Theocracy K
Religion based policy making is inherently immoral
MadKingFroggy17(https://www.deviantart.com/madkingfroggy/art/Theocracy-Is-Completely-Immoraland-Unethical-657583162)
Theocracy by it's mere implementation discriminates against non-believers and punishes those who
have actually done nothing morally wrong. The only fair way to decide the laws of a country is to make
them based on no religion whatsoever, so that the laws actually benefit and protect the people, not
some people's many religions have some horrendously regressive and harmful beliefs.In most
theocracies people may end up being put to death for merely having different beliefs or for speaking
'blasphemy' against the state religion.
imaginary friend.And
The USFG is a closeted theocracy
FORTENBERRY19(http://www.increasinglearning.com/american-theocracy.html)
recognition that God is the ultimate source of all power and authority was admitted by nearly all of our
nation’s founders. James Wilson, who served as one of our first Supreme Court Justices and was one of only
six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, wrote the following about the
relationship between the laws of America and those of her God:
What we do, indeed, must be founded on what he has done; and the deficiencies of our laws must be
supplied by the perfection of his. Human law must rest its authority, ultimately, upon the authority of
that law, which is divine.
This was the general opinion of the nation at our founding, and it has been the constant thread of truth to
which our nation has returned many times throughout her history. Was America founded as a
theocracy? Yes. Yes, indeed, she was.
This
The US is approaching the point of no return; the current path of religious policy
making is nearing an irreversible critical point that causes morals to fold onto
themselves
Lassiter19 (http://www.vabioethics.com/content/2019/1/4/theocracy-is-this-the-future)
. Throughout America’s storied history controversies have arisen regarding what is and what isn’t acceptable for the government to make a
in 1954 President Eisenhower asked Congress to add “one nation under God” to the pledge of
allegiance. Christianity was the undisputed prominent religion, but the addition of “under God” blurred
the lines set by the Constitution.
The Constitution of the United States clearly defines the separation of Church and State
law. For example,
Today, the country face s an ominous future as a minority political party governs the maj ority.
The curre nt minority political party, the Re publi cans, ca me to pow er in the 200 0s be caus e of gerry manderi ng, redistricting counties, and states in their fav or. The majority, the Democrats, have some control over legislation introduce d by the Re publicans, but cannot pass a pie ce of legislation without ha ving a few Rep ublica ns vote in their favor . To understa nd the situati on the country is in and the i mpa ct one political party has on the future of Ameri ca it is nece ssary to look at the influen ce religion has on the Re publi cans .
The Re publi can Party gained influe nce over the South i n 1968 beca use of evangelical s and traditional Roman Catholi cs.1 Both groups believe in social conservatis m. In 19 80 Presi dent Reaga n cha nged the face of the Re publi can Party by welcoming the evangelicals’ i nfluen ce into the White House, Congr ess, and legislation. Clyde Haber man wrote a comprehe nsive overview of the infl uen ce evangelical s have on t he Re publi can Party titled “Religion and Right -Wing P olitics: H ow Evangelicals Res hape d Elections.” (The New Y ork Times October 28, 201 8), Views on issues such as birth control, abortion, and the right wome n have to acces s healthcare were infl uenced by religious belie fs. T he pote ntial for a The ocra cy was created.
A Theocracy, a form of government in which a religious institution is an authority from which all
authority derives, has invaded legislation on all levels of government. In 2018, over 13 states adopted
restrictive anti-abortion laws. The Trump administration has enacted several restrictive abortion and
contraceptive laws, two of which were signed into law two days after the mid-term elections. the
Trump administration’s “execution of more anti-women’s healthcare laws than any other administration
Erin Corbett’s discusse s
This alone is troubling because these laws do not reflect the opinion of the majority. The majority
of Americans believe access to women’s healthcare is a right that should not be restricted or banned by
the government. However,
Christians, passed laws that affect the majority. Another worrisome
aspect is the Christian continued support of a President who by all reasoning defies their religious
and moral beliefs
willingness to capitulate to the wishes of a religious group and spurning of the Constitution throws the
government into disarray. The adoption of conservative Christian beliefs, the creation of legislation
which reflects religious beliefs, and the idolatry of politicians by said religious group lay the groundwork
for a government in which all laws are derived from that religion’s moral laws.
. The rights of women are being stripped,
. Women are losing autonomy, the right to have say
over their body, because of religious beliefs. Government bodies are ordaining laws from the moral laws
of a religious group. Is America becoming a Theocracy? I say yes. The legislation being passed, the rulings by courts, which have judges
appointed by Republicans, and the refusal of all forms of government to vote according to the wishes of the majority and
their constituents is proof America is losing the right to call itself a Democracy.
since 2 017” (Fortune Magazine Nove mber 8th, 2 018 ).
evangelicals and other conservative
evangelical and conservative
of the evangelicals. Some have sai d Trump is or dained by God.
The Re publi cans'
The possibility of a Theocra cy is not i mpossible
reflecting religious code s the maj ority does n’t believe in
Crossing this critical point will exacerbate the War, Gendered Violence, Racism,
Terrorism and Structural Violence already caused by religious decision making.
HALL01 (Religion and Violence: Social Processes in Comparative Perspective)
Religion is often held up as a vessel of peace, both inner and social. How, then, to understand its violent
currents? Given an uneven trend over the centuries toward cultural pluralism and freedom, modern
theorists optimistically concluded that religion would either decline in significance or become a pillar of
universalistic culture promoting a veritable community of mankind. Thus, as a flash point for violence,
religion scarcely warranted attention in the metanarratives of modernity. Yet such a reading of historical
development is far too optimistic, as the events of September 11, 2001, all too vividly demonstrate. A
moment’s reflection attests that religion and violence are often woven together in history’s tapestries.
Any number of religions have justified violence under certain circumstances, and others have become
caught up in its processes. In the ancient world, Zoroastrianism transformed earlier combat myths into a
theology of eternal apocalyptic struggle between good and evil and ancient Judaism forged a
confederacy under conditions of war Early Christianity had its martyrs, and the medieval Roman
church, its crusades and Inquisition. As for Islam, the close association between rulership and religion -together with the principle of jihad (or holy war) as a vessel of reformation -- infuse politics with
enduring potential for violence.
(Cohn 1993 : 114 ),
(Schluchter 1989 : 185, 2 00).
Embrace the Alt of a Global Non-Theistic Movement and rejection of Religion
influenced decision making
Lewis M.D 18 (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/201809/purpose-meaningand-morality-without-god)
Religion is not the source of purpose, meaning, and morality. Rather, religion can be understood as
having incorporated these natural motivational and social dispositions and having coevolved with
human cultures over time. Unsurprisingly, religion has also incorporated our more selfish, aggressive,
competitive, and xenophobic human proclivities.Modern secular societies with the lowest levels of
religious belief have achieved far more compassion and flourishing than religious ones.Secular
humanists understand that societal ethics and compassion are achieved solely through human action in
a fully natural world. We can rely only on ourselves and our fellow human beings. All we have is each
other, huddled together on this lifeboat of a little planet in this vast indifferent universe.We will need to
continue to work actively toward the collective goal of more caring societies in order to further
strengthen the progress of our species. the fully naturalist worldview of secular humanism empowers
us and liberates us from our irrational fears, and from our feelings of abandonment by the god we were
told would take care of us; it motivates us to live with a sense of interdependent humanistic purpose.
This deepens our feelings of value, engagement, and relatedness.
Far from being ni hilistic,
People can a nd do care, eve n if universe doesn’t.
Embracing the alt leads to widespread altruism and solves for every impact by ending
the moral hypocrisy of religion
Turner16 (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/children-with-a-religious-upbringing-show-lessaltruism/)
.In principle, religion’s emphasis on morality can smooth wrinkles out of the social fabric. Along those
lines, believers are often instructed to act selflessly towards others. Islam places an emphasis on charity
and alms-giving, Christianity on loving your neighbor as yourself. Taoist ethics, derived from the qualities
of water, include the principle of selflessness. However, new research conducted in six countries around
the world suggests that a religious upbringing may actually yield children who are less altruistic.
children ages five to twelve took part in the study, from the United States, Canada, Jordan, Turkey,
South Africa, and China. By finding that religious-raised children are less altruistic in the laboratory, the
study alerts us to the possibility that religion might not have the wholesome effects we expect on the
development of morality. The social practice of religion can complicate the precepts of a religious text.
In an experiment snappily named the dictator game, a child designated “dictator” is tested for
altruistic tendencies. This dictator child is conferred with great power to decide whether to share
stickers with others. Researchers present the child with thirty stickers and instruct her to take ten
favorite stickers. The researchers carefully mention that there isn’t time to play this game with
everyone, setting up the main part of the experiment: to share or not to share. The child is given two
envelopes and asked whether she will share stickers with other children at the school who cannot play
the game. While the researcher faces the wall, the child can slip some stickers into the donation
envelope and some into the other envelope to keep.As the researchers expected, younger children were
less likely to share stickers than older children. Also consistent with previous studies, children from a
wealthier socioeconomic status shared more. More surprising was the tendency of children from
religious households to share less than those from nonreligious backgrounds. When separated and
analyzed by specific religion, the finding remained: children from both Christian and Muslim families on
average shared less than nonreligious children.
the tendency for religious children to
share less than similar-aged children became more pronounced with age. The authors think this could
be due to cumulative effects of time spent growing up in a religious household.
Over 1000
But in order to
interpret these fi nding s, we have to first look at how to test morality.
(Other religious designations were not re presente d in large enough numbers for se parate statistical compari son. )
Older kids from all ba ckgrounds s hared more than younger ones, but
While the large numbers of s ubje cts strengthe ns the findi ng of a real di ffer ence between the groups of chil dren, the a ctual dis parity in typical sharing was about one sticker. We need to know if the gap i n sticker shari ng is mea ningful in the real world.
. In adults, religiousness has been linked with greater charitable giving
and generosity, but a common problem of these studies is relying on surveys. While surveys are useful
for collecting information en masse, people may report giving more to charity because they believe in
contributing, even if they didn’t live up to their own expectations.
There are difficulties in devising e xperime nts to look for religion’ s effect on selfl essness. Some would argue that childhood is the be st age to study effe cts of a religious upbringing, w hen e ducati on’s e ffects may be more immediate a nd powerful. Others w ould argue that only as adults do we begin to us e a mature moral compa ss, and this stage is more important
We all know our memories are less tha n per fect, a nd it’s possible that people w ho are regularly en courage d to per for m charitable a cts may overe stimate their contributions on a s urvey. Clearly, the best way to study the is sue is using e xperi ments in w hich people actually share ite ms (like sti cker s) or by looking at recor ds of giving.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy took the second approach by aggregating IRS charitable deductions to
compare ZIP codes in terms of factors like religious identification, though the analysis was restricted to
tax deductions and doesn’t tell us about individuals. By integrating statistics on religious affiliations of
each area, the Chronicle’s study found that religious areas gave more to charity. What the data doesn’t
tell is whether the extra contributions go to support local religious congregations and religious
organizations. In the end, what do we call generosity to one’s own group?The Oxford English Dictionary
defines altruism as “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others,”
but categorizing a behavior as e ntirely selfless has troubled s cholars for years. Book s like The Selfis h Gene, publishe d in 1976 , brought to the public the i dea that what see ms like altruism may actually be sel fish on a geneti c
level if the act of kindne ss is dire cted to cl osely-relate d individuals. A closely related individual bears si milar genetic material, so hel ping relatives could be construed a s “sel fish” be havior if you i magine a gene helping its likene ss house d in another body. Alternatively, expe cting help in t he fut ure could le ad a self -interested i ndividual to “per for m” altruis m. He might gain the estee m of the community by helping others publicly , while consci ously or uncons ciously waiting for the good deeds to pay off.
However, this strict termi nology is not what we intend in everyday spee ch. Broadly, altruis m is generosity. In the ca se of t he curre nt study, the re searchers corralled altruism i nto donation of sti ckers to anonymous s chool mates. Per haps a child refuse s to donate stickers into a n envelope so that he can t ake them home a nd share with his sibling s or frie nds rather tha n a stranger. Doe s that qualify more as nep otism or ge nerosity? If the childre n fr om religious ba ckgrounds als o happene d to have more sibling s, then the re sults might actually reveal a link between si blings and stickers. Correlation is a trick y indicator of causation, as we all know
. Aside from this altruism test, are there other
indicators of morality?
Religion often instructs believers in [its] moral justice. To test children’s reactions to interpersonal
conflict, the researchers showed cartoons of people pushing or bumping one another. Researchers
determined that Muslim children rated the pushing or bumping as more “mean”
Christian children
rated the videos as more mean than nonreligious children as well.
Muslim children tended to
assign higher punishments than Christian and nonreligious children.
forgiveness and
than Christia n childre n did, a nd in tur n
When asked to assign punishments for the pus hing or bumping,
Interpretation of these e xperime nts is also di ffi cult. The findings coul d conceivably sig nal a stronger se nse of justi ce in Musli m-raised childre n, and greater se nsitivity to the victim for M uslim a nd Christian raised kids . Or
punishing others
as the paper suggests, the children from nonreligious homes might be less harsh in
2NC stuff
Middle East link(SA,UAE, Houthi,Iran,Russia,Europe)
The war in Yemen is a religious war
Yemen’s religious divides largely parallel the country’s geography. Zaidi Shi’ism predominates in the
northern highlands, alongside a small Isma’ili minority; Sunnis form the majority elsewhere. Historically,
sectarianism has been minimal. Intermarriage between Sunnis and Zaidis is considered routine and, until
recently, Yemenis of different sects prayed at the same mosques without a second thought. But the rise
of political Islam – like the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islah Party and Zaidi Houthis – has raised
tensions. So too has the spread of Sunni ideology –particularly Salafism – in traditionally Zaidi areas. This
was a key contributing factor in the emergence of the Houthi movement.
Colonizer link/Christianity link
Christian ethics creates social divisions. the forbidden Other, the impure bodies, the
taboo communities are all marked as a threat to purity of the sacred who colonize
them for their own good.
Winters 2017 (Joseph, Winters is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Duke
University. “RAC(E)ING FROM DEATH: Baldwin, Bataille, and the Anguish of the
(Racialized) Human.” Journal of Religious Ethics. Volume 2, issue 45, page 380-405,
accessed 7/11/17)
In the same manner that Baldwin pulls ethical resources from black aesthetic and religious traditions, Bataille reinterprets
the writings and
discourses of medieval Christian mystics. As Amy Hollywood has so powerfully demonstrated, Bataille is one of many twentiethcentury French thinkers attracted to mystical experience as a site where certain kinds of constraints and divisions
(self/other, human/god) are both illuminated and transgressed (Hollywood 2002). Drawing from, and reimagining the tradition of mysticism, Bataille suggests that religion tells us something about the broader human condition; or to put it differently, that the general human condition is itself a religious conundrum. For Bataille, reli- gion indicates our
“search for lost intimacy” (Bataille 2006, 57; Bataille 1991, 57), a quest to be at home in the world, a persistent desire to
“return” to some undifferentiated state. But for Bataille, this quest is both emboldened and
hindered by our investment in being coherent selves, or what Bataille calls a “complete
self-consciousness,” that views itself and the world with clarity (Bataille 2006, 57). Our
investment in this kind of self keeps us alienated from others without extinguishing the desire
for home and intimacy; therefore, this quest often plays itself out by subordinating experiences,
encounters, and others to the projects, aims, and fantasies of the self or community. For Bataille, authentic religious intimacy—which can range from pre-modern sacrifice to mysticism and erotic experience—is ec-static, briefly taking the
individual outside of herself, and rendering her vulnerable to the murky, opaque quality
of life’s flows and rhythms. Being at home is ironically a feeling of being uprooted and unsettled. As an interruption into the self’s projects
and schemes, religious intimacy is marked by a range of affects—anguish and joy, pleasure
and pain. This resembles Baldwin’s understanding of the blues and spirituals as
expressions of an anguish-filled joy. Even though Bataille is influenced by certain elements of the Chris- tian tradition—negative
theology, mysticism, the wounded, torn nature of Christ’s flesh, the agony of God on the cross—he refuses the logic of redemption . He
affirms the Passion, the suffering and death of Christ, without the promise of victory and
restoration signified by Easter Sun- day. For Bataille, the logic of redemption, which places God’s
agony and suffering into a compensatory telos, entices us to associate the sacred with
wholeness, the divine with purity, and transcendence with ultimate- ly rising above earthly
contingency. He writes, for instance, “For the Christian apparently, sacred things are necessarily pure and impurity is profane” (Bataille 1986, 223). Here
we can see another convergence with Baldwin as Bataille suggests that the imaginary distinction between the pure and
impure, and the taboos that regulate the separation, can be disastrous for bodies and
communities that are marked as impure, as a threat to the purity of the sacred. At the same
time, Bataille claims that “the fear and trembling . . . [associated with] things sacred . . . are always bound up with horror inspired by a forbidden object” (Bataille
There is always something other and foreign about the sacred, even as we try to
domesticate and tame the discomfiting qualities of sacred objects and attribute these
qualities to the realm of the profane and obscene. Whereas the sacred is typically imagined as that
which needs to be protected from obscenity and degradation, Bataille suggests that religious experience
happens when taboos get transgressed, when the self crosses its limit, or when the
imagined border between protected self and forbidden Other is shattered. The sacred is a site of
impurity and ambivalence. Or as he puts it, religious experience involves a com- munication with the Other
marked by “laughter, dizziness, nausea, loss of self to the point of death ” (Bataille 2014, 42).
1986, 223).
The aff’s political theology is the legacy of American Calvinism – a mixture of religion
and politics constituted by a desire for dominance in the world, our belief in our
superior ability to manage the world, attempts to overcome past grievances by new
purifying actions, a belief in the idea that we can be redeemed by sacred objects like
the plan
Wellman 15. James, Professor and Chair of Comparative Religion at the Jackson School of International
Studies, University of Washington. “Empire of Sacrifice: Violence and the Sacred in American Culture.” In
Can We Survive Our Origins?: Readings in René Girard's Theory of Violence and the Sacred (Studies in
Violence, Mimesis, & Culture)
Continuing to explore and diversify Jon Pahl’s theme, I will argue that the seed of American preemption
(i.e., the myth of American preeminence, insofar as it rests on violence—“containing” it, but also
recycling it in the guise of preemptive aggression at home or abroad) lies in a form of religious sadism.
Girard, by virtue of the defi nition of desire given in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, argues that the driving
force of culture is, at its heart, “metaphysical desire.” He suggests that “mimetic desire,” whereby
humans imitate the desire of the other and then use this mediator-model as a motivating source, 82 Jon
Pahl and James Wellman are seeking to borrow from him godlike qualities and the power to exist in a
godlike mode. Of course, for Girard, this ferocious need always “ends in enslavement, failure, and
shame” (1961, 176). Since these desires are always just beyond reach, so that desire is thwarted and
rivalries form, which in the end produce confl ict and violence, and eventuate in scapegoating. Blood is
shed, and through these confl icts, the archaic process of sacralizing the victim produces a new—if
fragile and provisional—glow of unity and potential prosperity. The cycle of violence contained by
sacrifice continues as a natural fl ow of cultural construction. We might protest against this bloody
dynamic of history, but as Walter Benjamin remarked, “Th ere is no document of civilization which is not
at the same time a document of barbarism” (Benjamin 1968, 256). Indeed, Girard argues that the
sacralizing process is precisely the way in which this barbarism is transmogrifi ed into myth, so that
the community’s “founding murder” becomes the community’s project of salvation. In America, the
ongoing violence (against Native peoples, slaves, women, and minorities of every kind) has been
authorized by a specific type of Christianity—an American Calvinism, which is enrolled and mobilized
in the process of sacralizing and rationalizing forms of preemptive war, thus producing a myth that
vindicates American forms of exceptionalist nationalism, and justifi es steps taken in pursuit of world
domination. This particular species of American Calvinism, I will argue, acts as a seedbed for this desire
for dominance, arising out of a metaphysical craving to mimic the mediator and become the divine
sadist, whose dominance American leaders both seek and suffer from. Girard writes in Deceit, Desire,
and the Novel: We know that all victims of metaphysical desire seek to appropriate their mediator’s
being by imitating him. The sadist wants to persuade himself that he has already attained his goal; he
tries to take the place of the mediator and see the world through his eyes, in the hope that the play
will gradually turn into reality. The sadist’s violence is yet another effort to attain divinity. (1961, 185)
The empirical evidence for this peculiar American DNA is everywhere in plain sight. The Calvinist creed
of the obligation of rebelling against unjust Violence and the Sacred in American Culture 83 tyranny is
well documented in David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989).
Fischer paints a picture of the four primary folk cultures making up American culture. Fischer never
describes them as religious cultures per se, but simply as “cultures”; and yet in each case, the heart of
this civilization is the sacralization of revenge, and a desire to overcome past grievances—using the
ferocity of the Calvinist God as a motive force for moving forward and dominating one’s rivals. Thus
each culture in its own way uses theories of Reformed Calvinism to fi ght against forms of real or felt
tyranny: the Puritans resisting the British; the Anglicans holding down the Catholics; the Quakers
struggling against almost everyone; and the Scots-Irish against anyone not ScotsIrish. Th is latter group
put it best: “The best enemy is a dead enemy.” Each group carries a strain of Calvinist theology that
promoted the fi ght against tyranny and yearned, in one form or another, to dominate in the name of
this God. And this Calvinist God (the one orthodox Calvinists worship and believe in) is indeed a
ferocious and even sadistic god. Conservative evangelical theologians themselves—i.e., those defending
strict Puritanevangelical theologies—admit the vengeful nature of this god. In fact, if they argue against
it, they do so precisely because this theology “impugns the good character of God” (Olson 2011, 179).
Roger Olson, speaking directly to the recent rise of an American-based younger generation of New
Calvinists, describes their view of God as a picture in which God “ordains, designs, controls, and renders
certain the most egregious evil acts such as the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a small child and
genocidal slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Rwanda” (178). Olson warns against this image of God,
but to no avail. For these “young, restless and Reformed Calvinists glory in a God who takes no
prisoners—quite literally—proudly proclaiming a God that . . . only saves some when he could save all”
(179). Many would blanch at these images, but the core texts of Calvinism, at least in the most extreme
and unrevised versions, depict a sadistic—and impenitently Old Testament—God who arbitrarily
commits acts of global genocide, whether in time or beyond time. As Girard argues: “Divine punishment
is demystified by the gospels; its only place nowadays is in mythic imagination, to which modern
scepticism remains strangely attached” (1987 [2003]: 195). We are curiously faithful in part because
our primary metaphysical desire, mimetically enhanced, is to 84 Jon Pahl and James Wellman sacralize
our violence as a way of maintaining our dominance and as a way of rationalizing the motive force of
American exceptionalism. But more than that, the god desired is a god who is arbitrarily violent and
who needs no justifi cation for his violence. This god makes commands, chooses whom he wants,
destroys whom he wants, using whatever means are necessary to get what he wants. Seen through this
lens, a domestic or foreign policy that imitates these kinds of arbitrary divine rigor makes absolute
sense. Thus, forms of violence and torture are normal and to be expected from such culturegenerated
forms of mimesis: this is the way of the god. Early American fi gures in this form of Calvinism give us
quintessential and spectacular exemplars of the movement. Th e eighteenth-century Reformed thinker
and Calvinist Jonathan Edwards, the revivalist minister who spearheaded the First Great Awakening,
who is oft en lauded as the greatest American theologian, and who is a hero to many of the New
Calvinists, oft en chastised his fellow ministers that it was their duty to scare the hell out of their
people—literally.10 Edwards famously did this by preaching “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”
which literally imagined a god who would dangle the sinner over the fi res of hell, waiting for repentance
from the sinner. In Edwards’s classic Religious Affections, he argued that even the devil can mimic the
aff ections of conversion, further putting his congregation in a state of terror about that state of their
salvation (Edwards 2009). How does one know if one is saved? In fact, Edwards, as well as his fellow
ministers, terrifi ed their congregations to such an extent that suicides were reported across the
Northeast region—a man in Edwards’s own congregation took his life. Not long aft erwards, the revival
plateaued, at least in part because congregations had had enough of the manipulation. Edwards was
shortly thereaft er dismissed from his pulpit. We see in this example a form of terror, a religious sadism,
a way of coercing consent by dangling the possibility of arbitrary violence from which one has only one
outlet—to give in to the same god who is simultaneously the source of the threat. In his chapter
“Masochism and Sadism,” Girard, quite intentionally, puts masochism as the fi rst term of the two. He
argues that the sadist “persecutes because he feels he is being persecuted.” Th e masochist becomes a
sadist because he realizes “the key to the enchanted garden appears to be in the hands of the
tormentor” (1961, 185). Th e tormentor in this case is “Yahweh, the God of revenge,” who condemns
whom he wishes and saves Violence and the Sacred in American Culture 85 whomever he wants. This
god legitimates an arbitrary form of terror, which the sadist seeks to mirror and model, in part to
overcome his own fear and in part to express his sense of revenge. Th us, Girard makes clear that these
characters are neither essentially good nor evil, but damaged persons, victims of their own metaphysical
desire. He quotes Dostoevsky: “Do not hate the atheists, the professors of evil, the materialists, or even
the wicked among them, for many are good, especially in our time” (190). Moral illumination means
understanding the terror that haunts sadists, even in the midst of their persecution. We are, then,
identifying Calvinism as the bulwark religion of America: a sadistic and sacrifi cial religion where one’s
success is a marker of blessing and a providential promise of sacred acceptance. American
exceptionalism is legitimated through sacral and sacrifi cial forms, and its arbitrary nature is hidden
behind paeans raised to the glory of its promise, and to all who bow to its power. Disciplined moral
action demands that one have victory; one must not be a victim, because this is the mark of defeat,
both morally and in respect of one’s salvation. Grace is limited in this system and thus it must be
sought, even though one can’t earn it, and yet one’s success is a sign of it, as are the sobriety and iron
will of those who follow the creed. The warp and woof of masochism and sadism keeps many in its
grip—another kind of Weberian “iron cage.” Preemptive aggression is thus a natural extension of this
creed—when in doubt, act fi rst, ask for forgiveness later. Scots-Irish culture simply takes the victor’s
right to an extreme, in an ethic of radical freedom whereby contests over scarce resources create an
ecstasy of battle—as illustrated by the violence in American football and in military academies, and by
the anger of Second Amendment rights groups. Scott Appleby’s “ecstatic asceticism” in which one’s joy
is founded in solidarity with the power of the state, triumphant over all enemies, is a further extension
of this sacrificial ethic (Appleby 1999). To sacrifice one’s life for this power sacralizes not only one’s own
life but the life of the nation. Violence becomes a sacrament by which one wins glory for oneself, one’s
family, and the state.11 This ecstatic asceticism reigns supreme in the ethic of the American military—
deeply entrenched in the South and Midwest—which carries on the legacy of their Scots-Irish heritage.
The Navy Seal 6 team that was able to find and “take out” Osama bin Laden code-named their target
“Geronimo”—thus 86 Jon Pahl and James Wellman rehearsing an early episode of American Indian
scapegoating involved in America’s “winning” of the West. Following this murder (in its own way, a
founding murder), scenes were shown of various American military academies; cameras panned the
literal dance of ecstasy, in which soldiers chanted together, “u.s.a., u.s.a., u.s.a.” Th e fervency of this
sacramental ritual was as powerful as any I have ever witnessed. One might, once again, say: this is a
kind of inverted gospel—in which the one who comes in peace and in the name of the Lord only
arrives in and through the act of murder. And, of course, the model is not the Jesus of the Sermon on
the Mount or of the Cross, but rather the apocalyptic Christ from the Book of Revelation, who comes
on a white horse and tramples his enemies underfoot. This god is then interpreted as a Sovereign War
God, a sadistic Master—and, of course, one who can and should be imitated in the pulpit, whether in
church or in the White House. And, to be sure, there are many masochists who love this god, who love
this kind of leadership, and who take pleasure in the demanding nature of this gospel. Again, we see an
inverted gospel of peace—a powerful culture-construct (and cultureconstructing) god who motivates
a righteous and unrelenting violence, as effi cient as it is arbitrary.
Arms control furthers a form of liberal governmentality premised around humanitarian aims
– those are founded on colonialism and the determination of which nations are worthy of
arms and which are inherently violent
Cooper 18 (Neil Cooper is a Professor of International Relations and Security Studies & Head of Peace
Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford. “Race, Sovereignty, and Free
Trade: Arms Trade Regulation and Humanitarian Arms Control in the Age of Empire”
https://academic.oup.com/jogss/article-abstract/3/4/444/5076385, VR)
An alternative pessimistic approach takes more seriously the constructivist claim that norms are not just regulative but can also be constitutive
of identity and interests. It therefore shares some similarity with optimists such as Garcia but reaches different conclusions. In particular, this
set of scholars suggests that
what may look like a clash between humanitarian principle and base self-interest
actually reflects the influence of competing foundational and constitutive norms such as sovereignty,
self-defense, and free trade (Legro 1997, 33; Capie 2008; Grilot 2011, 540; Avant 2013, 741). This has resonance with a broader
literature discussing the tensions between market liberal norms and cosmopolitan liberal norms (Orbie and Khorana 2015). Regulation,
therefore, reflects the outcome of clashes (or indeed overlaps) between so-called “good” (e.g., humanitarian)
norms and “bad” (e.g., free trade, sovereignty, military necessity) norms, or, more precisely, emerges as the
outcome of particular norm hierarchies or systems of norms (Wunderlich 2013, 23). I will argue that an analysis of policy in the late nineteenth
century not only provides support for this perspective but also illustrates the historically contingent
nature of permissive and
proscriptive arms trade norms—in this case, norms grafted onto foundational constitutive norms of antislavery, free trade, sovereignty, colonialism, and the standard of civilization. The third strand of pessimistic
literature has drawn on thicker understandings of critical or postcolonial theory to critique contemporary practices of arms control. Where the
optimists focus on and celebrate the success of discrete campaigning initiatives—the first Matryoshka doll of arms trade governance—critical
pessimists also aim to contextualize such initiatives within the broader fields and logics associated with
the inter-related governance of arms, security, economy, and people. In this context, action on
landmines or cluster munitions has been depicted as part of a “devil’s bargain” (Krause 2011, 23) in which the
protection of some people from some weapons is achieved at the expense of legitimizing other arms,
forms of violence, and ways of war—in particular, liberal militarism (Stavrianakis 2016). Even more fundamentally,
some critical pessimists, drawing on Foucault (2003, 2007), have argued that initiatives on landmines or small arms can only
be properly understood as part of what has been labeled as “arms control as governmentality” (Krause
2011; also see Mutimer 2011). It is not my intention here to provide a full exploration of the concept of governmentality or its application to
colonialism (on the latter see Scott 1995; Larner and Walters 2002) but rather to use it to highlight particular themes relevant both to the study
of arms trade regulation in the late nineteenth century and current debates about norms, HAC, and arms trade regulation. The first theme is
reflected in the Sending
and Neuman (2006; also see Neuman and Sending 2007) who emphasize a reading of
governmentality as concerned with the changing practices and rationality (or mentality) of governing
and how these reflect and produce particular relations of power. For them, adding in a governmentality
perspective to the examination of both “good” and “bad” norms provides for a more complete analysis
by situating them in the broader relations of power, rationalities, and practices that produce certain
forms of behavior as appropriate and certain actors and identities as superior (Neuman and Sending 2007). For
example, rather than viewing the landmines campaign as illustrative of a civil society realm empowered at
the expense of recalcitrant states, they suggest it is better understood as indicative of a governmental
rationality in which political power operates through NGOs and one in which they are not so much
opponents of power as agents or even products of power (Sending and Neumann 2006; also see Lipschutz 2005, 247). A
second theme concerns the way in which governmentality is understood when applied to the field of international relations. In some
perspectives, governmentality requires a concern with elaborating the techniques aimed at regulating the behavior of states and governments,
particularly in a context of unequal power relations between North and South (Joseph 2009). For example, Mathur (2016) has
critiqued
the “colonialist governmentality” of arms control, evident in the practices of technology denial, forcible
disarmament, and counter-proliferation employed by the West and laundered through a new standard
of civilization mantra. Alternatively, Krause has placed more emphasis on Foucault’s distinction between sovereign and
governmental power. The former is concerned with securing a given territory through the exercise of direct power, whilst the latter is
exercised through the wide-ranging regulation of economy and society and particularly associated with
liberal techniques of government (Krause 2011, 21). Here, the distinction between the two does not imply a rejection or displacement of
sovereignty (Joseph 2009, 415) but its recasting within the concern for population (Sending and Neumann 2006, 657). Equally, there always
remains the possibility that governmental power can give way to the exercise of more direct forms of sovereign and disciplinary power (Joseph
2009, 426). Thirdly, when
applied to the field of arms control, this implies a distinction between a sovereign conception of arms
control and arms control as governmentality. The former is focused not only on securing the states’ monopoly of force but also on
reducing the risk of war between states, and its practices are shaped by formal adherence to notions of sovereign equality (Krause 2011). The
latter is
focused on managing populations, represents a technology of social control, and is concerned
with “who could legitimately use what kinds of violence against which people or groups ... under what
circumstances” (ibid., 31). Both types of arms control can be identified in the practices of earlier eras, but sovereign approaches to arms
control were more characteristic of the Cold War era. In the post-Cold War era, arms control as governmentality is characterized by
initiatives such as the ban on landmines and postconflict disarmament demobilization programs (ibid.). At
one level, therefore, this paper functions as a work of history that aims to delineate the norms, logics, and practices that constituted a
particular period of the operation of arms control as governmentality. As already discussed, however, the analysis of the governmentality of
arms trade regulation in the late nineteenth century also provides
a basis for critiquing the ahistorical and uncritical
assumptions of the norm optimist literature on arms trade regulation.
; altruistic society.
No perm
Reform is impossible and only leads to more violence such as colinization OR Religion
is a tool of the colonizer to demolish the colonized
Hall01(Religion and Violence: Social Processes in Comparative Perspective)
Even the violence of modern movements toward the nation-state was interwoven with religious thread,
whether in struggles of reformation and counter-reformation (England), or secularization that would
eliminate religion (France, the Soviet Union). Religion also could facilitate colonizing expansion,
frequently with violent consequences for the colonized. True, in core regions of the world economy,
religiously framed conflicts became displaced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by social
struggles that played out along class lines and, in the latter part of the twentieth, between superpowers.
However, these conflicts themselves often had “religious” overtones. Historian E. P. Thompson showed
how religion influenced nineteenth-century English class formation. And the central struggle of the postWorld War II era -- the Cold War -- was frequently portrayed by its Western protagonists as a struggle of
Christendom against godless Communism. From formative phases to high modernity, metanarratives of
universalistic modernization, class struggle, and the geopolitics of the Cold War obscured these
connections between religion and violence. But with the end of the Cold War and the surge of capitalist
globalization in the 1990s, status conflicts supplanted class conflicts, and the potential of religion as a
central organizing basis of violence became increasingly obvious, to both protagonists and scholars, and
now, to the general public.
. The September 11 terrorist attacks; continuing struggles
between Jews and Palestinians; the Troubles in Northern Ireland; the nationalist conflicts in the Balkans;
ethnic wars in Africa; simmering conflict between Pakistan and India; terrorist actions by extreme right
Christian fundamentalists in the U.S.; the subway poison gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyô sect in Tokyo;
the deaths of hundreds in a burning church of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten
Commandments of God in Uganda; the persecution of Falun Gong in China -- this is but a cursory list of
some of the most dramatic violent events involving religion from the modern era’s
In short, religion a nd violen ce are har dly strangers. Yet neither are e pisodes in whi ch they become conne cted all of a pi ece
at the turn
second t o its third millen nium.
Perm unnecessary; econ deficit occurs with no benefit if aff passes
World of the alt
Human beings living for one another in absence of religion. This means that all people will do for one
another without adherence to their tribe or selfish tendencies.
Latin link
The influence of religion in Western politics makes the values that the 1AC is based off
of, liberal values like freedom and democracy, ambiguous and meaningless
Groys 09 (Boris Efimovich Groys is an art critic, media theorist, and philosopher. He is currently a
Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and Senior Research
Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany., “Religion in the Age of
Digital Reproduction” https://www.e-flux.com/journal/04/68569/religion-in-the-age-of-digitalreproduction/, VR)
The general consensus of the contemporary mass media is that the return of religion has emerged as the most
important factor in global politics and culture today. Now, those who currently refer to a revival of religion clearly do
not mean anything like the second coming of the Messiah or the appearance of new gods and prophets. What they are
referring to rather is that religious attitudes have moved from culturally marginal zones into the mainstream.
If this is the case, and statistics would seem to corroborate the claim, the question then arises as to what may have caused
religious attitudes to become mainstream. The survival and dissemination of opinions on the global information market is
regulated by a law formulated by Charles Darwin, namely, the survival of the fittest. Those opinions that best adapt to the
conditions under which they are disseminated will, as a matter of course, have the best odds of becoming mainstream. Today’s
opinions market, however, is clearly characterized by reproduction, repetition, and tautology. The widespread understanding of
contemporary civilization holds that, over the course of the modern age, theology has been replaced by philosophy, an
orientation toward the past by an orientation toward the future, traditional teachings by subjective evidence, fidelity to origins
by innovation, and so on. In fact, however, the modern age has not been the age in which the sacred has been
abolished but rather the age of its dissemination in profane space, its democratization, its globalization.
Ritual, repetition, and reproduction were hitherto matters of religion; they were practiced in isolated, sacred places. In the
modern age, ritual, repetition, and reproduction have become the fate of the entire world, of the entire
culture. Everything reproduces itself—capital, commodities, technology, and art. Ultimately, even
progress is reproductive; it consists in a constantly repeated destruction of everything that cannot be
reproduced quickly and effectively. Under such conditions it should come as no surprise that religion—in
all its various manifestations—has become increasingly successful. Religion operates through media channels
that are, from the outset, products of the extension and secularization of traditional religious practices. Let us now turn to an
investigation of some of the aspects of this extension and secularization that seem especially relevant to the survival and
success of religions in the contemporary world. 1. The Internet and the Freedom of Faith The regime under which
religion—any religion—functions in contemporary Western secular democratic societies is freedom of
faith. Freedom of faith means that all are free to believe what they choose to believe and that all are free to
organize their personal and private lives according to these beliefs. At the same time, however, this also
means that the imposition of one’s own faith on others in public life and state institutions, including
atheism as a form of faith, cannot be tolerated. The significance of the Enlightenment was not so much that it resulted in
the complete disappearance of religion, but that religion became a matter of private choice, which then resulted in the
withdrawal of religion into the private sphere. In the contemporary world, religion has become a matter of private taste,
functioning in much the same way as do art and design. Naturally, this is not to suggest that religion is precluded in public
discussion. However, the place of religion in relation to public discussion is reminiscent of the place of art as outlined by
Immanuel Kant in The Critique of Judgment: religion may be publicly discussed, but such a discussion cannot result in any
conclusion that would become obligatory, either for the participants of this discussion or for society as a whole. Commitment to
one religious faith or another is a matter of sovereign, private choice that cannot be dictated by any public authority—including
any democratically legitimized authority. Even more importantly, such a decision—as in the case of art—need not be publicly
argued and legitimized, but rather publicly accepted without further discussion. The legitimacy of personal faith is
based not on the degree of its power of persuasion, but on the sovereign right of the individual to be
committed to this faith. In this respect, freedom of faith is fundamentally different from, let’s say, the kind
of freedom represented in scientific research. In the context of a scientific discussion every opinion can be argued for or
against, but each opinion must also be substantiated by certain facts and verified according to fixed rules. Every participant in
such a discussion is undoubtedly free—at least theoretically—to formulate his or her position and to argue in its favor.
However, one may not insist on a scientific opinion that is not subject to justification, and that would contravene all proof and
evidence to the contrary, without introducing any argument that would otherwise make one’s position plausible and persuasive
to others. Such unyielding resistance to the obvious, such blindness toward the facts, to logic and common sense, would be
regarded as bordering on the insane. If someone were to refer to his sovereign right to insist on a certain
scientific opinion without being able to legitimize this insistence by rational argument, he or she would
be excluded from the scientific community. What this means is that our contemporary, Western notion of
freedom is deeply ambiguous. In fact, discourse on freedom always pivots on two radical types of
freedom: an unconditional freedom of faith, that sovereign freedom permitting us to make personal
choices beyond all public explanation and justification, and the conditional, institutional freedom of
scientific opinion, which depends on the subject’s ability to justify and legitimize this opinion in
accordance with pre-determined, publicly established rules. Thus, it is easy to show that our notion of
democratic, free society is also ambiguous. The contemporary notion of political freedom can be interpreted in part as
sovereign, in part as institutional: in part as the sovereign freedom of political commitment, and in part as the institutional
freedom of political discussion. But whatever may be said about the contemporary global political field in general, one thing
remains certain: this field is becoming increasingly influenced, or even defined, by the Internet as the primary medium of global
communication. And the Internet favors private, unconditional, sovereign freedom over scientific, conditional, institutional
freedom.