is no, they couldn’t do it,” Carvin said.
Constitutional law deals in fictions, but is there any serious argument that die-offs don’t have a
“substantial effect” on foreign and interstate commerce? Isn’t there some symbolism in this year’s measles
outbreak? It originated in Disneyland, an artificial world entirely created by and devoted to the national and global market.
The pandering of politicians like Chris Christie and Rand Paul strikes me as disgusting—all but disqualifying. I
am a vaccine hawk. Polio disabled my grandfather for life, then hastened his death. I remember the
annual summer panics over its spread, and the relief with which my parents took us to a mobile vaccination clinic. The polio-vaccination wars produced
casualties—recently vaccinated children sometimes spread the virus to their parents or others—but that childhood terror is now largely gone. I had not
one but two smallbox scratches; smallpox
is gone now. I had measles, mumps, and chicken pox, and I am glad today’s
children are spared the pain and risk. But I have also sat up all night with a fretful child after a vaccination. It was scary, and science
didn’t comfort me much until morning came.
That science, however, is much clearer now than it was in 1905, or even 1985. Vaccines
work; they are safer than ever; they don’t
cause autism; the benefits far outweigh the risks; and we have a duty to protect ourselves, our children, and
society at large. Those who deny the science are shirking a duty of citizenship. “Personal belief” in junk science won’t do; if anti-vaxers can’t be
convinced, then, harsh as this sounds, they and their children need to be isolated.
It’s not retrograde, however, to argue that vaccination laws need to be carefully crafted, to be based
on the best science, and to allow for medical exceptions. The power to protect the public can be a fearful one, even when wielded wisely. Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes regarded Jacobson as a proud moment for the Court. In 1927, he cited it to justify forcible sterilization of a “feeble-minded” woman
named Carrie Buck. “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes,” he wrote.
2NC SAY YES
Here’s the poll
DuVivier 2007 – Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law (K.K.,
Oregon Law Review, “Fast-Food Government and Physician-Assisted Death: The Role of Direct
Democracy in Federalism”, 86 Or. L. Rev. 895, Lexis)
An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that an individual patient should have the right
to refuse life support. n145 In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that this right to refuse medical treatment was a
fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. n146 Despite this, many state
legislatures have had difficulty passing "living will" legislation recognizing this right because of opposition by groups that morally
oppose the right on religious grounds.
Polls also suggest that, even though efforts to identify a federal constitutional right to die failed, n147
a majority of Americans favor physician-assisted death. n148 This support has been a growing trend
since 1947 when only thirty-seven percent [*927] polled supported PAD. n149 In comparison, a Gallup poll
in 1996 showed that seventy-five percent of Americans favored PAD. n150 In addition, eight separate polls
by Field Research since 1979 show a majority of Californians, ranging from sixty-four to seventy-five percent, consistently support
PAD. n151
Physicians, however, disagree about PAD. But, it does have significant support within the medical community. For example,
physicians have given high approval ratings to its use under Oregon's PAD statute, n152 and several polls
showed a majority of doctors favored PAD in certain circumstances. n153 Moreover,
the California Association of Physician
Groups, the nation's largest professional organization representing physicians practicing in the managed care
model, recently voted to support PAD legislation in California. n154 And although the American Medical
Association and some state medical associations have opposed [*928] legalizing PAD, n155 these same organizations
"unequivocally endorse[] the practice of terminal sedation - the administration of sufficient dosages of pain-killing medication to
terminally ill patients to protect them from excruciating pain even when it is clear that the time of death will be advanced." n156 The
AMA also supports legislation permitting "palliative care," n157 or care allowing a physician to prescribe pain relief instead of
curative treatment. n158
We don’t have to win everyone says yes
Srinivas 2009 – JD Candidate, Stanford (Rohith, 13 MSU JOURNAL OF MEDICINE AND
LAW 91, “EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL FOR AMERICAN DEATH TOURISM”)
For now, nobody
questions the ability of American states to regulate life-ending procedures within
their borders. But when constitutional constraints and geopolitical concerns prevent state and federal
governments from effectively curbing death tourism, as this Article has concluded, the ability to
regulate internally loses much of its value. The states that have decided against legalizing
life-ending procedures-forty-seven and one-half by my count- may ultimately reverse course and decide
that, if their residents are undergoing these procedures anyway, they might as well do so at home
and under the watchful eye of local regulators. The states that would rather keep their hands clean than have
them forced, though, may see their policies reduced to mere value statements. In the end, that may be the cost
of living in a free and cos- mopolitan world.
Brittany Maynard was a game changer—popular opinion is distinct from legislative
opinion
CBS 12/5/2014 (Dennis Thomopson, “Did Brittany Maynard change minds about right-to-die
laws?”, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/brittany-maynard-poll-right-to-die-laws/)
Already-strong public support for right-to-die legislation has grown even stronger in the days since
the planned death of 29-year-old brain cancer patient Brittany Maynard, a new HealthDay/Harris Poll
has found.
An overwhelming 74 percent of American adults now believe that terminally ill patients who are in
great pain should have the right to end their lives, the poll found. Only 14 percent were opposed.
Broad majorities also favor physician-assisted suicide and physician-administered euthanasia.
Only three states -- Oregon, Washington and Vermont -- currently have right-to-die laws that allow
physician-assisted suicide.
"Public opinion on these issues seems to be far ahead of political leadership and legislative
actions," said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Poll. "Only a few states have legalized physician-assisted
suicide and none have legalized physician-administered euthanasia."
People responded to the poll in the weeks after Maynard took medication to end her life in early November.
Maynard moved from California to Oregon following her diagnosis with late-stage brain cancer so she could take
advantage of the state's "Death With Dignity Act." Her story went viral online, with a video explaining her choice garnering nearly
11.5 million views on YouTube.
A "poster child for the movement," Maynard helped spark conversations that allowed people to put themselves in her
shoes, said Frank Kavanaugh, a board member of the Final Exit Network, a right-to-die advocacy group.
"I think it is just a natural evolution over a period of time," Kavanaugh said of the HealthDay/Harris Poll results. "There was a time
when people didn't talk about suicide. These days, each time conversations occur, people think it through for themselves, and more
and more are saying, 'That's a reasonable thing to me.'"
The poll also found that:
Support for a person's right to die has increased to 74 percent, up from 70 percent in 2011. Those
opposed decreased to 14 percent from 17 percent during the same period.
No impact to setbacks—second wave effect
Garrett 2001 (Elizabeth, University of Chicago Law School, Chicago Journal of International
Law, “Issues in Implementing Referendums in Israel: A Comparative Study in Direct
Democracy”, 2 Chi. J. Int'l L. 159, Lexis)
A question related to the effect of the popular vote is the question of what
follows from a "no" vote. If the referendum
fails to obtain whatever vote has been explicitly identified as required for passage (and whatever margin is implicitly necessary for
the vote to be perceived as finally settling the matter), what happens next, if anything? After the proponents of
Scottish devolution failed in a 1979 referendum in the UK because 40 percent of the electorate did not support the
referendum although a majority of voters did, there remained a sense of unfinished business. Eighteen years
later, a similar devolution referendum passed by a significant margin. No one promised the
electorate that they would have a chance to reconsider after a period of time, but the contours of the first vote
combined with political and [*163] social changes paved the way for a second vote. An explicit
promise of a second modified referendum in case of defeat is unlikely from either side: proponents will not want to give voters the
possibility of voting in the future on an agreement that they like better, and most opponents will want to settle the matter
permanently. In the context of the Israeli peace accords, however, a second related referendum is an interesting and not
entirely fanciful possibility. Assume, for example, that an agreement with the Palestinians is rejected by voters and opinion
polls reveal that the provision concerning the status of Jerusalem was responsible for most of the opposition. After some time to cool
off, negotiators might try to construct a different bargain, armed with better knowledge of voter
preferences, and submit the new agreement to a second popular vote. Depending on the dynamics of the first
negotiations, it might even be necessary to have one defeat to encourage bargainers to adopt more
realistic positions and accept more difficult compromises. At the very least, it seems unwise to rule out a
subsequent referendum, although it appears unrealistic to expect that the aftermath of a "no" vote will be discussed concretely or
that promises about future elections will be made. Furthermore, it will be difficult to resume negotiations for some time, if at all,
after a popular defeat, with the degree of a difficulty turning on the margin of the defeat, the nature of the issues pivotal to the
outcome, and the changes in government leadership brought about by any defeat
They are the elitist technocrats who are afraid of democracy – turns the entire aff
and proves THEY’RE reactive for fearing legitimately expressed popular opinion
Maimon Schwarzschild 2003; Professor of Law, University of San Diego “Voter Initiatives and American Federalism:
Putting Direct Democracy in its Place” Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series Research Paper No. 60
Direct democracy, and especially lawmaking by voter initiative, arouses perennial fears. The
voters may be ill informed. They may be swayed by demagogues, or by the highest-spending
interests. They may disregard the rights or interests of minorities. And there are institutional concerns. A “Yes” or “No” vote
makes no room for compromise. Direct democracy gives no weight to intensity of preference: the votes of
those who feel strongly, or whose interests are at stake, count for no more than anyone else’s. The
very existence of lawmaking by direct democracy may devalue the coexisting representative institutions: it may lower the prestige of
the legislature and demoralise the elected representatives. Some of these fears may not be very serious. There is no
evidence that legislatures are less esteemed, or ambitious men and women less apt to run for office, in states
with initiatives than in states without them. (When Mark Twain suggested that America has no distinctive criminal
class other than Congress, his disrespect was not provoked by the success of direct democracy.) “Yes” or “No” referenda
may leave little room for compromise, but the spirit of compromise is sometimes strained in
legislatures as well: there are common enough complaints about partisanship and “deadlock” in
Congress. Money is undoubtedly influential in politics, but it is not clear that this is more so for
direct democracy than for elective politics: there is considerable evidence, in fact, that high
spending is not enough to win passage for an initiative, although it may be more effective in defeating an
opponent’s initiative. 43 Demagoguery does not seem particularly strong in Switzerland, the country
where direct democracy is least constrained by representative institutions – although perhaps the Swiss
are unusually mature politically. 44
2NC SOLVES RIGHTS
We solve rights better—the thesis of their ev is that you need to continually
negotiate and manifest new rights instead of viewing them as liberal democratic
trump cards—but voting aff is the abstract liberal assertion of a right without any
regard for procedure. Their ev is contrasting Rehnquist’s decision in the
Glucksberg case with Justices like Souter and Stevens, who said the Court decision
is not absolute because it’s open to local experimentation—that’s the CP
Stern and DiFonzo 2009 – J.D., M.S.W., attorney; J.D., Ph.D., Professor of Law, Hofstra
University (Ruth C. & J. Herbie, University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy,
“STOPPING FOR DEATH: RE-FRAMING OUR PERSPECTIVE ON THE END OF LIFE”, 20 U.
Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 387)
The complexities of human suffering call for flexible, creative, and even experimental,
medical and legal strategies. It is somewhat dispiriting that Washington State's voters chose to enact a carbon copy of ODDA
and that Montana may be contemplating legislation similar to that of Oregon. n363 Future legislation should be based on
detailed [*427] exploration of end of life issues. This process would include testimony from, among others, doctors, patients,
family members and palliative and hospice care professionals. Further, it is crucial that these laws and policies contain procedures
for ongoing research and evaluation. Improving the care of dying patients demands openness, the sharing of
ideas, and continual reassessment of our end of life measures and practices.
Discussions on the end of life arouse fear, discomfort, even outrage. But it is only by exposing, rather than
suppressing controversy that we, ultimately, find the strength and wisdom to decide these matters for
ourselves. As Sherwin Nuland explained:
In the United States and democratic countries in general, the
importance of airing differing viewpoints rests not
in the probability that a stable consensus will ever be reached but in the recognition that it
will not. It is by studying the shades of opinion expressed in such discussions that we become aware of
considerations in decision-making that may never have weighed in our soul-searching. Unlike the debates, which
certainly belong in the public arena, the decisions themselves will always properly be made in the tiny, impenetrable sphere of
personal conscience. And that is exactly as it should be. n364
Whether the Supreme Court decides to revisit the issues in Washington v. Glucksberg n365 is not as
significant as what transpires at our country's regional and local levels. As Sylvia Law has noted, "While
Supreme Court recognition of a constitutional right sounds like a grand affirmation of liberty, most
often it is a mopping-up operation to bring the outliers into the consensus that has
already been reached in the states." n366
We access self-styling better – that’s what direct democracy is
John G. Matsusaka 2005 Professor of Finance and Business Economics in the Marshall School of Business, Professor of
Business and Law in the Law School, and President of the Initiative & Referendum Institute, all at the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, California. Direct Democracy Works Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 19, Number 2—Spring
2005—Pages 185–206
Of course, the bottom line is whether direct democracy makes government better or
worse. This question may not have an objective answer since whether a policy is good or bad so often is in the
eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, some research has attempted to assess the quality of direct
democracy policymaking in terms of efficiency, utility and other concepts that economists traditionally
use to evaluate outcomes. The first statistical study was Pommerehne’s (1983) examination of trash collection in
Swiss municipalities. He found that cities with direct democracy collected trash at a lower cost than
cities without direct democracy, all else equal. This could happen if direct democracy was used to combat public sector unions,
require competitive bidding, and so on. In a similar vein, Feld and Savioz (1997) estimated aggregate production
functions for Swiss cantons (equivalent to Ameri- can states) and found greater total factor productivity
in cantons with more direct democracy. Higher productivity could be evidence that public sector
investments are more productive. Blomberg, Hess and Weerapana (2004) fit a growth model to data
from American states over 1969–1986 and found that states with the initiative process grew more
quickly and had higher output per capita than noninitiative states, again holding constant other factors such as the
capital stock. These studies do not resolve the problem that initiative
status might proxy for some other
unobserved factor, but they paint the outline of a positive picture of direct democ- racy when it
comes to economic performance. Evidence of a different sort comes from Frey and Stutzer (2000). They
used survey data in which individuals reported their “subjective well-being,” called
“happiness” for short. Frey and Stutzer found that people living in Swiss cantons reported
higher levels of “happiness” when there was more direct democracy available.
2NC PERM
[Cards from T = Summers, Biz Dictionary, Stell – all are in 1nc]
Plan says “suicide,” CP says “death”—in practice they’re similar but plan amplifies
backlash—torpedos the vote
Dulworth 2014 – R.N., graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
(Sherrie, New York Law School Law Review, “From Schiavo to Death Panels: How Media
Coverage of End-of-Life Issues Affects Public Opinion”, 58 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 391)
A more recent example of the end-of-life political battleground can be found in
Massachusetts. On November 6, 2012,
voters rejected an initiative known as Dignity 2012 by a narrow margin of 51% to 49%.37 The hotly contested
ballot measure was modeled after the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity law.38 The Massachusetts law would have allowed
physicians to prescribe life-ending medication to terminally ill patients who requested it, were
able to take the medication without assistance from anyone else, and met other specific medical and legal criteria.39 At the
time of the vote, only three states—Oregon, Washington, and Montana—allowed physicians to legally prescribe medications for such
an intended purpose. Had the vote passed, Massachusetts would have become the only East Coast state to legalize physicianassisted
dying.40 The Massachusetts campaign had gathered grass roots support throughout the state, but also drew
highly publicized opposition, especially from religious organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church.41 As the time
for the vote grew closer, the publicity reflected strong opinions from both proponents and opponents. Both sides used emotionally
charged words and language to frame the issue. Proponents referred to the act with gentler and more compassionate language, such
as “assisted dying” and “death with dignity.” In contrast, opponents often used the emotionally laden phrase
“assisted suicide,” which was also frequently repeated by the media. Most people recoil from the term
“suicide.” It is a word associated with a stigma and heaves a heavy emotional impact. While “suicide” is routinely used to refer to
someone taking his or her own life, proponents explain that allowing a terminally ill person to choose when
and how to
die—and then calling it “suicide”—is misleading.42 In an op-ed piece in the Canadian media, Globe
made a case for the power of language to influence perceptions.
Picard wrote, “Calling medically assisted dying suicide is a lot like calling surgery a
knife attack.”43 The news coverage of the Massachusetts law typically included explanations about the medical and legal
and Mail health reporter André Picard
considerations, as well as the psychosocial “pro and con” perspectives from both sides, but nevertheless latched onto the word
“suicide” with disproportionate frequency. A LexisNexis Academic search of content from major U.S. newspapers and wire service
reports for the ninety-day period preceding the November 6 vote yielded results showing a propensity toward use of the term
“assisted suicide,” with 244 citations for that term as opposed to eighty-six citations for “death with dignity” and fifteen for “assisted
dying.”44
This is key
Pratt 1998 – JD, PhD in neurophysiology, attorney specializing in health law at Davis Wright
Tremaine LLP in Portland, Oregon (Carol A., Oregon Law Review, “Efforts to Legalize
Physician-Assisted Suicide in New York, Washington and Oregon: A Contrast Between Judicial
and Initiative Approaches-Who Should Decide?”, 77 Or. L. Rev. 1027)
Central to the debate over PAS has been a battle over terminology. 64 Not surprisingly, we
do not have a vocabulary that explicitly deals with a terminally ill person using drugs legally
obtained from a physician to hasten his or her death. Instead, we are forced to borrow and build upon existing
terms such as "suicide ' ' 65 and "euthanasia." ' This has two consequences: confusion and polarization.
The choice of terminology can be as polarizing as declaring oneself a liberal or a conservative: it
announces up front how the individual is framing the debate. A critical distinction
is whether one chooses to use the term "physician-assisted suicide," which invokes
historical, legal, and ethical objections to the premature self-termination of viable human life, or euphemisms such as
"death with dignity" or "right to die." These are distinctions with a difference, as they have been
shown by recent polls to be critical to the success or failure of ballot initiatives and public support. As
will be discussed more fully below, ballot initiatives that would have permitted lethal injection as a means of PAS consistently have
failed. Conversely, Oregon's successful ballot initiative was limited to self-administered medications.
Mutually exclusive
Fox 1 (Graham, Director of Legislative and Public Affairs – IRPP, “Direct Democracy Would Be Beneficial in Canada, but Not in
All Forms”, Institute for Research on Public Policy, 6-7, http://www.irpp.org/newsroom/archive/2001/060701e.pdf)
Secondly, governments
should initiate referendums more frequently, but only when they are genuinely
uncertain about the direction to take, and are perhaps even prepared to remain neutral throughout
the process. The authors conclude that the alternative – using referendums as a tool to ratify policy decisions
that have already been made – actually serves to further undermine trust in the political system by
fuelling public cynicism. Governments that are already committed to a course of action are
unlikely to use the referendum as a tool for genuine public consultation. Instead they will use the
referendum strategically, and shape the rules that govern the process, in an effort to ensure that they obtain their
desired result.
Especially for PAS—exclusive 50 state action is key
DuVivier 2007 – Associate Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law (K.K.,
Oregon Law Review, “Fast-Food Government and Physician-Assisted Death: The Role of Direct
Democracy in Federalism”, 86 Or. L. Rev. 895, Lexis)
Finally, federalism allows states to act as laboratories. Centralization
at the federal level can stifle innovation,
power
to the states encourages the evolution of ideas that can help advance an issue nationally. The
"evolutionary process" of "innovation" works best when experimentation is diffused. n35
More progress is likely when "fifty different parallel state governments and countless
substate governments" are working on possible solutions to problems that face the nation. n36 Some of these
ideas will be rejected, but the odds improve with the existence of multiple, creative options.
with congressional "stasis" preventing any positive action from that national legislative body. n34 Instead, dispersing
2NC DEMOCRACY NB
They can’t win defense because the CP is a better application of their utopianism
args—aff’s intent is life-affirming, but the mandate is solely death-focused—
democracy requires the ability to affirm survival as well
Scott and Katz-Fishman 4 (Jerome, Director of Project South – Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide
and Walda, Professor – Howard University, “Popular Democracy: A Vision for Our Movement”, 10-26,
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/7600)
When we look deeper into popular democracy several principles and processes emerge as essential for understanding and organizing in our current
moment - equality, participatory decision-making, struggle and liberation. Equality means the equal sharing and access to all the resources and goods
and services we must have to satisfy our material, intellectual, cultural and spiritual needs. It also means that all people are valued and treated equally
and have equal rights regardless of race/ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, age and disability, etc. Going from the extreme polarization of today's
wealth and poverty to equality among all peoples is an ongoing process as well as an essential principle of popular democracy. Participatory
decision-making involves full bottom-up and active participation in making decisions that affect
the lives of all of us - but especially of working and poor people. The involvement of those most adversely affected is key to
this process. For this to happen we must all prepare ourselves through practice, education and
information gathering and then come together to share our analysis and reach collective agreements.
Struggle is the real fight we are in for our very lives against those who are pushing us into joblessness,
poverty, homelessness, hunger, violence, incarceration, war and death. It is like being in a burning building and being
chained to the walls and floor. Our struggle to beat these odds, to collectively break free and to survive and thrive is
what drives us. Our independent path to fundamental social change is rooted in our vision of another
world and a strategic plan to get there. Liberation is what we are fighting for. It is what we will have when we are truly in
control of our own collective destiny as working and poor peoples around the world. We will have full access to the resources, the goods and services
necessary for a quality life - and this is within our reach because today's electronic technology makes it possible to create a vast abundance of all the
goods and services we need. We
will also be in control of decision-making as we reorganize society - locally, nationally and globally - to value
all people and our human rights and to respect nature and the ecological system we share on this earth. Popular
democracy has no economic exploitation, political and cultural oppression, poverty, genocide
or war and militarism. Rather, it is the opposite - it embodies and expresses the principles and processes
of equality, participatory decision-making by all, our struggle to be free and liberation for
humanity.
They can’t win offense either—assumes fatalist views of direct democracy that
voting neg better corrects
Hirsch and Amar 2002 – JD Yale; Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale (Alan and
Akhil, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, 29.2, “Direct Democracy and Civic Maturation)
Opponents of direct democracy trot out examples of initiatives too complicated for voters to understand, or campaigns dominated by
well-mobilized interest groups. But flaws in direct democracy constitute grounds for reform, not
abolition. If the initiative process does not always conform to the ideal, we should try to fix it
rather than abandon it. If perfection were required, we would have to throw out legislatures too .
Moreover, concern that initiatives lack proper, deliberation suggests an opportunity as much as a
risk. Assorted measures can be taken to ensure that voters possess more familiarity with issues. 107 The appropriate model of
direct democracy is not a simple vote in a private booth, but a process that brings citizens
together to discuss an issue. This, in turn, contributes to a more deliberative and communityminded citizenry. In other words, we should turn on its head the argument that direct
democracy produces laws uninformed by deliberation. Initiatives should be used to
inspire deliberation, producing both better laws and better citizens.
CP is key
Tolbert and Smith 2005 – *PhD, Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa;
**PhD, UF Research Foundation Professor, Department of Political Science, University of
Florida (March, Caroline and Daniel, American Politics Research, 33.2, 283-309, “The
Educative Effects Of Ballot Initiatives On Voter Turnout”,
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/dasmith/apr%202005.pdf)
CONCLUSION
We began by proposing to measure Progressive Era wisdom against contemporary reality of one of the educative effects of citizen lawmaking—voter
turnout. During that celebrated age of reform, scholars, reformers, legislators, and the general public vigorously discussed the expectations and
limitations of citizen lawmaking. By examining empirically some of the normative claims advanced during the Progressive Era, we have tried to
reevaluate this enduring debate over the pedagogical nature of the initiative process. Although numerous scholars continue to investigate the direct
effects of ballot initiatives on public policy and minority rights, we
have begun to test claims regarding the process’s
indirect effects on political participation, or what some Progressives liked to call the “educative value” of direct
democracy (D. Smith & Tolbert, 2004). Lending support to arguments made by Progressive Era reformers and
contemporary normative scholars, our analysis indicates that states with more initiatives on
the ballot have had higher voter turnout in midterm and presidential elections during the past quarter of a century,
controlling for alternative explanations for variation in turnout rates. Studies using individual- level survey
data substantiate this finding (D. Smith & Tolbert, 2004; Tolbert, McNeal, et al., 2003). These are notable findings, as the evidence contradicts
previous research showing that the initiative process has a negligible impact on voter turnout (Everson, 1981; Magleby, 1984), as well as more recent
studies showing that salient ballot measures do not increase electoral participation in presidential elections (Lacey, in press; M. Smith, 2001) or have
only a modest effect (Tolbert, Grummel, et al., 2001).
Clearly, the use of the initiative process matters—more initiatives appearing on statewide ballots lead to higher voter turnout
rates over time. Our findings suggest that ballot initiatives in high- and lowinformation elections have a positive impact on political participation.
Initiatives stimulate turnout in presidential and midterm elections; however, the
effect remains stronger in midterm
elections. Our research is consistent with previous literature (D. Smith, 2001; Tolbert, Grummel, et al., 2001) as well as contradictory, as we find a
positive turnout effect in presidential elections and a larger positive turnout effect in midterm elections. It is somewhat surprising to note, we find that
VEP estimates actually accentuate the impact of initiative use on turnout compared to VAP, rather than diminish as we had expected. Each initiative
appearing on the state ballot leads to almost a 1% increase in turnout in presidential elections and almost a 2% increase in turnout in midterm
elections, all else equal. For reasons already discussed, we suggest that the state VEP turnout estimates (McDonald& Popkin, 2001) are likely to be
more reliable and valid, and the analysis based on these data is preferable to those based on the VAP turnout estimates.
We should emphasize that we agree with the theoretical justification for increased turnout with policy questions on the ballot offered by M. Smith
(2001); the combination of salient ballot measures and campaign efforts can raise turnout. The difference in our findings (evidence of a turnout effect
in presidential elections notwithstanding) appears to be rooted in the empirical measurement of direct democracy or initiative use. We suggest the
measurement of ballot measure salience used by M. Smith (2001) and
his successors (Lacey, in press) may underestimate the
true effects of the process on participation rates. Because ballot measure salience is based solely on postelection front-page
newspaper coverage of initiative and referendum elections, this might understate the actual salience of policy issues on the ballot among the electorate.
We suggest that political
information from multiple sources (including online and television media, friends, coworkers, etc.)
may not be fully captured by M. Smith’s (2001) precise salience measure but may be captured in our measure of the
number of initiatives on the ballot, which is more inclusive and takes into account the cumulative effect that the process of direct democracy has on
making citizens more engaged in and knowledgeable about politics (D. Smith&Tolbert, 2004). Likewise, use ofVAP turnout rates, rather than
VEPturnout rates, appears to understate the relationship between ballot measures and voter turnout.
Another way to conceptualize the difference between our pedagogical argument about the cumulative educative effects of direct democracy, as opposed
to ballot measure salience, is in terms of supply and demand. Some citizens are able to learn more in information-rich environments about politics in
general (Lupia, 1994; Popkin, 1991). So it is not just the supply side (availability of salient initiatives, referendums, and political campaigns) but the
demand side of the equation (e.g., citizen interest and learning) thatwork together.We suggest that our measure of the number of initiatives on the
ballot picks up the supply- and-demand side of this equation, whereas measures of ballot measure salience may only account for supply-side factors
(Lacey, in press; M. Smith, 2001). Understanding the broad nature of the educative effects of ballot initiatives is newin the literature on direct
democracy and underscores our novel finding of a significant turnout effect in presidential elections.
As initiative elections gain use and in importance, they may play a growing role in presidential and midterm elections. As
we have witnessed in California and several other states during the past decade, ballot measure proponents and opponents likely will continue to fuse
their campaigns with the presidential, U.S. Senate, and gubernatorial candidates and vice versa (Garrett&Smith, 2004; D. Smith&Tolbert, 2001, 2004).
In the future, the
initiative process and more participatory modes of governance, including Internet
increase voter participation in presidential and
midterm election years (Tolbert &McNeal, 2003). Given declining U.S. turnout (VAP, if not VEP), the presence of
policy questions on the ballot may indeed be a desirable way to mobilize voters. Our analysis lends
mobilization, mail, and even Internet voting, as well as national referendums, may
support to the popular belief that substantive measures on the ballot do mobilize voters and can reshape the electorate, which may have important
ramifications for candidate elections. In light of the dramatic growth in the use of citizen initiatives and legislative referenda in the American states in
the past 20 years, these positive effects on voter turnout appear to confirm at least one of the educative effects made by Progressive Era advocates of
citizen lawmaking (D. Smith & Tolbert, 2004). As such, observers of similar patterns during the 2003 California recall or the August 2004 Missouri
primary should not be surprised, as ballot measures clearly have had a positive effect on voter turnout over time.
Ballot initiatives are too rare—key to voter turnout
Tolbert and Smith 2005 – *PhD, Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa;
**PhD, UF Research Foundation Professor, Department of Political Science, University of
Florida (March, Caroline and Daniel, American Politics Research, 33.2, 283-309, “The
Educative Effects Of Ballot Initiatives On Voter Turnout”,
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/dasmith/apr%202005.pdf)
Some scholars
have begun to critically explore what Progressive reformers referred to as the educative effects of direct
democracy (Smith & Tolbert, 2004). Although ballot measure contests unquestionably have had a major impact
on public policy in the two dozen states that permit citizen lawmaking (Bowler, Donovan, & Tolbert, 1998; Broder, 2000; Ellis, 2002; Gerber,
1996, 1999; Gerber, Lupia, & McCubbins, 2004; Gerber, Lupia, McCubbins, & Kiewiet, 2001; Lascher, Hagen, & Rochlin, 1996; Schrag, 1998), we
argue that the process of direct democracy itself can influence the attitudes and behaviors of
individuals. The educative effects of ballot initiatives include enhancing civic engagement (M. Smith, 2002;
Tolbert, McNeal,&Smith, 2003), building confidence in government (Bowler & Donovan, 2002; Hero & Tolbert, 2004; Mendelsohn
& Cutler, 2000), and mobilizing interest groups and political parties (Boehmke, 2002; Bowler & Donovan, 1998; D. Smith & Tolbert, 2001;
Tolbert, McNeal, et al., 2003). Previous studies have found that citizens who are exposed to ballot initiatives have more
political knowledge (M. Smith, 2002; Tolbert, McNeal, et al., 2003) and interest in politics (Tolbert, McNeal, et al., 2003),
enhanced political efficacy (Bowler& Donovan, 2002; Hero & Tolbert, 2004; Mendelsohn & Cutler, 2000), and are more
likely to contribute to citizen interest groups (D. Smith& Tolbert, 2004). Scholars have also found that states with more
frequent use of ballot initiatives have more citizen and nonprofit interest groups (Boehmke, 2002; D. Smith & Tolbert, 2004; see also Gerber, 1999).
Chief among these educative effects, however, is the positive effect that direct democracy has on voter turnout
(Donovan & Smith, 2004; Lacey, in press; M. Smith, 2001; Tolbert, Grummel, & Smith, 2001; Tolbert, McNeal, et al., 2003). As Putnam (2000) notes,
voting is by a “substantial margin the most common form of political activity [by citizens], and it embodies the most fundamental democratic principle
of equality” (p. 35). Building on recent research assessing how ballot initiatives may shape the broader democratic landscape in the American states
(Bowler & Donovan, 2004a; Mendelsohn & Cutler, 2000; D. Smith & Tolbert, 2004; Tolbert, 2003), and specifically how the process effects the
attitudes and behaviors of citizens, we elaborate on this theme by systematically analyzing over time howballot measures affect voter turnout in the
American states. Specifically, we assess the Progressive Era proposition that the use of the initiative in the American states can bolster voter turnout.
Using aggregate-level voter eligible population (VEP) turnout data from the 50 states (McDonald &
Popkin, 2001), we examine whether states that use the initiative process have higher levels of voter
turnout in midterm and presidential elections than states that do not permit the process.
Actually, CP is pretty rare, especially on this scale—and Harvard BoSu is to blame
Frey 2003 – Professor at the Institute for Empirical Economic Research at University of
Zurich (7/21, Bruno S., “Direct Democracy for Transition Countries”,
http://www.sigov.si/zmar/apublic/jiidt/jiidt03/5frey.pdf)
Referenda can hardly be considered a generally accepted institution. Not surprisingly, the
members of the ‘classe politique’ are quick to raise strong objections. They realize that referenda
constitute a threat to their power by limiting their rent seeking potential. Many intellectuals also reject
referenda with a variety of arguments. The basic reason is because they consider themselves to be better
judges of what is “good” for the people than the citizens themselves. They tend to see
themselves in the role of a 'philosopher-king' determining what 'social welfare' is. Consequently, they
prefer decisionmaking systems where they have a larger say. Thus, their opposition against referenda is due to
the same interests as the one against the market (see Stigler 1984). The following statement by a political scientist illustrates the
widespread feeling among intellectuals that referendum democracy 'reduces governmental efficiency of performance and the
capacity to innovate' (Hertig 1984, pp. 254-5; my translation). This is, however, a purely technocratic view of efficiency. It
disregards the inclination of politicians to deviate from citizens' preferences, and to engage in
rent seeking for their own benefit.
2NC VACCINES
We can agree that process of engaging death/suicide solves public acceptance—
that’s our CP—it’s a unique net benefit because voting aff ends the conversations
necessary to solve the aff!
Stern and DiFonzo 2009 – J.D., M.S.W., attorney; J.D., Ph.D., Professor of Law, Hofstra
University (Ruth C. & J. Herbie, University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy,
“STOPPING FOR DEATH: RE-FRAMING OUR PERSPECTIVE ON THE END OF LIFE”, 20 U.
Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 387)
In the context of scarcity in health resources, it seems reasonable to place a lower priority on patients closer to death. But even in
war, accidents and disasters, standards of triage are subject to a lack of consensus. n419 How to achieve "the greatest
good for the greatest number of people" raises a series of difficult questions: "Is it the number of lives saved?
Years of life saved? Best 'quality' years of life saved? Or something else?" n420 In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a nurse at New
Orleans' Memorial Hospital defended her actions in injecting an elderly, unconscious woman with morphine and sedatives,
hastening her death: "But even if it had been euthanasia," she said, "It's not something we don't really do every day-it just goes
under a different name." n421 In
order to acquire legitimacy, health care allocations systems must be
perceived as fair and just by the populations they serve. This can only be achieved if policies
are "publicly understandable, accessible and subject to public discussion and revision."
n422
The risk is linear—it’s intrinsic offense because the effect on external actors CAN
be a reason legalization is bad—only scenario for serious US disease outbreak
Wong 2/1/2015 (Kristina, The Hill, “CDC warns of 'large outbreak' of measles”,
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/231394-cdc-director-warns-of-measles-outbreak)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Tom Frieden on Sunday warned
a "large outbreak" of measles.
that the U.S. could see
"We are very concerned by the growing number of people who are susceptible to measles, and the possibility that we could have a
large outbreak in this country as a result," Frieden said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
There are at least 102 reported cases in 14 states, according to the CDC. Frieden said that the U.S. is "likely to see more cases."
Frieden said there is "aggressive public health action" to identify those with measles, isolate those sick and
quarantine those who have been exposed.
But he said the best way to prevent the spread of measles was vaccination.
Frieden said despite the U.S.'s 92 percent vaccination rate, there is growing evidence more parents are not vaccinating their
children.
"What we’ve seen is, as over the last few years, a small but growing number of people, have not been
vaccinated. That number is building up among young adults in society, and that makes us vulnerable," he said.
Frieden acknowledged that some parents are concerned about the safety of vaccines, or think measles no longer
exists.
"One in six kids could have a fever ten days after, but the vaccine is safe and effective. And for those parents that may think that
measles is gone, it’s still here, and it can be quite serious," he said.
Frieden also appeared on ABC's "This Week," urging parents to vaccinate their children.
"What you do for your own kids doesn't just affect your family. It affects other families as well," he said. "The
more kids who are not vaccinated, the more they're at risk and the more they put their neighbors' kids at risk
as well.”
Probability—we cognitively underestimate disease
Patrick S. Roberts 8, fellow with the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard and
assistant professor with the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech,
January, Review of Richard Posner’s “Catastrophe: Risk and Response,” Homeland Security
Affairs, Volume 4, No. 1
Most people
have difficulty thinking about abstract probabilities as opposed to events they have
capacity is limited, and startling events such as the attacks of September 11 trigger our
observed. Human mental
attention. But evaluating risk requires paying attention to what we do not see. There has been
surprisingly little attention in the popular media given to pandemic flu, even though influenza killed
approximately twenty million people in 1918-1919. The disease has no cure, and vaccines are difficult
to produce because of the mutability of the virus. People from all walks of life pay greater attention to issues in
recent memory and tend to give greater weight to confirmatory evidence; the cumulative effect is to under- prepare
for catastrophe.
Aff would “death panels” uproar 2.0—original healthcare dispute proves
OPB 2014 – Oregon Publish Broadcasting (10/22, “Blumenauer Pushes for End-of-Life
Conversations Again”, note in brackets appears in original,
http://www.patientsrightscouncil.org/site/health-care-reform/)
Congressman Earl Blumenauer
is working to try to allow doctors to bill health insurance companies for end-oflife conversations….Blumenauer is pushing the Obama administration to include his bill in its rulemaking authority, due out by the
end of the month. He tried to include similar legislation in the Affordable Care Act, but it
was taken out after a furor erupted over so-called “death panels.”
[Note: Blumenauer is a strong supported of Oregon's assisted suicide law.]
T
1NC T
A) Violation
United States includes federal government—not just local
Lagueux, 91 – US District Judge (Ronald, IN THE MATTER OF THE COMPLAINT OF
BALLARD SHIPPING COMPANY FOR EXONERATION FROM OR LIMITATION OF
LIABILITY Civil Action No. 89-0685L UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND 772 F. Supp. 721; 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13103; 33 ERC (BNA)
1996; 33 Employee Benefits Cas. (BNA) 1996; 1992 AMC 402 September 17, 1991, Decided,
lexis)
Claimants argue that the statute's broad, "pre-civil war" definition of "United States" -- meaning
the several states and territories -- when applied to subsection (f)(1), gives Rhode Island a cause of action.
Claimants also argue that the provisions in subsection (f)(4), measuring liability to include costs incurred by a state government, and
subsection (f)(5), requiring a state's authorized representative to act as a trustee to recover costs of restoration, confirm that states
have standing under section 311 of the FWPCA to sue the shipowner.
But this selective reading of the statute misses more direct language that only supports a cause of
action by the federal government. HN6Go to this Headnote in the case.The language of the statute must be given its
ordinary meaning, absent clear legislative intent to the contrary, Consumer Product Safety Comm'n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S.
102, 108, 64 L. Ed. 2d 766, 100 S. Ct. 2051 (1980), and this Court must be chary of reading into the statute any remedies that are not
expressly stated there, Middlesex County Sewerage Auth. v. Nat'l Sea Clammers Ass'n, 453 U.S. 1, 14-15, 18, 69 L. Ed. 2d 435, 101 S.
Ct. 2615 (1981). A common-sense reading of the statute compels the conclusion that states have no standing [**7] to sue under
section 311. HN7Go to this Headnote in the case.Subsection (f)(1) plainly makes shipowners and operators liable only "to the United
States Government" for costs incurred during the removal of oil. 33 U.S.C. § 1321(f)(1) (1988). The last sentence of this section adds:
"The United States may also bring an action against the owner or operator of such vessel . . . ." Id. "United States
Government" and "United States" mean the federal government.
The broad definition of "United States" in subsection (a)(5) -- which includes the several states but
conspicuously leaves out the federal government -- would make little sense if it were applied to this
context, as Claimants propose. To apply the broad definition set forth in subsection (a)(5) wherever the term "United States" appears
in section 311 would be folly. For example, "district court of the United States," 33 U.S.C. § 1321(b)(6)(B) (1988),
can mean nothing but the federal district courts. The meaning of "United States" in this context is
obvious, and no one would suggest that it includes the states.
The broad definition in subsection (a)(5) relates, not to the courts empowered with jurisdiction or the sovereigns that have standing
to sue, but to the [**8] geographical scope of potential liability under section 311 of the FWPCA. See, e.g., 33 U.S.C. §§ 1321(a)(10),
(a)(11), (a)(15), (a)(16), (b)(1), (b)(2)(A), (b)(3), and (b)(4). Thus, an oil spill in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands may touch
the "United States" and create liability under the FWPCA, but the Trust [*724] Territory of the Pacific Islands must rely on the
"United States Government" -- the appropriate federal authorities -- to bring suit under Section 311.
Congress could have given the states explicit, separate authority to bring suit under section 311, but it did not. In other parts of this
section, Congress recognized a distinction between the "United States" and "a State or political
subdivision thereof." E.g., 33 U.S.C. § 1321(a)(4) (1988). This distinction indicates that, subsection (a)(5) notwithstanding,
Congress did not intend to include the several states every time it used the words
"United States" in section 311. When Congress intended to include the governments of the several
states, it explicitly spoke of states in addition to the "United States."
In the legal context, should reflects a normative mandate, not personal speculation
Summers 94 (Justice – Oklahoma Supreme Court, “Kelsey v. Dollarsaver Food Warehouse of
Durant”, 1994 OK 123, 11-8,
http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=20287#marker3fn13)
13 "Should"
not only is used as a "present indicative" synonymous with ought but also is the past
tense of "shall" with various shades of meaning not always easy to analyze. See 57 C.J. Shall § 9,
Judgments § 121 (1932). O. JESPERSEN, GROWTH AND STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1984); St. Louis & S.F.R.
Co. v. Brown, 45 Okl. 143, 144 P. 1075, 1080-81 (1914). For a more detailed explanation, see the Partridge quotation infra note 15.
Certain contexts mandate a construction of the term "should" as more than merely
indicating preference or desirability. Brown, supra at 1080-81 (jury instructions stating that jurors "should"
reduce the amount of damages in proportion to the amount of contributory negligence of the plaintiff was
held to imply an obligation and to be more than advisory); Carrigan v. California Horse Racing Board, 60
Wash. App. 79, 802 P.2d 813 (1990) (one of the Rules of Appellate Procedure requiring that a party "should devote a section of the
brief to the request for the fee or expenses" was interpreted to mean that a party is under an obligation to include the requested
segment); State v. Rack, 318 S.W.2d 211, 215 (Mo. 1958) ("should" would mean the same as "shall" or "must" when
used in an instruction to the jury which tells the triers they "should disregard false testimony"). 14 In
praesenti means
literally "at the present time." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 792 (6th Ed. 1990). In legal parlance the phrase
denotes that which in law is presently or immediately effective, as opposed to something that will or
would become effective in the future [in futurol]. See Van Wyck v. Knevals, 106 U.S. 360, 365, 1 S.Ct. 336, 337, 27
L.Ed. 201 (1882).
Legalize is to make lawful by judicial or legislative sanction
BUSINESS DICTIONARY 14 [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/legalize.html]
legalize - To make enforceable, justifiable, or lawful by judicial or legislative
sanction.
It’s distinct from decrim because it includes an affirmative grant of legality and
conditions for PAS to occur
Stell 98 [Lance, professor of philosophy at Davidson College and Medical Ethicist at the
Carolinas Medical Center, Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, ed: Battin]
To Decriminalize or to Legalize? Mine
is an argument for full, formal decriminalization of
physician-assisted suicide. It is compatible with but does not make the argument for decriminalization of assisted suicide,
per se. 48 Similarly, it is compatible with but does not make the argument for legalization. The distinction
is this. Laws that criminalize conduct (whether at common law or by statute) define acts that are wrongful,
specify elements of the offense, and (in the case of statutory prohibitions) prescribe punishment(s) which may be
imposed for committing the offense.49 Decriminalization of conduct may occur by legislative removal from
the criminal law of statements which define the conduct as wrongful and punishable. For example,
Section 14-17.1 in Article 6 of North Carolina's law concerning homicide says, "The common-law crime of suicide is hereby abolished
as an offense." (1973, c.1205). North Carolina's criminal code does not include "promoting suicide" or "aiding suicide" or "assisting
suicide," as offenses. Nor does its homicide law specify any of these as a way of committing manslaughter. Obviously, when an
offense is abolished, one can no longer be indicted for it. (After Jack Kevorkian's first highly publicized assisted
suicide, it was discovered that, apparently, "assisted suicide" was not defined as a specific offense in Michigan. So he was indicted for
homicide instead, and acquitted). Conduct can also be decriminalized by courts' striking down statutes (in
whole in or in part, on constitutional grounds) which define offenses and provide punishments for them. With uncertain and
arbitrary effect, conduct can be decriminalized by police discretion, prosecutorial discretion and jury nullification—conveying more
or less clearly that physicians' using their medical privileges to assist patient suicide in certain circumstances will not be punished.
Decriminalization confers no special privileges or immunities—not on physicians, nor on anyone else.
Decriminalization provides no course to a "safe harbor" securing qualified persons from
criminal or civil penalties. Legalization of conduct defines acts that are authorized by specifying
what, how, when and by whom they may be performed. Legalization may also confer criminal
and civil immunity upon eligible persons who follow the laws provisions in good faith. For example, Oregon's
Proposition 16, despite explicitly denying that it does so, legalizes physician-assisted suicide. Its procedures, allow
an informed and capable adult resident of Oregon, who is terminally ill and within six months of death, to voluntarily request a
prescription for medication to take his or her life. The measure allows a physician to prescribe a lethal dose
of
medication when conditions of the measure are met. The distinction between
decriminalization and legalization matters because stringent regulation of lethalprescription writing enabling terminally ill patients to take their lives with the law's blessing, by
implication, ignores the myriad other unregulated uses of medical authority which can be
deployed to the same end. Thus, not only is it dishonest for Oregon to proclaim that it doesn't authorize physician-assisted
suicide, it is arbitrary for it to single out one use of medical privilege by which physicians may
assist, (the prescribing privilege), and offer a shield of immunity to physicians who follow the
procedures outlined for that use of privilege. If this is a wedge, opening the way to stringent
regulation of all medically managed deaths, patient self-determination will have been
effectively extinguished. The wedge interpretation threatens to turn lose the dogs of the
criminal law on physicians, potentially destroying the control patients have won over lifesustaining treatment. If legalization/regulation of lethal prescription writing isn't a wedge, it
perpetuates dishonesty and strategic behavior.
The 2ac’s resolved interp won’t apply
Webster’s Guide to Grammar and Writing – 2k
(http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm)
Use of a colon before a list or an explanation that is preceded by a clause that can stand by itself. Think of the colon as a gate, inviting
one to go on… If the introductory phrase preceding the colon is very brief and the clause following the
colon represents the real business of the sentence, begin the clause after the colon with a capital letter.
B) Vote neg—
1. They destroy the only predictable neg ground on a massively aff biased topic
with 5 distinct lit bases—decrim is our only recourse and disads don’t exist to
utopian imagination.
2. Prep and clash—post facto topic change alters balance of prep, which
structurally favors the aff because they speak last and use perms—key to engage a
prepared adversary and a target of mutual contestation.
3. Limits—specific topics are key to reasonable expectations for 2Ns—open
subjects create incentives for avoidance and monopolization of moral high
ground—that denies a role for the neg and turns accessibility.
4. Refinement -- unlimited topics makes assessing the validity of the 1ac’s truth
claims impossible AND cause concessionary ground which creates incentives for
avoidance
Topicality is a voter—specific ev!!
Shively 2000 – assistant professor of political science at Texas A & M University (Ruth Lessl,
“Political Theory and Partisan Politics”, Chapter 8, “Political Theory and the Postmodern
Politics of Ambiguity”, eds. Portis, Gundersen, and Shively, p. 176-182, ProQuest ebrary)
Like all attempts to impose order on the world, then, political theorists’ attempts to order the world of politics— to manage or tame its disorders by
making it rational and harmonious— are foundationally and morally ambiguous. To the extent that theorists attempt to provide for harmonious
community by silencing and managing conflict and deviance, they overlook the community’s foundations in conflict and deviance and participate in the
cruelties discussed above. And to the extent that they claim to provide secure, rational foundations for political life, they overlook the irrational
elements that constitute and sustain reason, clinging to the false reassurance that their truths are grounded in a solid, intelligible reality. J-F. Lyotard
sums up this ambiguist sentiment when he writes that this philosophical “quest for a constituent order that gives sense to the world, to society, to
discourse . . . is the mental illness of the West.” For it is this kind of quest that holds out the false “hope that in time the fullness of meaning will emerge;
that the problems facing Western civilization will be solved by reasonable and orderly minds put to the task of assembling the remaining pieces of the
human puzzle; that madness, chaos, and bewilderment, like a frontier will eventually be settled” (Corlett 1989, 155– 156). Political theory is a political,
not a philosophical, endeavor then because it is one more arena in which rational and social orders are presented as invariable and absolute goods
while, in reality, being matters of variable and arbitrary power. And it is one more arena in which we are reassured of the mind’s ability to triumph over
disorder when, in fact, disorder remains a permanent and vital feature of our situation. What
then should we do? If we accept
the fundamental ambiguity of reason and community, what becomes of the role of the political
theorist? The ambiguists vary somewhat in their answers to this question, but they agree that
the theorist’s role is not about building the perfect, harmonious society or the ideal, rational
order, and that a theory’s success is not measured by its ability to manage or resolve conflict and
difference. Rather, the theorist’s role is about unmasking and delegitimizing the forms of power and subjugation that
lie behind the aims of reason and harmony and a theory’s success is measured by its embrace of difference and support for the goods of political
conflict. In fact, from this perspective, political confrontation is something to be positively celebrated.
In the first place, it is a permanent and constitutive feature of our communities. It is inescapable. And those who attempt to escape it only end up
deceiving themselves and sub-jugating others. And in the second place, it is a source of vitality for human society. To be truly alive is to be conflicted
and conflictual, for, as Stuart Hampshire warns: “Harmony and inner consensus come with death, when human faces no longer express conflicts but
are immobile, composed, at rest” (Hampshire 1989, 189). While
to live vitally is to be willing “to accept and embrace
the perpetuity of contest . . . to give up on the notion that one day a constitutive truth . . . will
emerge and settle the ambiguities and struggles that mark the lives of most men and women”
(Honig 1993, 210– 211). Thus, the ambiguists favor an expansion of the sites of political conflict in society. They would foster a general “enmity
toward order,” 2 teaching us to reject the idea of a highest good or final harmony to be achieved in society, to purge “rational foundational truths from
In this light, then, the
public realm is not the place to resolve differences or ambiguities, but the place to welcome, and
work with, them: “the medium through which . . . ambiguities can be engaged and confronted,
shifted and stretched” (Connolly 1990, 82). What is aimed at is what Lyotard has christened “la sveltesse”: the
exhilaration of a discordant diversity or “difference” metamorphic enough to prevent the rootedness that engenders serious conflict but
simultaneously strong and purposeful enough to “contaminate” and subvert the hegemony of rationalist, technologically
regimented existence. (Pangle 1992, 48) By embracing diversity and disorder as such, the ambiguists hope to unsettle the human drive toward
the public realm,” 3 and to embrace “the unruly conflicts and contests of democratic politics” (Honig 1993, 14).
conformity and control, and to undermine rationalist claims to truth and order. They would teach us to resist closure and the “all-too-human yearning
for a freedom from politics or contest,” to challenge and “problematize” society’s categorizations while supporting and expanding the goods of
disruption and subversion. 4 I hope this brief summary fairly captures the postmodern approach to the inevitably political nature of all political theory.
I personally believe that there
is much to admire in this project. It has helped to uncover real elements of cruelty and
arbitrariness in assumptions about reason and community and to create a new and deeper appreciation for the goods of diversity and contest. But
while I am sympathetic to these ends, I am doubtful about the means the ambiguists use to achieve them. In
particular, I am doubtful that the maintenance of a deep skepticism or antifoundationalism is the best way to enhance political contest (using “contest,”
here, as shorthand for the various ambiguist projects of resistance, subversion, dissonance, disruption, and the celebration of difference). My argument
is twofold. First, I will suggest that a
closer look at the nature and needs of political contest reveals an activity
requiring certain clear, uncontested foundations. And second, a closer look at the ambiguists’ own assumptions reveals that some
such foundation is implicit and implicitly protected from contest or subversion. In other words, even those who would build a
politics of radical resistance and subversion must acknowledge and justify their own un resisted and un subverted
foundations.
“JUST SAYING NO”
The first point here is that the ambiguists cannot embrace all disruptive actions or resist all attempts to categorize activities in terms of “good” and
“bad,” “legitimate” and “illegitimate,” “civil” and “uncivil.” For if their aim is to give voice to those who have been silenced or marginalized, they must,
at the very least, distinguish between activities that silence and marginalize versus those that do not. They must tell us, for example, what makes an act
an act of resistance rather than of cruelty or tyranny, or what defines behavior as contestation as opposed to mere bullying or ostracization. They do not
tell us these things, of course, since their own assumptions require them to resist such attempts at closure and categorization. Yet, an answer is implied.
It is implicit in their democratic vision of society and, indeed, in any democratic vision of society. “Good” political acts— acts of legitimate resistance
and contest— are, for them, as for most other people, civil acts: meaning, essentially, acts that are respectful of the goods of democracy and liberty; acts
that are nonviolent and designed to increase others’ freedom and knowledge. For example, no ambiguists (in my readings) seek or sanction acts of
“contest” that involve behaviors like burning crosses on people’s lawns, lying to the public, shouting others into silence, hitting or killing or threatening
political opponents, or the like. Rather, their political examples uniformly suggest that the expansion of contest would involve only civil kinds of
resistance and subversion: things like teaching, protesting, demonstrating, arguing, raising awareness, questioning and the like. After
all, the
point of being in the ambiguist camp in the first place is to protest acts of tyranny and compulsion. So, despite strong
rhetoric about disrupting all orders and undermining all rules, they cannot, and do not, contest or undermine basic rules of civility (rules which I will
define further in a moment). In keeping with their democratic ambitions, they do not seek to annihilate or silence opposition, but to diversify and
increase its voices and opportunities. My point here is not just to say that the ambiguists are nice people who happen to reject violent and tyrannical
tactics. It is to say that their goals imply and require this. For certain
threatening others with violence or shouting
subversive or disruptive political activities— like
opponents into silence— are such that they undermine any further
subversions and disruptions. In this sense, some disruptions turn out to solidify the status quo and some subversions turn out to be
countersubversive. Which is why the ambiguists must stop short of celebrating all differences or disorders, for what would be the point of rejecting the
old system for its supposed tyrannies— its bullying and silencing tactics— only to take up more of the same? 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
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 import for them— one must establish and maintain the rules and regulations and laws that protect democracy. In short,
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.
Thus far, I have argued that 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 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 selfcontradiction: to hold to both one’s purposes and to that which defeats one’s purposes— to tolerance and intolerance, open-mindedness and closemindedness, 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 antidemocrat, 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.
SAYING “YES” TO PERSUASION The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say “no” to— they must reject and
limit— some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say “yes” to some things. In particular, they must say “yes” to the idea of
rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize
the role of agreement in political contest, or the
basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is
in thinking that agreement marks the end of contest— that consensus kills debate. But this is
true only if the agreement is perfect— if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our agreements
are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and
so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray
writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume
that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a
context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if
we cannot agree
on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or
good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one
cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia
is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one’s target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the
sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy.
In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and
debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share
an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator’s audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea
presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some
basic agreement or harmony.
STEINBERG (END OF 1NC)
Relevance isn’t enough—only a precise and limited rez creates clash on a point of
mutual difference
Steinberg & Freeley 8 *Austin J. Freeley is a Boston based attorney who focuses on criminal,
personal injury and civil rights law, AND **David L. Steinberg , Lecturer of Communication
Studies @ U Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision
Making pp45Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a difference of opinion or a conflict of
interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a tact or value or policy, there is no need for
debate: the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for example, it would be pointless to
attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four," because there is simply no controversy about
this statement. (Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas,
proposals, interests, or expressed positions on issues, there is no debate. In addition, debate cannot produce
effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be
answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal
immigration. How many illegal immigrants are in the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration
and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do they take jobs from
American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem that some do not speak English? Is it the
responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should
they have the opportunity- to gain citizenship? Docs illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal
immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human
beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? I low are their families
impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we
build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification can!, or enforce existing laws against employers?
Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be
addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this
"debate" is likely to be emotional and intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful
without focus on a particular question and identification of a line demarcating sides in
the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively, controversies must be stated clearly. Vague
understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions, frustration, and
emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the United States Congress to make progress on the
immigration debate during the summer of 2007.
Someone disturbed by the problem of the growing underclass of poorly educated, socially
disenfranchised youths might observe, "Public schools are doing a terrible job! They are overcrowded,
and many teachers are poorly qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain
order in their classrooms." That same concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision,
such as "We ought to do something about this" or. worse. "It's too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned
citizens worried about the state of public education could join together to express their
frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools, but without a focus for their
discussions, they could easily agree about the sorry state of education without finding
points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session would follow. But if a precise
question is posed—such as "What can be done to improve public education?"—then a more profitable area of
discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution
step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for
parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies. The statements "Resolved: That the federal government
should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities" and "Resolved: That the state of Florida should adopt a
school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for
debate. They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points
of difference.
To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing
limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined. If we merely talk
about "homelessness" or "abortion" or "crime'* or "global warming" we are likely to have an
interesting discussion but not to establish profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement
"Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword" is debatable, yet fails to provide much basis
for clear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean that the written word is more effective than physical force for
some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose.
Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely
worded to promote well-organized argument. What
sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels,
government documents, website development, advertising, or what? What does "effectiveness" mean in this context?
What kind of physical force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question
might be. "Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Liurania of our support in a certain
crisis?" The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as "Resolved: That the
United States should enter into a mutual defense treatv with Laurania." Negative advocates
might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to
say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by
advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the
controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that
debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of
difference, which will be outlined in the following discussion.
UTOPINAISM
Utopianism isn’t a viable political strategy engagement with nitty-gritty details is
most effective
James Ferguson, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, “The Uses of
Neoliberalism,” Antipode Vol. 41 No. S1 ‘9 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 166–184
If we are seeking, as this special issue of Antipode aspires to do, to link our critical analyses to the world of grounded
political struggle—not only to interpret the world in various ways, but also to change it—then
there is much to be said for focusing, as I have here, on mundane, real- world debates
around policy and politics, even if doing so inevitably puts us on the compromised and
reformist terrain of the possible, rather than the seductive high ground of revolutionary ideals
and utopian desiresBut I would also insist that there is more at stake in the examples I have discussed here than
simply a slightly better way to ameliorate the miseries of the chronically poor, or a
technically superior method for relieving the suffering of famine victims.¶ My point in discussing the South African BIG
campaign, for instance, is not really to argue for its implementation. There is much in the campaign that is appealing, to be sure. But one can just as
easily identify a series of worries that would bring the whole proposal into doubt. Does not, for instance, the decoupling of the question of assistance
from the issue of labor, and the associated valorization of the “informal”, help provide a kind of alibi for the failures of the South African regime to
pursue policies that would do more to create jobs? Would not the creation of a basic income benefit tied to national citizenship simply exacerbate the
vicious xenophobia that already divides the South African poor, ¶ in a context where many of the poorest are not citizens, and would thus not be eligible
for the BIG? Perhaps even more fundamentally, is the idea of basic income really capable of commanding the mass support that alone could make it a
central pillar of a new approach to distribution? The record to date gives powerful reasons to doubt it. So far, the technocrats’ dreams of relieving
poverty through efficient cash transfers have attracted little support from actual poor people, who seem to find that vision a bit pale and washed out,
compared with the vivid (if vague) populist promises of jobs and personalistic social inclusion long offered by the ANC patronage machine, and lately
personified by Jacob Zuma (Ferguson forthcoming).¶ My real interest in the policy proposals discussed here, in fact, has little to do with the narrow
policy questions to which they seek to provide answers. For what is most significant, for my purposes, is not whether or not these are good policies, but
the way that they illustrate a process through which specific
governmental devices and modes of reasoning that we
have become used to associating with a very particular (and conservative) political agenda
(“neoliberalism”) may be in the process of being peeled away from that agenda, and put to very
different uses. Any progressive who takes seriously the challenge I pointed to at the start of this essay, the
challenge of developing new progressive arts of government, ought to find this turn of events of
considerable interest.¶ As Steven Collier (2005) has recently pointed out, it is important to question the
assumption that there is, or must be, a neat or automatic fit between a hegemonic “neoliberal”
political-economic project (however that might be characterized), on the one hand, and specific
“neoliberal” techniques, on the other. Close attention to particular techniques (such as the use of
quantitative calculation, free choice, and price driven by supply and demand) in particular settings (in Collier’s case, fiscal and
budgetary reform in post-Soviet Russia) shows that the relationship between the technical and the politicaleconomic “is much more polymorphous and unstable than is assumed in much critical geographical work”,
and that neoliberal technical mechanisms are in fact “deployed in relation to diverse political
projects and social norms” (2005:2).¶ As I suggested in referencing the role of statistics and techniques for pooling risk in the creation of
social democratic welfare states, social technologies need not have any essential or eternal loyalty to the
political formations within which they were first developed. Insurance rationality at the end of the nineteenth century
had no essential vocation to provide security and solidarity to the working class; it was turned to that purpose (in some substantial measure) because it
was available, in the right place at the right time, to be appropriated for that use. Specific
ways of solving or posing
governmental problems, specific institutional and intellectual mechanisms, can be combined in
an almost infinite variety of ways, to accomplish different social ends. With social, as with any
other sort of technology, it is not the machines or the mechanisms that decide what they will be
used to do.¶ Foucault (2008:94) concluded his discussion of socialist government- ality by insisting that the answers to the Left’s governmental
problems require not yet another search through our sacred texts, but a process of conceptual and institutional innovation. “[I]f there is a really
socialist governmentality, then it is not hidden within socialism and its texts. It cannot be deduced from them. It must be invented”. But invention in
the domain of governmental technique is rarely something worked up out of whole cloth. More often, it involves a kind of bricolage (Le ́vi- Strauss
1966), a piecing together of something new out of scavenged parts originally intended for some other purpose. As we pursue such a process of
improvisatory invention, we might begin by making an inventory of the parts available for such tinkering, keeping all the while an open mind about
how different mechanisms might be put to work, and what kinds of purposes they might serve. If
we can go beyond seeing in
“neoliberalism” an evil essence or an automatic unity, and instead learn to see a field of specific
governmental techniques, we may be surprised to find that some of them can be
repurposed, and put to work in the service of political projects very different from
those usually associated with that word. If so, we may find that the cabinet of governmental arts
available to us is a bit less bare than first appeared, and that some rather useful little
mechanisms may be nearer to hand than we thought.
Their moral tunnel vision undercuts political responsibility and increases violence
Isaac 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)
Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power
is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests over the
distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the
means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise,
power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not
reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr,
and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political
responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity,
but it suffers 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.
Pure philosophical focus creates no neg ground and makes it impossible to
evaluate desirability of legalization – independently turns case
De Visser 2014 – author of Jeruzalem/Quds, writes from Amsterdam about issues of culture
and conflict (2/3, Daily Beast, “The Dutch Debate Doctor-Assisted Suicide For Depression”,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-debate-doctor-assisted-suicidefor-depression.html)
Despite the rational arguments for legal euthanasia as a matter of principle, the questions now
being raised in the Netherlands are about practice.
Psychiatrist Boudewijn Chabot, seen as a pioneer of the euthanasia movement after his conviction in 1991 for
helping a female patient die, told the Dutch TV program Nieuwsuur that the law “has gone off the rails.”
“In the last two years things started happening that made me feel uncomfortable,” he said. Many of the Dutch have living
wills stating whether they want to be euthanized or not, if they are no longer able to make the
decision. But Chabot argues that a written statement made when one is of sound mind should not be considered “completely
valid” for “a seriously demented person who no longer knows what it means.”
Chabot warned that the emphasis on a long-term doctor-patient relationship is paramount when it comes to evaluating psychiatric
problems. “There are a 100,000 chronic psychiatric patients” in the Netherlands, according to Chabot, and of those “a large segment
struggles with and against a death wish.” If the Life-Ending Clinic wants to take on such a responsibility, he said, then it better “get
ready.”
In one highly publicized example last year, the clinic helped a 63-year-old man with severe psychiatric problems to end his life.
After a very active career working for government, the patient in question could not face his upcoming
retirement. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad the clinic’s psychiatrist, Gerty Casteelen said the
man “managed to convince me that it was impossible for him to go on. He was all alone in the world. He’d
never had a partner. He did have family but he was not in touch with them. It was almost like he’d never developed as a person. He
felt like he didn’t have the right to live. His self-hatred was all consuming.”
The man’s long-term physicians
had rejected his request previously. But the clinic’s team evaluated
him, read his medical history and decided it was time to close his case— permanently.
Clinic Director Pleiter thinks giving psychiatric patients a chance at assisted suicide is important. “We are dealing with a group of
patients that have no other place to go, that are also being ignored by psychiatry,” he said. “We are looking at their requests
seriously, we treat them in all fairness. I believe it was a deliberate choice for the lawmakers to offer space legally, to which both
patients with physical as well as psychological problems can turn.”
But where does one draw the line? Because these patients are not physically ill, the evaluations of independent psychiatrists are
under scrutiny. Does this mean any person suffering from serious depression can shop around until he or she finds someone willing
to help with suicide? And euthanasia is not only for old people. How young can you be and still get legal help if
you want to die? How far should society go to overcome the biologically inbuilt threshold that makes it hard to take one’s own
life by aiding someone to do so?
The controversy surrounding the Life-Ending Clinic’s activities has caused the Dutch press to look at some of the other cases from
recent years. In one particularly disturbing case a 35-year-old woman, the youngest to die since the Dutch law was introduced, got
help killing herself in 2012. Excerpts of her file were published by Dutch national newspaper Trouw and read like a sad story of
clinical depression. But the file also shows an extended period of hopefulness. Not enough apparently. A team of doctors decided
there was no cause to wait, and ended her life.
POLITICS
1NC POLITICS
Consistent focus from and political capital Obama prevent Senate Democratic
defections that wreck the Iran deal
DeBonis & Kane, 4/2/15 (Mike & Paul, Washington Post.com, “Congress reacts to Iran
nuclear framework with cautious optimism, renewed skepticism,” Factiva, JMP)
Congress greeted news of a framework agreement to curtail the Iranian nuclear weapons program much as it has reacted to the months of negotiations that preceded it — with
criticism from most Republicans, optimism from most Democrats, and a strong desire from both sides to play a direct role in the deal.
Obama said Thursday that his administration would give Congress a thorough briefing on the
details of the framework, but the outlines immediately revealed did not immediately move any
key lawmakers off of their previous positions — even as Obama warned against knee-jerk
reactions.
President
"If Congress kills this deal not based on expert analysis, and without offering any reasonable alternative, then it's the United States that will be blamed for the failure of
diplomacy," he said. "International unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen."
Congressional sentiment was inflamed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's early-March visit to Washington, where he told a joint session of Congress that any deal
would "pave the way" to an Iranian nuke, and by the subsequent letter signed by 47 Republican senators sent to the Iranian regime, warning that Congress could reverse any deal
made at the negotiating table.
Thursday's release of key details about the nuclear framework heralded a new phase of
domestic politicking, where Obama will be seeking to keep Democrats unified behind
him as he sells the deal to the public and on Capitol Hill, while Republicans determine
how hard a line to draw against the terms negotiated over many months by the U.S. and five other foreign partners.
Key lawmakers struck a careful note Thursday, seeking above all to firm up Congress's role in
reviewing the deal.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said lawmakers "must remain clear-eyed regarding Iran's continued resistance to concessions,
long history of covert nuclear weapons-related activities, support of terrorism, and its current role in destabilizing the region."
"If a final agreement is reached, the American people, through their elected representatives, must have the opportunity to weigh in to ensure the deal truly can eliminate the
threat of Iran's nuclear program and hold the regime accountable," said Corker, the lead sponsor of a bipartisan bill that would bring the nuclear deal to Congress for a 60-day
review.
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to mark up the
review bill the day after members return. Corker said he is "confident of a strong vote" in its favor.
Congress is out of session until April 13, but
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who invited Netanyahu to Washington and visited him in Israel earlier this week, also called for a legislative role in any deal:
"Congress must be allowed to fully review the details of any agreement before any sanctions are lifted," he said in a statement. "After visiting with our partners on the ground in
the Middle East this week, my concerns about Iran's efforts to foment unrest, brutal violence and terror have only grown. It would be naïve to suggest the Iranian regime will not
continue to use its nuclear program, and any economic relief, to further destabilize the region."
Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), a co-chairman of the House Republican Israel caucus, was more sharply critical of the advance toward a deal, saying in a statement that it "makes no
demonstrable progress on the legitimate security concerns of the American people and the international community." Rep. Steve Israel, a House Democratic leader and frequent
critic of the Iran talks, said he remains "highly skeptical" of a deal: "The details deserve and must get a vote by the U.S. Congress."
On the Senate side, the Republicans most critical of the deal showed no sign of softening their
rebukes, and their Thursday statements indicated an emerging set of specific criticisms.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the freshman who rocked Capitol Hill by putting together the letter addressed to Iranian leaders, said in an interview that the framework discussed
Thursday represented "a list of concessions to put Iran on the path to a nuclear bomb."
"At this point, the only thing to do is walk away, impose new sanctions, and drive a tougher bargain," he said.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a Foreign Relations member and a potential presidential candidate, said in a statement that the initial reports on the framework were "very
troubling" and represented an "attempt to spin diplomatic failure as a success" while doing nothing about Iran's non-nuclear activities.
Both Cotton and Rubio said they were concerned that thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges would remain operational, even as negotiators said two-thirds or more
would be decommissioned, and that the hardened Fordow enrichment facility would remain open, even if in a non-weapons capacity.
Senate Democrats, even those who had been skeptical of the negotiations, struck more positive
notes Thursday, starting with Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), who called on his colleagues to "take a deep
breath, examine the details and give this critically important process time to play out."
"We must always remain vigilant about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon but there is no question that a diplomatic solution is vastly preferable to the alternatives,"
he said.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who until his Wednesday indictment on federal corruption charges served as the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, had been
outspoken in his criticism of the Iranian regime and the dismal prospects for a diplomatic solution to its nuclear ambitions. But, like Corker, he did not characterize the deal in a
Thursday statement but instead staked out the congressional interest in reviewing it.
"If diplomats can negotiate for two years on this issue, then certainly Congress is entitled to a review period of an agreement that will fundamentally alter our relationship with
Iran and the sanctions imposed by Congress," he said. "The best outcome remains a good deal that ends Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program. That requires a strong, united,
and bipartisan approach from the administration and Congress."
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the new ranking member, said in his own statement that "Congress has a role to play in this process" but he stopped short of endorsing a formal review
period. "The best outcome is a strong diplomatic one," said Cardin, who is not a cosponsor of the bipartisan review bill.
Obama on Thursday sought to forestall criticism of the deal by focusing attention on alternatives.
"When you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question: Do you
really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented, backed by the world's major powers, is
a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?" Obama asked in the White House Rose
Garden. "Is it worse than doing what we've done for almost two decades with Iran moving forward with its nuclear program and without robust inspections? I think the answer
will be clear."
But the deal's fate may rest squarely on whether he can convince congressional
Democrats and a few centrist Republicans to leave him a free hand in the coming
months to consummate the deal.
"I hope today's announcement imbues Democrats with a sense of the seriousness of the stakes,"
said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a junior member of the Foreign Relations Committee who has emerged as a strong
administration ally.
Murphy said that it was critical that enough Democrats stand together to assure that
the Corker bill mandating congressional review falls short of the two-thirds
majority needed to override Obama's veto.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), another junior member of Foreign Relations, said the bloc of Republicans open to possible compromise is "bigger than it would seem to some people"
and noted that "the country as a whole seems more open to a negotiated agreement than our conference has been."
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that Americans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin support the idea of striking a deal that would restrict the Iranian nuclear program in
return for loosened sanctions.
it'll be a tough sell, and it's the final details that matter," Flake said, adding that he expects
Kerry, a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to make personally make the case on Capitol
Hill: "The administration is going to need all hands on deck."
Despite the White House's poor reputation for managing congressional relations,
Murphy said that on this particular issue they have demonstrated success before
and should be able to replicate that now. In 2014, as pressure built to ramp up sanctions
on Iran, administration officials worked the Democrats to avoid a vote on the issue.
But multiple Republican senators said they expected to present a united front based on specific
objections to the new framework, likely to be coordinated through Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
"That said,
Secretary of State John
who was overseas Thursday and did not issue a statement on the negotiations.
Plan’s hugely contentious despite public support
Girsh, 99 --- president of Hemlock USA, which supports the Oregon law and is working to pass
similar legislation in other states (10/25/1999, Faye, Interviewed by Michael Vitez, The
Philadelphia Inquirer, “THE CONTINUING DEBATE OVER PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE,”
Lexis, JMP)
Q: Explain
this to me: The contradiction. Public opinion in your view overwhelmingly
supports assisted suicide. Yet legislatures overwhelmingly oppose it.
A: Well, I think the main thing is the influence of the Catholic church, which is very strong in the
legislatures, and the right-to-life movement. . . . I think most state legislatures have two
lobbyists from the Catholic church full time, a couple of lobbyists from the American Medical
Association, which opposes physician-assisted suicide, or the state medical society. And as a grassroots
movement we simply [can't] compete with that.
The impact is military intervention that escalates—political capital is key to
prevent it
Costello, 3/30/15 --- Policy Fellow, National Iranian American Council (Ryan, “Stakes Are
High for Iran Nuclear Negotiations,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-costello/stakes-arehigh-for-iran_b_6973272.html, JMP)
This week, the U.S. has a chance to lead an international coalition into an agreement that would guard against any attempt by Iran to obtain a nuclear
weapon. However, the decades since the Iranian Revolution in 1979 are littered with missed opportunities to resolve differences between the U.S. and
Iran, including on the nuclear issue. With
political capital expended to keep the negotiations afloat,
particularly in Washington, and the list of issues to be resolved shrinking, these negotiations
have steadily risen in importance. As a result, failure or the rash rejection of a
breakthrough by Congress or Iranian hardliners could result in irreparable damage to
the diplomatic track, with profound consequences for an already chaotic region.
We may never see a pair of U.S. and Iranian Presidents more willing to expend the
political capital necessary to reach a nuclear deal. President Obama famously distinguished himself on the
campaign trail in 2008 by vowing to sit down with any world leader without preconditions, including Iran, and has turned an Iran nuclear deal into
what could be the chief foreign policy goal of his second term. Secretary of State John Kerry and other top U.S. diplomats have also spent countless
hours doggedly pursuing a deal that balances between the political imperatives of Washington and Tehran.
In Iran, President Rouhani campaigned on a platform of moderation and outreach to the West. Rouhani was the lead nuclear negotiator for Iran
between 2003-2005, which resulted in Iran freezing its enrichment and implementing the IAEA's Additional Protocol. Rouhani's foreign minister,
Mohammad Javad Zarif, also has a successful track record of negotiating with the West, playing a critical role in the effort to form a new government
for Afghanistan at the Bonn conference in 2001. Over
the past year and a half of intense negotiations, Rouhani
and Zarif have kept Iran's skeptical Supreme Leader united behind their efforts to reach a deal,
preventing counterproductive divides in Iran's political elite.
Now, with the political scales tilted heavily in favor of diplomacy, failure could
eliminate diplomatic prospects for the foreseeable future. Escalation will be the name of
the game if negotiations fail, as lead U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman articulated in October. Congress would pass
sanctions and President Obama might not put up much of a fight. Iran would expand its nuclear
program and limit the access of international inspectors. The sanctions regime would fray or
potentially collapse, diminishing U.S. leverage over Iran. Tacit cooperation in Iraq to counter
ISIS militants could end, with dangerous consequences.
If diplomacy fails, President Obama would likely resist the reinvigorated calls from neoconservative circles to attack Iran, but he has less than two years
remaining in office. Prominent Republicans weighing Presidential runs have already staked out a hardline position by warning Iran that they would
undo any potential multilateral nuclear agreement "with the stroke of a pen." Democrats, as well, could be scarred by failure and rush toward a hawkish
position. Whereas
a multilateral agreement would constrain the next President from returning to
the escalation route, an advancing Iranian nuclear program and the lack of diplomatic prospects
would tempt many of Obama's potential successors to consider the military option, regardless
of the consequences. Those who have dreamed of attacking Tehran ever since the fall of Baghdad are
banking on such an opportunity to renew their case for yet another disastrous war.
This shit matters yo
Rudra Sil 11, Asst. Professor of Political Science @ University of Pennsylvania where he holds
the Janice and Julian Bers Chair in the Social Sciences, “De-Centering, Not Discarding, the
“Isms”: Some Friendly Amendments,” International Studies Quarterly (2011) 55, p. 481-485
Lake is right to note that inter-paradigm debates frequently reflect epistemological divisions, such as between nomological and narrative styles of
scholarship. It is worth noting, however, that crucial epistemological differences exist on each side of this divide as
well—for example, between empiricists and theoretical realists on the nomological side, or between post-structuralists and those partial to
hermeneutics or ‘‘thick’’ description on the ‘‘narrative’’ side. The permutations and fractal distinctions (Abbot 2004:162–70) among various
epistemological issues make it more reasonable to speak of an epistemological ‘‘spectrum’’ rather than ‘‘divide’’ (Sil 2000). We do concur with Lake’s
salutary, pluralistic stance, evident in his acknowledgment of the absence of any objective criteria for preferring one epistemological position over
another. This pluralism, however, restates rather than resolves the dilemma posed by the epistemic commitments or preferences of different
communities of scholars. This is why our
conception of analytic eclecticism proceeds from a pragmatist
foundation. The pragmatist turn in international relations scholarship does not resolve
epistemological dilemmas, but it does enable us to temporarily bypass or suspend
irresolvable metaphysical debates for the purpose of exploring substantively
important problems. Pragmatism also recognizes the inevitable fallibility of truth
claims and focuses on the consequences of our conclusions about various
problems (Sil and Katzenstein 2010:43–48). Pragmatism does not trump other foundational perspectives. It creates the conditions for greater
toleration and more inclusive dialogue among scholars partial to different research traditions. And it may even pave the way for a return to the public
engagement that characterized the social sciences at their birth (Calhoun 2009).
2NC POLITICS DA THEORY
--Disregarding it dooms the aff to failure
Saideman 11 Steve is an Associate Prof of PoliSci at McGill University. “Key Constraint on
Policy Relevance,” July 25, http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2011/07/key-constraint-onpolicy-relevance.html
I would go one step further and suggest that one
of the key problems for scholars who want to be relevant for
policy debates is that we tend to make recommendations that are "incentive incompatible." I
love that phrase. What is best for policy may not be what is best for politics, and so we may think we
have a good idea about what to recommend but get frustrated when our ideas do not get that far. ¶ Lots of folks talking about early
warning about genocide, intervention into civil wars and the like blame "political will." That countries lack, for whatever reason, the
compulsion to act. Well, that is another way of saying that domestic politics matters, but we don't want to think about it. ¶ Dan's piece contains
an implication which is often false--that IR folks have little grasp of domestic politics. Many IR folks do tend to ignore or simplify the domestic side too
much, but there is plenty of scholarship on the domestic determinants of foreign policy/grand strategy/war/trade/etc. Plenty of folks look at how
domestic institutions and dynamics can cause countries to engage in sub-optimal foreign policies (hence the tradeoff implied in my second book--For
Kin or Country). ¶ The challenge, then, is to figure out what would be a cool policy and how that cool policy could resonate with those who are relevant
To be policy relevant requires both parts--articulating a
policy alternative that would improve things and some thought about how the alternative could be
politically appealing. ¶ Otherwise, we can just dream about the right policy and gnash
our teeth when it never happens.
domestically. That is not easy, but it is what is necessary.
CASE
1NC CASE
Extinction not inevitable
Boaz, 12/31/14 [David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and has played
a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement. He is the
author of The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom and the editor of The Libertarian
Reader. He is a provocative commentator and a leading authority on domestic issues such as
education choice, drug legalization, the growth of government, and the rise of libertarianism.
Boaz is the former editor of New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a
Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981. The earlier edition of The Libertarian Mind,
titled Libertarianism: A Primer, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “a well-researched
manifesto of libertarian ideas.” His other books include The Politics of Freedom and the Cato
Handbook for Policymakers. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the
New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Slate, and
he wrote the entry on libertarianism at the Encyclopedia Britannica. He is a frequent guest on
national television and radio shows, and has appeared on ABC’s Politically Incorrect with Bill
Maher, CNN’s Crossfire, NPR’s Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered, The McLaughlin
Group, Stossel, The Independents, Fox News Channel, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free
Europe, and other media. Happy New Year: A Time to Celebrate Human Progress,
http://www.cato.org/blog/happy-new-year-time-celebrate-human-progress]
The media are full of headlines about war, sexual assault, inequality, obesity, cancer risk,
environmental destruction, economic crisis, and other disasters. It’s enough to make
people think that the world of their children and grandchildren will be worse than today’s world. But the
real story, which rarely makes headlines, is that, to paraphrase Indur Goklany’s book title, we are living
longer, healthier, more comfortable lives on a cleaner and more peaceful planet.
(Allister Heath summed up his argument in a cover story for the Spectator of London, without all the charts and tables.) Fortunately,
beyond the headlines, more people do seem to be recognizing this. The Cato Institute, for instance, has created an ever-expanding
website on human progress, known simply as HumanProgress.org. Here’s Steven Pinker expanding on the information in his book
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined in Slate: The world is not falling apart. The kinds
of violence to which most people are vulnerable—homicide, rape, battering, child abuse—have been in
steady decline in most of the world. Autocracy is giving way to democracy. Wars between states—by far the most
destructive of all conflicts—are all but obsolete. He has charts of the data in each of those areas. And here’s Pinker at the
Cato Institute discussing why people are so pessimistic when the real trends are so good: Fraser Nelson, editor of the
Spectator, writes that 2014 has been the best year ever – just as 2013 was, and just as 2015
will be. It is something that is, now, true every year but the point cannot be made enough. We’re
living through a period of amazing progress – in medicine, prosperity, health and even
conquering violence. Nelson offers this brilliant graphic from the Lancet, a British medical journal: Winning the war on
disease And just today we learn in a new report from the American Cancer Society that cancer rates have fallen 22 percent in two
decades. At Spiked Online, editor Brendan O’Neill points out “10 Kickass Things Humanity Did in 2014.” Andres Martinez at Zocalo
Public Square: The “good old days” are a figment of our imagination. Life–here, there, everywhere–has never been
better than it is today. Our lives have certainly never been longer: Life expectancy in the U.S. is now 78.8 years,
up from 47.3 years in 1900. We are also healthier by almost any imaginable measure, whether we mean that literally, by
looking at health indices, or more expansively, by looking at a range of living-standard and social measures (teen pregnancy rates,
smoking, air-conditioning penetration, water and air quality, take your pick).
Particulars trump root cause, even if it were provable
Azar Gat 9, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, “So Why Do
People Fight? So Why Do People Fight? Evolutionary Theory and the Causes of War”, European
Journal of International Relations 2009 15: 571-599
This article’s contribution is two-pronged: it argues that IR
theory regarding the causes of conflict and war is deeply
flawed, locked for decades in ultimately futile debates over narrow, misconstrued concepts; this conceptual
confusion is untangled and the debate is transcended once a broader, comprehensive, and evolutionarily informed perspective is adopted. Thus
attempts to find the root cause of war in the nature of either the individual, the state, or the international system are
fundamentally misplaced. In all these ‘levels’ there are necessary but not sufficient causes for war, and
the whole cannot be broken into pieces.13 People’s needs and desires — which may be pursued violently
— as well as the resulting quest for power and the state of mutual apprehension which fuel the
security dilemma are all molded in human nature (some of them existing only as options, potentials, and skills in a
behavioral ‘tool kit’); they are so molded because of strong evolutionary pressures that have shaped
humans in their struggle for survival over geological times, when all the above literally constituted matters of life and
death. The violent option of human competition has been largely curbed within states , yet is
occasionally taken up on a large scale between states because of the anarchic nature of the interstate system. However, returning to step one, international anarchy in and of itself would not be an explanation for war
were it not for the potential for violence in a fundamental state of competition over scarce
resources that is imbedded in reality and, consequently, in human nature. The necessary and sufficient
causes of war — that obviously have to be filled with the particulars of the case in any specific war —
are thus as follows: politically organized actors that operate in an environment where no superior
authority effectively monopolizes power resort to violence when they assess it to be their most
cost-effective option for winning and/or defending evolution-shaped objects of desire, and/or their power in the system that can
help them win and/or defend those desired goods.
The aff doesn’t solve their broader transhumanism arguments—don’t evaluate
impacts that the plan doesn’t meaningfully address, otherwise they’re just FYIs
BoSu is not the savior
Z Al-Mwajeh 5, Indiana University of Pennsylvania The School of Graduate Studies and
Research Department of English, CRITIQUE OF POSTMODERN ETHICS OF ALTERITY
VERSUS EMBODIED (MUSLIM) OTHERS,
https://dspace.iup.edu/bitstream/handle/2069/23/Ziad%20Al-Mwajeh.pdf?sequence=1
alterity-oriented postmodernism can be described as idealistic in a Platonic sense. Plato’s “Myth of
Plato’s world of matter is preceded and to some extent
controlled by the world of ideas, or by the Logos. Postmodern alterity seems to submit to the Platonic idea-matter dialectics. Thus, the
postmodernists critique metaphysical, linguistic, or symbolic superstructural systems as if fixing
the idea translates into fixing praxis. One implicit assumption is that knowledge translates into
ethics. In other words, it seems that postmodernists do not only consider man ‘good,’ but also assume that the moment one is
enlightened about the good, he/she will automatically choose it by virtue of its being good. I am not
particularly opposed to such idealism. On the contrary, the problem with such idealism is that it underestimates political
and economic contexts, pressures, motivations, and even the desire for power regardless of the
consequences, sometimes. Postmodern thought does not problematize the passage from metaphysics
or the moment of knowledge into action. It seems that the moment we know that our
metaphysical or epistemological foundations are other-unfriendly automatically translates into
abandoning those ways in favor of more just arrangements such as alterity ethics. Thus,
postmodernists retain Platonic residues whenever they assume that self-other enduring
conflicts are primarily caused by ideational or metaphysical systems. They, too, become idealists
whenever they do not problematize the assumption that the world of ideas precedes the world of
matter—almost in a causal manner—or whenever they assume their automatic
translatability as if fixing the philosophical or epistemological system would
automatically fix the institutions and practices that stem from them. 3
However,
the Cave” enacts a dialectical ascension or progress toward an ideal republic governed by reason.
Their impacts are reductive and absurd
Dickinson 2004 – University of Cincinnati (Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy:
Some Reflections on Our Discourse About “Modernity,” Central European History, vol. 37, no. 1,
March)
the continuities between early twentieth-century biopolitical discourse and the practices of
the welfare state in our own time are unmistakasble. Both are instances of the “disciplinary society” and of biopolitical, regulatory,
In short,
social-engineering modernity, and they share that genealogy with more authoritarian states, including the National Socialist state, but also fascist Italy, for example. And it is
analysis can easily become superficial and misleading,
because it obfuscates the profoundly different strategic and local dynamics of power in the two kinds of
regimes. Clearly the democratic welfare state is not only formally but also substantively quite
different from totalitarianism. Above all, again, it has nowhere developed the fateful,
radicalizing dynamic that characterized National Socialism (or for that matter Stalinism), the
psychotic logic that leads from economistic population management to mass murder. Again,
there is always the potential for such a discursive regime to generate coercive policies. In those cases in which the regime
of rights does not successfully produce “health,” such a system can —and historically does— create compulsory programs to enforce it. But again, there are
political and policy potentials and constraints in such a structuring of biopolitics that are very
different from those of National Socialist Germany. Democratic biopolitical regimes require,
enable, and incite a degree of self-direction and participation that is functionally incompatible
with authoritarian or totalitarian structures. And this pursuit of biopolitical ends through a
regime of democratic citizenship does appear, historically, to have imposed increasingly narrow
limits on coercive policies, and to have generated a “logic” or imperative of increasing liberalization. Despite limitations imposed by political context and
certainly fruitful to view them from this very broad perspective. But that
the slow pace of discursive change, I think this is the unmistakable message of the really very impressive waves of legislative and welfare reforms in the 1920s or the 1970s in
Germany.90 Of course it is not yet clear whether this is an irreversible dynamic of such systems. Nevertheless, such regimes are characterized by sufficient degrees of autonomy
(and of the potential for its expansion) for sufficient numbers of people that I think it becomes useful to conceive of them as productive of a strategic configuration of power
relations that might fruitfully be analyzed as a condition of “liberty,” just as much as they are productive of constraint, oppression, or manipulation. At the very least,
totalitarianism cannot be the sole orientation point for our understanding of biopolitics, the only end point of the logic of social engineering. This notion is not at all at odds with
the core of Foucauldian (and Peukertian) theory. Democratic welfare states are regimes of power/knowledge no less than early twentieth-century totalitarian states; these
The
concept “power” should not be read as a universal stifling night of oppression,
manipulation, and entrapment, in which all political and social orders are grey, are essentially or
effectively “the same.” Power is a set of social relations, in which individuals and groups have
varying degrees of autonomy and effective subjectivity. And discourse is, as Foucault argued, “tactically
polyvalent.” Discursive elements (like the various elements of biopolitics) can be combined
in different ways to form parts of quite different strategies (like totalitarianism or the
democratic welfare state); they cannot be assigned to one place in a structure, but rather circulate. The varying possible constellations of power in modern
systems are not “opposites,” in the sense that they are two alternative ways of organizing the same thing. But they are two very different ways of organizing it.
societies create “multiple modernities,” modern societies with quite radically differing potentials.
Threats aren’t exclusively discursive issues
Thierry Balzacq 5, Professor of Political Science and IR @ Namar University, “The Three Faces
of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context” European Journal of International
Relations, London: Jun 2005, Volume 11, Issue 2
However, despite important insights, this position remains highly disputable. The reason behind this qualification is not hard to
understand. With great trepidation my contention is that one of the main distinctions we need to take into account while examining
securitization is that between 'institutional' and 'brute' threats. In its attempts to follow a more radical approach to security
problems wherein threats are institutional, that is, mere products of communicative relations between agents, the CS has neglected
the importance of 'external or brute threats', that is, threats that do not depend on language mediation to be
what they are - hazards for human life. In methodological terms, however, any framework over-emphasizing either
institutional or brute threat risks losing sight of important aspects of a multifaceted phenomenon. Indeed, securitization, as
suggested earlier, is successful when the securitizing agent and the audience reach a common structured perception of an ominous
development. In this scheme, there is no security problem except through the language game. Therefore, how problems are
'out there' is exclusively contingent upon how we linguistically depict them. This is not always
true. For one, language does not construct reality; at best, it shapes our perception of it.
Moreover, it is not theoretically useful nor is it empirically credible to hold that what we say
about a problem would determine its essence. For instance, what I say about a typhoon
would not change its essence. The consequence of this position, which would require a deeper articulation, is that some
security problems are the attribute of the development itself. In short, threats are not only institutional; some of them
can actually wreck entire political communities regardless of the use of language. Analyzing
security problems then becomes a matter of understanding how external contexts, including external objective
developments, affect securitization. Thus, far from being a departure from constructivist approaches to security,
external developments are central to it.