2AC
PM
AT: Native Gaming
Non-unique and turn – casinos were hit hard by the recession and haven’t recovered –
online gambling is key to boost revenues
Larson 14 (Steve, Legal poker laws and news reporters, USA Gambling News, “Land-Based Casinos See Declining Revenues in Most Areas
of the United States”, http://www.legaluspokersites.com/news/land-based-casinos-see-declining-revenues-in-most-areas-of-the-unitedstates/3365)
Harrah’s Casino in Tunica, Mississippi will be closing on June 2, costing the local economy 1,300 jobs. The casino’s fate was used as an example
of the overall decline of the American gambling industry in a recent Bloomberg Business article. The Tunica casino complex features everything
a resort would want, says Bloomberg, except customers. From an all-time high of $1.2 billion in revenues in 2006, Harrah’s Casino saw revenue
fall to $738 million in 2013. That’s why Caesars Entertainment plans to close the resort on June 2. The move will put 1,300 Mississippians out of
work. Saturated Land-Based Gaming Market John Payne,
president of the central markets division at Caesars, was
asked recently about the closing. His answer was eye-opening. Payne said “There’s too much supply in the system.”
The gambling industry is like any other market: it follows the laws of supply and demand. In the 1990′s and early 2000′s,
big land-based casinos were being built as quickly as the governmental systems could approve them.
Resorts like Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods in Connecticut were making money hand-over-fist, while Tunica was quickly becoming America’s third
most famous gambling hub. American Casino Cities in Trouble Now,
Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Tunica all have their
problems. The global recession hurt the brick-and-mortar gaming interests in America worst of all.
Atlantic City revenues are down from $4.9 billion in 2007 to $2.8 billion in 2013. Mississippi’s numbers are down from
$2.9 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2013. The Las Vegas Strip casinos weathered the financial storm the best, but
their revenues shrank from $6.8 billion to $6.5 billion from 2007 to 2013–in a time their executives expected to see major growth. This
is bad news for most of the companies in the US gaming industry, because they leveraged growth with big debts. Caesars Entertainment alone
owes over $22 billion in debt. When
the financial numbers cannot hit what the projections were–and miss it by
billions of dollars–businesses suddenly have trouble. Leveraged Debt Versus Declining Revenues The five-and-a-half
year economic recession is the major reason casinos are having so much trouble, though. While a profit-making
business can weather an economic downturn of one or two years, it becomes difficult for any business to sustain itself when the troubles last
half of a decade. Joel Simkins, a Credit Suisse analyst, says,
“Gaming can skew a little more blue-collar and middleincome, and if you look at the national economic statistics, that’s a subset that remains challenged. We need a much
more robust economic climate for some of these markets to do better.” An executive from Penn National Gaming
put it a pithier way: “The low end has been wiped out.” The executive was talking about the over-50 women who used to lose $50 to $75 on
the slot machines on their trips. These ladies’ gambling budget is severely curtailed, if not gone, these days. Without
the low stakes
gamblers providing a constant, dependable stream of revenue, casinos are trying to appeal to the high
rollers more than ever. That is why Missouri is considering joining the list of states which allow “markers”, a type of casino credit for anyone
gambling over $10,000. Such credit is meant to attract high stakes gamblers, whose losses often can single-handedly affect the budgets of a
brick-and-mortar casino operation. More Competition Than Ever With such decisions being made and more states turning to gambling for extra
revenues, competition across the
USA is greater than ever. The slowed economy combines with a saturated
market to have caused these issues. Back in 1988, only Nevada and New Jersey allowed casino gambling. Now, 39 different U.S.
states have land-based casinos inside their borders. The inception of Native American casinos was bound to hurt the business in Las Vegas and
Atlantic City. These combined with state-licensed non-tribal gaming casinos to saturate the market. Then the race tracks started allowing
gaming machines, so the racinos got into the action. Then the multistate lotteries began taking some of the betting dollars. Then online
gambling came along. Foxwoods Casino was in the middle of a massive building phase when the recession of 2008 and 2009 hit. Now, the
world’s largest casino by floor space is now facing major financial troubles. Faced with competition in Massachusetts and Rhode Island,
Foxwoods is hoping to move into the Massachusetts market or else see 30% of their business go away. Online
Gambling Seen as the
Answer With the land-based gaming operations often in trouble, state lawmakers are starting to turn
towards online gambling as a solution. That is the states which allow licensed online gambling sites tie these licenses to their
native land-based gaming ventures. In tough times, the additional cash boost that an online casino and poker
room offers can make all the difference.
No link uniqueness and turn – offshore regulators trigger it now and legalized online
gaming would increase casino profits
Nebel 12 (Cory, UNLV William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, “The Internet Gaming Industry for Newbies”,
http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2474&context=thesesdissertations)
The unfair competition and threat to integrity arguments typically brought forth by land based casino
executives certainly hold true in the current environment of unregulated, illegal act of online gambling in the
U.S. However, a United States environment which offered legal and regulated internet gambling would
crumble both argumentative points. Brick and mortar locations would be able to run their own virtual
based gambling websites in addition to land based operations, providing for a new and previously untapp ed e - commerce revenue
stream. Additionally, codified internet gambling regulation and legalization would rid the industry of
unethically run internet companies and greatly decrease the possibility of another Full Tilt insufficient
funds debacle, eliminating the potential for a tainted gambling market image. The general consensus that
the availability of online gambling would serve as a substitute for land based casino gambling is a theory
which is unfounded and lacking any factual 13 supporting evidence. One study by Philander and Fiedler (2012)
sought to objectively examine the relationship between one form of online gambling, online poker, and the
corresponding effect on the offline gambling market. The results of the study revealed that, contrary to po pular belief,
online poker does not cannibalize the offline gaming market (Philander & Fiedler, 2012). Instead, it was
discovered that there exists a significant positive relationship between online and offline gaming and
that the markets are actually complementary to one another (Philander & Fielder, 2012). As a result, gaming
operators should actually be in support of the legalization and regulation of online poker, given the positive
relationship between internet poker and their own revenue s . Land bas ed casino executives should seek to team up and collaborate with
online poker operators to positively drive both revenue and profits, but instead they continue fighting tooth and nail against online poker’s
legalization and regulation
K
2AC Framework
We have to work through policy institutions – trade activism is useless unless we have
the expertise to oversee policy decisions
De Bievre 14 (Dirk, Prof at the University of Antwerp, “A Glass Quite Empty: Issue Groups’ Influence in the Global Trade Regime”,
Global Policy Volume 5, Issue 2, May 2014)
Furthermore, advanced industrialized countries with prominent intellectual-property-based multinationals
were remarkably successful at evacuating the issue from the WTO agenda, and shifting it to other international
forums such as the World Health Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization, where adding flexibility to the
TRIPs obligations would have no legal bite (De Bievre et al., 2013). Aided by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria
(heavily funded by the Gates Foundation), prices for some important medicines have gone down, yet the declared aim of disabling
[undercutting] the TRIPs treaty was not achieved. Western countries
assured us that the strictures of the TRIPs
Agreement remained untouched and started to impose higher standards, so-called TRIPs Plus obligations,
through their bilateral trade agreements with developing countries. The conclusion seems warranted that interest
groups defending diffuse interests face more daunting collective- action problems in order to continually monitor and weigh on policy
formulation and implementation than do interest groups defending concentrated interests. Indeed, rather
than witnessing the
prowess of social movements transforming global trade governance, collective action effects known on
the domestic level (D€ur and De Bievre, 2007) seem to play out even more strongly on a global scale, leading to
inclusion without influence.
From global mobilization to domestic parliamentary control of trade policy In this article, I have argued
that CSO influence on global trade policy is a glass quite empty rather than half full. This assessment was
made with the benchmark of whether these organizations have a lasting impact on policy
formulation and implementation, and has concluded that such tangible effects are marginal. The mobilization
straw fires that foster high visibility, but little lasting heat, because many
organizations are unable to maintain the mobilization of their members to monitor and weigh on the
day-to-day grind of policy making. Therefore, it seems that many analysts and observers have seen what they
wished to see, whereas a more sober view of CSO activism reveals a remarkable resilience of producerdriven politics and institutional stability in global trade policy . Should this be reason for resignation and
complacency, giving up the cause of global policy making and mustering widespread support for CSOs, especially
among the democratic members of the WTO? No, but the appropriate location for the close, day-to-day monitoring
and input from CSOs should be focused more squarely on domestic parliaments, so as to enhance the
potential of CSOs produces
democratic control of governments’ decisions in the WTO specialized committees and ministerial
conferences. Less
spectacular, but more effective, such a parliamentarization of trade politics would benefit from
the networks these CSOs have developed over the last decades. This would permit coordination among them to target
domestic parliamentarians that can and should develop far more expertise on trade policy and
provide genuine democratic legitimacy to the international commitments their governments enter into, or do not, in the
Directly engaging to reconfigure the state rather than critiquing it is better able to
create meaningful change
McCluskey 8 (Martha T., Professor of Law at SUNY Buffalo Law School, “How Queer Theory Makes Neoliberalism Sexy”,
WTO.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1154550)
In the end what
seems to be a choice to reject, subjective, deceptive “rights” claims in favor of more
careful, honest evaluation of competing policy preferences ends up being a choice to stifle a more candid debate
about competing subjective “rights”. Those who oppose new rights on account of their high “price” are simply using the term
“price” as a label to mystify the subjective decision to privilege other policies by fixing them as necessary, normal background rights. By
masking these other rights as part of a market “price,” law-and-economics creates a veneer of economic
objectivity and technical authority that obscures the underlying historical contingencies and contestable
moral and political judgments that ground these background rules. The queer critique of rights similarly
disparages certain policy choices as costly, dishonest, coercive state power even while it privileges and
normalizes other policy choices as part of a privatized background of naturalized power. By implying that some
safer or more exciting space free from regulatory effects awaits those who reject state support, queer
theory’s anti-statism joins rightwing free-market ideology in erasing the pervasive structures of legal
rights and state control that inevitably govern the family and market. Particularly in the current social
and political context, where neoliberalism exerts far more cultural, legal, and political power than queer
theory or other left, critiques disdain for liberal rights and regulation may do more to strengthen an
authoritarian state than to open up possibilities for more progressive alternatives. A critical approach
that instead aims directly and openly to reconfigure the state for feminist ends may have the advantage of
directly engaging rather than conceding the questions of what kind of state power, in whose interests,
we want to advance, in her analysis of feminist advocacy for rights to caretaking support, Mary Anne Case (2001) suggests that some
state-centered reforms could paradoxically be less costly and regulatory with respect to feminist concerns than
some reforms that seem more narrowly targeted. (Jase criticizes reforms aimed at giving parents greater rights in the
workplace, but not out of simple faith in an unregulated market or private family comprised of unconstrained individual choice. Instead, like
those who are generally critical of liberal rights, she explores the harmful incentive effects likely to flow from such rights and warns that these
effects could particularly impact women and others already subject to inequity in the workplace. She goes further, however, to explain how
some law reforms that are even more state-centered might avoid some of these costs. For example, Case notes expanded rights to public
recreation and public transportation would alleviate some of the burdens on women caring for children without setting up a zero-sum
competition between family-focused mothers and work-focused women, or between competing groups of workers. Fineman (2004) similarly
explains that her vision of caretaking rights requires expansive restructuring of both state and market to avoid shifting caretaking costs to
others who hear disproportionate shares of the costs of social production and reproduction. She links her proposal for caretaking rights to a
broad vision stronger workers’ rights and stronger human rights to economic resources sufficient to address basic human needs regardless of
caretaking responsibilities. Rather
than categorizing reform strategies as public or private, critical theory might
better achieve its goals by focusing directly on the different normative goals of queer and feminist
theory. But discussing those questions of substantive value leads to a second point of disagreement prominent in some queer and feminist
legal theory.
Must re-articulate systems rather than rejecting them – sustains new forms of political
organization – rejection allows re-articulation by non-progressive forces
Mouffe 9 (Chantal, Westminster political theory professor, “The Importance of Engaging the State”, http://m.friendfeedmedia.com/ef12653960910c6594243a9a98293bfa1e1702ff#page=94)
It is clear that, once we envisage social reality in terms of ‘hegemonic’ and ‘counter-hegemonic’
practices, radical politics is not about withdrawing completely from existing institutions. Rather, we have no other
choice but to engage with hegemonic practices, in order to challenge them. This is crucial; otherwise we will be faced with a chaotic
situation. Moreover, if we do not engage with and challenge the existing order, if we instead choose to simply escape the
state completely, we leave the door open for others to take control of systems of authority and regulation.
Indeed there are many historical (and not so historical) examples of this. When the Left shows little
interest, Right-wing and authoritarian groups are only too happy to take over the state. The strategy of exodus
could be seen as the reformulation of the idea of communism, as it was found in Marx. There are many points in common between the two perspectives. To be
sure, for Hardt and Negri it is no longer the proletariat, but the Multitude which is the privileged political subject. But in both cases the state is seen as a monolithic
apparatus of domination that cannot be transformed. It has to ‘wither away’ in order to leave room for a reconciled society beyond law, power and sovereignty. In
reality, as I’ve already noted, others are often perfectly willing to take control. If my approach – supporting new social movements and counterhegemonic practices
– has been called ‘post-Marxist’ by many, it is precisely because I have challenged the very possibility of such a reconciled society. To
acknowledge the
ever present possibility of antagonism to the existing order implies recognising that heterogeneity
cannot be eliminated. As far as politics is concerned, this means the need to envisage it in terms of a hegemonic struggle between conflicting
hegemonic projects attempting to incarnate the universal and to define the symbolic parameters of social life. A successful hegemony fixes the
meaning of institutions and social practices and defines the ‘common sense’ through which a given conception of reality
is established. However, such a result is always contingent, precarious and susceptible to being challenged by
counter-hegemonic interventions. Politics always takes place in a field criss-crossed by antagonisms. A properly political intervention is always
one that engages with a certain aspect of the existing hegemony. It can never be merely oppositional or conceived as desertion, because it aims to challenge the
existing order, so that it may reidentify and feel more comfortable with that order. Another
important aspect of a hegemonic politics
lies in establishing linkages between various demands (such as environmentalists, feminists, anti-racist
groups), so as to transform them into claims that will challenge the existing structure of power relations.
This is a further reason why critique involves engagement, rather than disengagement. It is clear that the different demands that exist in
our societies are often in conflict with each other. This is why they need to be articulated politically,
which obviously involves the creation of a collective will, a ‘we’. This, in turn, requires the determination of a ‘them’. This
obvious and simple point is missed by the various advocates of the Multitude. For they seem to believe that the Multitude possesses a natural unity which does not
need political articulation. Hardt and Negri see ‘the People’ as homogeneous and expressed in a unitary general will, rather than divided by different political
conflicts. Counter-hegemonic practices, by contrast, do not eliminate differences. Rather,
they are what could be called an ‘ensemble
of differences’, all coming together, only at a given moment, against a common adversary. Such as when different
groups from many backgrounds come together to protest against a war perpetuated by a state, or when environmentalists, feminists, anti-racists and others come
together to challenge dominant models of development and progress. In
these cases, the adversary cannot be defined in broad
general terms like ‘Empire’, or for that matter ‘Capitalism’. It is instead contingent upon the particular
circumstances in question – the specific states, international institutions or governmental practices
that are to be challenged. Put another way, the construction of political demands is dependent upon the
specific relations of power that need to be targeted and transformed, in order to create the conditions for a new hegemony.
This is clearly not an exodus from politics. It is not ‘critique as withdrawal’, but ‘critique as
engagement’. It is a ‘war of position’ that needs to be launched, often across a range of sites, involving
the coming together of a range of interests. This can only be done by establishing links between social
movements, political parties and trade unions, for example. The aim is to create a common bond and
collective will, engaging with a wide range of sites, and often institutions, with the aim of transforming
them. This, in my view, is how we should conceive the nature of radical politics.
2AC Impact Calc
This comes first because communities structurally dispossessed cannot effectively
sustain revolutionary challenges to systems of oppression.
Ling, New School International Affairs professor, 2001
(LHM, Post-Colonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire Between Asia and the West, google
books)
Without concrete action for change, postmodernism's `dissident voices' have remained bracketed,
disconnected, not really real. In maintaining `a critical distance' or `position offshore' from which to `see the possibility of change' (Shapiro, 1992:
49), the postmodern critic brushed off too conveniently the immediate cries of those who know they are
burning in the hells of exploitation, racism, sexism, starvation, civil war, and the like but who have few
means or strategies to deal with them. What hope do they have of overthrowing the shackles of
sovereignty without a program of action? After all, asked Mark Neufeld, `What is political without partisanship?' (Neufeld, 1994: 31). In not
answering these questions, postmodernists recycled, despite their avowals to the contrary, the same sovereign
outcome as (neo)realism: that is, discourse divorced from practice, analysis from policy, deconstruction
from reconstruction, particulars from universals, and critical theory from problem-solving. Dissident
international relations could not accommodate an interactive, articulating, self-generative Other. Its exclusive focus on the Western Self ensured, instead,
(neo)realism's sovereignty by relegating the Other to a familiar, subordinate identity: that is, as a mute, passive reflection of the West or utopian projection of the
West's dissatisfaction with itself. Critique
became romanticized into a totalizing affair - especially for those who
must bear the brunt of its repercussions. bell hooks asked, appropriately: `[s]hould we not be suspicious of postmodern critiques of the
"subject" when they surface at a historical moment when many subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time?' (hooks, 1990: 28) Without
this recognition, postmodernists ended up marginalizing, silencing, and exiling precisely those who are `the
greatest victims of the West's essentialist conceits (the excolonials and neocolonials, Blacks, women, and
so forth)' (Krishna, 1993: 405). Worse yet, added Roger Spegele, dissidence as offshore observation has `freed us from the
recognition that we have a moral obligation to do anything about it' (Spegele, 1992: 174).
Independently, extinction risks must come first
Cummiskey 90 – Professor of Philosophy, Bates (David, Kantian Consequentialism, Ethics 100.3, p 601-2, p 606, jstor,)
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract "social entity." It
is not a question of
some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive "overall social good." Instead, the question is whether some
persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Nozick, for example, argues that "to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and
take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has."30 Why, however, is this not equally true of all those that we do not save
through our failure to act? By
emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, one fails to sufficiently
respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the
cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the
unconditional value of rational beings, choose? We have a duty to promote the conditions necessary for
the existence of rational beings, but both choosing to act and choosing not to act will cost the life of a rational being. Since the basis of Kant's principle
is "rational nature exists as an end-in-itself' (GMM, p. 429), the reasonable solution to such a dilemma involves promoting, insofar as one can, the conditions
necessary for rational beings. If
I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I do not use them arbitrarily and I
do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have "dignity, an unconditional and incomparable
value" that transcends any market value (GMM, p. 436), but, as rational beings, persons also have a fundamental equality which dictates
that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others. The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support the view that
we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal
consideration dictates that one sacrifice some to save many. [continues] According to Kant, the objective end of moral action is
the existence of rational beings. Respect for rational beings requires
that, in deciding what to do, one give appropriate
practical consideration to the unconditional value of rational beings and to the conditional value of happiness. Since agentcentered constraints require a non-value-based rationale, the most natural interpretation of the demand that one give equal respect to all
rational beings lead to a consequentialist normative theory. We have seen that there is no sound Kantian reason for abandoning this natural
consequentialist interpretation. In particular, a consequentialist interpretation does not require sacrifices which a Kantian ought to consider unreasonable, and it
does not involve doing evil so that good may come of it. It simply requires an uncompromising commitment to
the equal value and equal claims of all rational beings and a recognition that, in the moral consideration of conduct, one's own
subjective concerns do not have overriding importance.
Perm
Perm – do both – Refusal of state politics locks in the status quo and de-energizes
movements – must defend specific alternative futures and a way to get there
Hall 6 (Donald E., professor of English at West Virginia University, where he also serves as chairman of the department of foreign languages,
“Imagining Queer Studies Out of the Doldrums”, http://chronicle.com/article/Imagining-Queer-Studies-Out-of/25787)
Indeed, much of
the early energy in queer studies generally derived from the sense of being asked, and being
willing, to commit one's self to an important, realizable, and exhilarating cause. Unfortunately some
recent theoretical work is not helpful. Especially deflating is Lee Edelman's much-discussed antipolitical
polemic from 2004, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, which is actually a symptom and reinforcement of
the very problem of general political passivity that I'm discussing here. Edelman uses Lacanian theory to argue
that queers should repudiate the "oppressively political" and abandon any claim to a "viable political future." But the
question remains as to how best to rekindle not only intellectual intensity in the classroom, but also an excitement
about a dramatically different future that might even motivate students to engage in the hard work of
collective action and sustained response long after they leave the university. Fundamental not only to "identity
politics," but to all critical-thinking-based pedagogy is the belief that students, whatever their political orientation, should become
engaged citizens in the world, not passive consumers who simply accept the status quo. And what I have found works
best in that regard is a return to an older model of consciousness-raising, based on dialogue and a sharing of lived experiences (there are
always students in class who have endured terrible hardships about which they are willing to speak), followed by exercises that ask
students to imagine certain futures — utopias, even — that they would find worthy of fighting for. The
diversity of what they come up with (Is sex work legalized? Does marriage become a wholly passé concept? What role does
spirituality or religion play?) can lead to very dynamic conversations. Indeed, discussing their utopias allows them
to begin to delineate the steps necessary to reach those states, looking backward in time to the
successes of past social movements and forward to ones in which they might invest. It encourages
students to think critically about how social change occurs, rather than to imagine vaguely that injustice
somehow dissipates magically without the hard work of individuals and groups' organizing. It urges them
to juxtapose the present situation — and whatever fuzzy sense they have of its basic acceptability — with a concrete
visualization of what they would prefer as a reigning paradigm (or variety of paradigms). Some, such as
Edelman, would argue that such exercises lock us into variations of the "norm" as it currently stands (whatever we
project will simply be a version of what already is), but consensus about a single place-holding utopia is never the goal.
The wide variety of possible utopias, as they sometimes clash with and sometimes complement each other, leads to
intellectual excitement, critical attachment, and even productive anger. I will take that energy any day over the
stasis produced by a cynical refusal even to imagine or invest in a future. Queer studies will never be what it was in the early 1990s. Today's
context of ongoing oppression but token media and marketplace acceptance is very different. However, the doldrums of the queer-studies
classroom and queer studies as a field can be challenged and the energy reignited. This means resisting the all-too-easy acceptance by students
of the status quo; it means reminding them of the rhetorical and physical violence that continues to exist (but that is also uncomfortable to
acknowledge and much easier simply to ignore or downplay); it means (for those of us working in queer studies) disrupting our own
complacency that can result from being tenured, having successful writing and lecturing careers, and being able to afford a few comfortable
lifestyle components. Queer
studies will have a future only if it does the hard work of imagining possible
futures and articulating ways to actually get us there.
Edelman’s thesis is wrong – politics is a site of reform – that’s why people vote, care
about the environment and live in communities – death is inevitable, but there is
value in tangible improvements in the human condition
Brenkman ‘2 (John, Distinguished Professor of English and Comprative Literature at CUNY Graduate
Center, Narrative, “Queer Post-Politics”, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 174-180, Project Muse)
But Edelman interprets this nonrecognition in very different terms from those I have just used. When he asserts that "there are no queers in that future as there can be no future
for queers," he is not making a mere statement of protest; rather, he is announcing the theoretical position that is the explicit stake of his entire argument. I [End Page 175] now
want to turn to his theoretical project, which involves an argument in political theory and an argument from psychoanalysis and a link between the two. The Political Theory
Argument For Edelman the image of the child-as-future is more than a powerful trope in the political discourse of the moment. It in effect defines the political realm: "For
politics, however radical the means by which some of its practitioners seek to effect a more desirable social order, is conservative insofar as it necessarily works to affirm a social
order, defining various strategies aimed at actualizing social reality and transmitting it into the future it aims to bequeath to its inner child" (19). The burden of this argument is
that a genuinely critical discourse cannot arise via the marking or symbolizing of the gap between the present and the future. Such symbolizing has indeed been the defining
feature of modern critical social discourse, whether among the Enlightenment's philosophes, French revolutionaries, Marxists, social democrats, or contemporary socialists and
democrats. Jürgen Habermas, in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, defines modern time-consciousness itself as a taking of responsibility for the future. Edelman sees in
For him any such political discourse or activity steps into "the logic by which
political engagement serves always as the medium for reproducing our social reality" (26). Certainly the
such a time-consciousness an inescapable trap.
political realm—whether viewed from the perspective of the state, the political community and citizenship, or political movements—is a medium of social reproduction, in the
sense that it serves the relative continuity of innumerable economic and non-economic institutions.
But it is not simply a mechanism of
social reproduction; it is also the site and instrument of social change. Nor is it simply the field
of existing power relations; it is also the terrain of contestation and compromise. Edelman compounds his reductive concept of the political realm by in turn postulating
an ironclad intermeshing of social reproduction and sexual reproduction. Here too he takes a fundamental feature of modern society, or
any society, and absolutizes it. Sexual reproduction is a necessary dimension of social reproduction,
almost by definition, in the sense that a society's survival depends upon , among many other things, the fact that its
members reproduce. Kinship practices, customs, religious authorities, and civil and criminal law variously regulate sexual reproduction. However,
that is not to say that the imperatives of social reproduction dictate or determine or fully functionalize the
institutions and practices of sexual reproduction. The failure to recognize the relative
autonomy of those institutions and practices underestimates how seriously feminism and
the gay and lesbian movement have already challenged the norms and institutions of compulsory
heterosexuality in our society. They have done so through creative transformations in civil society and everyday
life and through cultural initiatives and political and legal reforms. The anti-abortion and anti-gay activism of the
Christian Right arose, in response, to alter and reverse the fundamental achievements of these movements. How then to analyze or theorize this struggle? A motif in Edelman's
analysis [End Page 176] takes the rhetoric and imagery of the Christian Right and traditional Catholicism to be a more insightful discourse than liberalism when it comes to
. The Right does not have a truer sense of the
social-symbolic order than liberals and radicals; it simply has more reactionary aims and has mobilized
understanding the underlying politics of sexuality today. I think this is extremely misguided
with significant effect to impose its phobic and repressive values on civil society and through the state. The Christian Right is itself a "new social movement" that contests the
To grant the Right the status of exemplary articulators of "the" social
order strikes me as politically self-destructive and theoretically just plain wrong.
feminist and gay and lesbian social movements.
Embracing political change is important for altering the future and for queer
scholarship -- Even if there's no future, the aff is key to make the present better
Duggan 94 – Lisa, Queering the State, Social Text, No. 39 (summer, 1994), pp. 1-14
The problem for those of us engaged in queer scholarship and teaching, who have a stake in queer politics, is how to
respond to these attacks at a moment when we have unprecedented opportunities (we are present in university curriculums and national
politics as never before), yet confront perilous and paralyzing assaults. It is imperative that we respond to these attacks in
the public arena from which they are launched. We cannot defend our teaching and scholarship without
engaging in public debate and addressing the nature and operations of the state upon which our jobs and
futures depend. In other words, the need to turn our attention to state politics is not only theoretical (though it
is also that). It
is time for queer intellectuals to concentrate on the creative production of strategies at the
boundary of queer and nation-strategies specifically for queering the state.5
AT: No Reproduction
Reducing the future to reproduction as their Lippert evidence does is reductionist –
fantasies of immortality are inevitable – the case is a da to the alt
Feit 2005 (Mario, “Extinction anxieties: same-sex marriage and modes of citizenship” theory and event,
8:3, projectmuse)
Warner is thus concerned with the purity of the queer alternative, which he sees under attack by virtue of the persistence of the reproductive
narrative's extension to non-biological reproduction.101 Those "extrafamilial intimate cultures" should not be understood in the terms of that
which they replace, namely biological reproduction. Those alternative spaces are to be pried loose from biological reproduction; their
representations should also be freed from the metaphors of reproduction. Warner's demand for purity goes further -- he hopes
for a
culture cleansed from the reproductive imaginary altogether. The reproductive narrative would become archaic. It
would no longer be used to conceive of relations to mortality, cultural production and the building of a
future. In other words, lesbians and gay men must not appropriate reproductive metaphors for their own relation to mortality, sexuality and
world-making. Same-sex marriage must be avoided.102 It would link queer life to the kinship system's relation to mortality and immortality. It
Warner takes the heteronormative promise of
immortality via reproduction too seriously -- too seriously in the sense that he thinks that by resisting
reproductive imaginations one resists fantasies of immortality. However, Bauman's point about
strategies of immortality is precisely that all aspects of human culture are concerned with immortality.
turns out to be, at least for Warner, a misguided response to mortality.
Indeed, Bauman's argument focuses on cultural production in the widest sense, whereas he considers sexual reproduction "unfit for the role of
the vehicle of individual transcendence of death" because procreation secures species "immortality at the expense of the mortality of its
individual members."103 In other words, fantasies
of immortality may exist outside the reproductive paradigm -and Irving's attempt to find vicarious immortality may not be reducible to a heteronormative strategy
of consolation. These juxtapositions of Bauman and Warner complicate the latter's sense that any attempt to imagine a future by
definition implicates one in heteronormativity. Put more succinctly, giving up on reproductive relations to the future does
not constitute the break with fantasies of immortality Warner makes it out to be. Indeed, there are
other ways -- nonheteronormative ways -- in which we equate world-making, i.e. citizenship, with
vicarious immortality. The queer dream of immortality may not rely on reproduction. But it, too, is a way of coping with mortality by
leaving a mark on the world, by leaving something behind that transcends generations. In Warner's and Butler's critiques of marriage it is quite
clear that a culture that they are invested in, that they helped to build, is one that they want to see continue. They take same-sex marriage so
personally, because queer culture is so personally meaningful. If my argument is correct, this personal meaningfulness exceeds the meaning
that Butler and Warner consciously attribute to it. That neither of them argues that the preservation of queer culture is about vicarious
immortality is beside the point. As Zygmunt Bauman emphasizes, the immortalizing function of culture is highly successful insofar it remains
opaque to those participating in the making of this culture.104 In raising the question of how much queer critics of marriage are themselves
invested in strategies of immortality, of a nonheteronormative kind, I thus hope to contribute to a reflection on the anxieties driving the queer
critique of marriage. Attending
to anxieties about mortality, I believe, will help move the same-sex marriage
debate among queer theorists away from concerns with transcending death and towards a more
complex awareness of the challenges of political strategies for plural queer communities.
AT: Death Drive
Accepting the death drives obliterates ethics and agency
Lear 2000 Jonathan Lear, Philosophy Professor at the University of Chicago, 2000
Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life, Page 131-132
By 1920 Freud is ready to break up what he has come to see as a fantasized unity of mental functioning. The mind can no longer be understood
in terms of the pleasure principle, but instead of living with the gap, he posits a “beyond.” It is in this way that Freud takes himself to be
explaining aggression. Aggression
is now interpreted as the death drive diverted outward. It is precisely
this move which locks us into an inescapably negative teleogy. Let us just assume (for the sake of argument,
though I think it true) that humans are aggressive animals, and that dealing with human aggression is a serious psychological and social
problem. The question remains: how
might one deal with it? But if, as Freud does, one interprets aggression as
the most obvious manifestation of one of the two primordial forces in the universe, the answer would
seem to be: there is no successful way. My first inclination is to say that this leads to a pessimistic view of the
human condition; but this isn’t really the issue. My second inclination is to say it leads to a limited view of the
human condition; but even this doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. The point here is not to endorse an ontic
optimism – that if we didn’t adopt this view, we could shape life in nonaggressive ways – but to
confront an ontological insight: that Freud’s interpretation is an instance of bad faith. The
metaphysical basicness of the death drive implies a kind of metaphysical intractability to the
phenomenon of human aggression. As a matter of empirical fact, humans may be aggressive animals – and the fact of human
aggression may be difficult to deal with. It may be experienced as intractable. But to raise this purported intractability to
a metaphysical principle is to obliterate the question of responsibility. And it is to cover over – by
precluding – what might turn out to be a significant empirical possibilities.
Zero empirical or logical basis for the psychoanalytic critique
Mootz, 2k [Francis J, Visiting Professor of Law, Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson School of Law; Professor of Law, Western New
England College School of Law, Yale Journal of the Law & Humanities, 12 Yale J.L. & Human. 299, p. 319-320]
Freudian psychoanalysis increasingly is the target of blistering criticism from a wide variety of commentators. 54 In a recent review,
is literally nothing to be
said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its
component dogmas Analysis as a whole remains powerless... and understandably so, because a thoroughgoing
epistemological critique, based on commonly acknowledged standards of evidence and logic decertifies every
distinctively psychoanalytic proposition. 55 The most telling criticism of Freud's psychoanalytic theory is that it has proven no more
Frederick Crews reports that
independent studies have begun to converge toward a verdict... that there
effective in producing therapeutic benefits than have other forms of psychotherapy. 56 Critics draw the obvious conclusion that the benefits (if
any) of psychotherapy are neither explained nor facilitated by psychoanalytic theories. Although Freudian psychoanalytic theory purports to
provide a truthful account of the operations of the psyche and the causes for mental disturbances, critics argue that psychoanalytic
theory may prove in the end to be nothing more than fancy verbiage that tends to obscure whatever
healing effects psychotherapeutic dialogue may have. 57
Freudian psychoanalysis failed
because it could not make good on its claim to be a rigorous and empirical
science. Although Freud's mystique is premised on a widespread belief that psychoanalysis was a profound innovation made possible by his
genius, Freud claimed only that he was extending the scientific research of his day within the organizing context of a biological model of the
Freud's adherents created the embarrassing cult of personality and the myth of a selfvalidating psychoanalytic method only after Freud's empirical claims could not withstand critical scrutiny
in accordance with the scientific methodology demanded by his metapsychology. 59 The record is clear
human mind. 58 [*320]
that Freud believed that psychoanalysis would take its place among the sciences and that his clinical
work provided empirical confirmation of his theories. This belief now appears to be completely
unfounded and indefensible.
Freud's quest for a scientifically grounded psychotherapy was not amateurish or naive. Although Freud viewed his "metapsychology as a set of
directives for constructing a scientific psychology," n60 Patricia Kitcher makes a persuasive case that he was not a blind dogmatist who refused
to adjust his metapsychology in the face of contradictory evidence. n61 Freud's commitment to the scientific method, coupled with his creative
vision, led him to construct a comprehensive and integrative metapsychology that drew from a number of scientific disciplines in an impressive
and persuasive manner. n62 However, the
natural and social sciences upon which he built his derivative and
interdisciplinary approach developed too rapidly and unpredictably for him to respond. n63 As
developments in biology quickly undermined Freud's theory, he "began to look to linguistics and especially to
anthropology as more hopeful sources of support," n64 but this strategy later in his career proved equally [*321]
unsuccessful. n65 The scientific justification claimed by Freud literally eroded when the knowledge base
underlying his theory collapsed, leaving his disciples with the impossible task of defending a theory
whose presuppositions no longer were plausible according to their own criteria of validation. n66
Regs Solve
Not true – online gamblers are six times more likely to be high income earners –
means online gambling is less likely to negatively impact African-American users than
land-based methods
Amsel 9/12 (2014, Peter, citing Statistics Canada: Canada's national statistical agency, “KANYE WAS WRONG: IT’S ONLINE GAMBLING
THAT DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE,” http://calvinayre.com/2014/09/12/business/online-gambling-doesnt-care-about-black-people/)
Thursday’s other anti-gambling testimonial came courtesy of Wellington Webb (pictured right), former mayor of
Denver and current paid spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling (CSIG), the lobby group funded by
Las Vegas Sands boss Sheldon Adelson. Webb published an op-ed in The Hill reminiscing about those halcyon days when candy bars cost a
nickel, children respected their elders and the 1961 Wire Act boldly predicted the rise of the internet three decades later. Webb’s
op-ed
has the same goal as those penned by the CSIG’s other rented guns: to push Congress to pass Adelsonpenned federal online gambling prohibition bills. But unlike previous CSIG campaigns, which suggested online gambling firms
were hanging around elementary schools handing out candy, Webb’s op-ed takes a different tack. Playing off his status as Denver’s
first African-American mayor, Webb claims African-Americans are particularly at risk to the evils of
online gambling. Webb reminds everyone that the US Department of Justice was responding to a query by two state lotteries when it
issued its late-2011 opinion that the Wire Act applied purely to online sports betting. Webb then cites University of Buffalo stats
that show lotteries draw most of their revenue from players on the lower rungs of the socio-economic
ladder. Given that African-Americans are disproportionately represented among the ranks of the
economically unfortunate, Webb concludes that African-Americans are more likely to play the lottery.
Webb then cites Pew Internet Research data that says African-Americans are more likely than whites to (a) own smartphones and (b) to rely on
these phones for more than just making calls. By
Webb’s calculations, this makes African-Americans “uniquely
susceptible to the threat” of online gambling. Hate to burst Webb’s bubble, but Statistics Canada studies
have found that online gamblers were six times more likely to be high-income earners than those with
the lowest earning potential, which suggests that low-income African-American smartphone users are
actually less likely to be going online to get their lottery fix. So perhaps Webb ought to be advocating for a shutdown of
all lottery retailers, that is, provided he can find an aging billionaire with an axe to grind against Kwik-E-Mart.
Extra-legal individual approaches fail-the progress of the conservative agenda via
institutional routes prove our argument
Lobel, 2007(Orly, UCSD law professor, “The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical Legal Consciousness and Transformative Politics”,
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/lobel.pdf)
the practical failures and the fallacy of rigid boundaries generated by extralegal activism rhetoric permit us to
broaden our inquiry to the underlying assumptions of current proposals regarding transformative politics — that is, attempts to produce meaningful
changes in the political and socioeconomic landscapes. The suggested alternatives produce a new image of social and political action. This vision rejects a shared theory of social reform,
rejects formal programmatic agendas, and embraces a multiplicity of forms and practices. Thus, it is described in such terms as a plan of no
plan,211 “a project of projects,”212 “anti-theory theory,”213 politics rather than goals,214 presence rather than power,215 “practice over theory,”216 and chaos and openness over order and formality. As a result, the
Both
contemporary message rarely includes a comprehensive vision of common social claims, but rather engages in the description of fragmented efforts. As Professor Joel Handler argues, the commonality of struggle and social vision
that existed during the civil rights movement has disappeared.217 There is no unifying discourse or set of values, but rather an aversion to any metanarrative and a resignation from theory. Professor Handler warns that this move
“[T]he opposition is not playing that game
. . . . [E]veryone else is operating as if there were Grand Narratives . . . .”218 Intertwined with the resignation from law
and policy, the new bromide of “neither left nor right” has become axiomatic only for some.219 The contemporary
away from grand narratives is self-defeating precisely because only certain parts of the political spectrum have accepted this new stance:
critical legal consciousness informs the scholarship of those who are interested in progressive social activism, but less so that of those who are interested, for example, in a more competitive securities market. Indeed, an interesting
conservative
advocacy groups have rapidly grown both in number and in their vigorous use of traditional legal strategies to
promote their causes.221 This growth in conservative advocacy is particularly salient in juxtaposition to the decline
recent development has been the rise of “conservative public interest lawyer[ing].”220 Although “public interest law” was originally associated exclusively with liberal projects, in the past three decades
of traditional progressive advocacy. Most recently, some thinkers have even suggested that there may be “something inherent in the left’s conception of
social change — focused as it is on participation and empowerment — that produces a unique distrust of legal
expertises
1AR
Case
Prefer our statistical evidence to their anecdotal claims – it’s key to critical
information consumption.
Bennett 2012
D. Scott, Head of the Political Science Department at Penn State University, Chapter 4 - Teaching the
Scientific Study o f I n t e r n a t i o n a l P o l i t i c s, Guide to the Scientific Study of International
Processesy First Edition
Closely related to simply asking what evidence there is, is teaching students to address the breadth,
depth, and quality of that evidence. Generally, a scientific approach would suggest that the broader the
base of evidence for some theory/relationship/ hypothesis/policy, the more confident we can be that it is correct.
A single anecdote offered in favor of a policy or hypothesis is less strong than a systematically collected or sampled
set of facts, cases, or data points. Generalization, and by extension forecasting based on generalizations and patterns
from the past, requires that specific pieces of information (cases) have been combined and compared. All
other things equal, the more cases, comparisons, and data there are validating a generalization, the better. Knowing how broad the
evidence is behind an argument or policy, and what the basis for inference was in the theory and forecasting behind a policy, is
also part of being a critical consumer and evaluator of politics and policy evaluation. Depth of evidence may also
make a difference even if we have a small set of cases, for instance if we contrast a set of connected hypotheses that are all supported by a
single high-quality case traced over time to a single hypotheses supported in a single regression on a standard data set. Quality of evidence ties
to concepts of replication and being explicit about indica tors. If
reproduced/ replicated by another researcher, then
there is "a lot" of "evidence" but it is all vague or could not be
it is less valuable than more systematically- collected scientific
evidence. One way to phrase this informally is that the scientific approach is like detective work - it seeks to follow reproducible steps that
others (a jury) can follow, and brings to bear multiple methods, indicators, and arguments to strengthen a claim that is fundamentally based on
evidence. Evidence may come in different forms and from many disparate sources. But the
more evidence, and the better its
quality, the more convincing the support for a generalization will be. Evidence is important in the context of
evaluating competing arguments or hypotheses. It is important to understand that there are alternative hypotheses about what makes states
or other actors do what they do, and understanding
the evaluation of these hypotheses is critical, as they may lead
to different policy choices. For example, deterrence vs. spiral hypotheses about likely paths to peace and war in the age of
nuclear deterrence, encouraging trade rather than democracy as a remedy to war, or focusing on maintaining balances of power
rather than empowering international institutions to keep the peace, are simple examples of alternative arguments about theories and
variables that have obvious and direct policy implications. Certainly some alternative arguments may be more easily evaluated with evidence
than others. Rather
than simply accepting that these competing explanations exist however, or that your party
affiliation must determine which explanation you believe, a scientific approach will suggest that on at least some
questions, assessment via evidence is possible. The scientific language of variables or factors that influence behavior in the
real world may also help students assess complicated political situations that do not fall neatly into one theme, paradigm, or perspective.
Recognizing that leaders may have multiple incentives — to increase national power, to increase the odds of their election/selection, to satisfy
domestic constituencies, to decrease the risk of costly war - helps students see the push and pull of politics. Framed
in scientific
terms, such influences or incentives may be seen as variables that influence politics (or which at least are
hypothesized to influence politics). Predicting what leaders or citizens will do, which is critical to assessing the likely effects of
national/international actions and policies, depends in part on what variables we believe are important, and on the levels of those variables in
different situations. Asking students "what variables/ factors are at work here" is a useful way of breaking a complicated situation down into
components
K
Util’s the only moral framework
Murray 97 (Alastair, Professor of Politics at U. Of Wales-Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, p. 110)
Weber emphasised that, while the
'absolute ethic of the gospel' must be taken seriously, it is inadequate to the tasks of
evaluation presented by politics. Against this 'ethic of ultimate ends' — Gesinnung — he therefore proposed the 'ethic of
responsibility' — Verantwortung. First, whilst the former dictates only the purity of intentions and pays no attention to consequences, the
ethic of responsibility commands acknowledgement of the divergence between intention and result. Its
adherent 'does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his [OR HER] own actions so far as
he was able to foresee them; he [OR SHE] will say: these results are ascribed to my action'. Second, the 'ethic of ultimate
ends' is incapable of dealing adequately with the moral dilemma presented by the necessity of using evil means to achieve moral ends:
Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the
'salvation of the soul.' If, however, one
chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of
absolute ends, then the goals may be changed and discredited for generations, because responsibility for
consequences is lacking. The 'ethic of responsibility', on the other hand, can accommodate this paradox and
limit the employment of such means, because it accepts responsibility for the consequences which they imply.
Thus, Weber maintains that only the ethic of responsibility can cope with the 'inner tension' between the 'demon of politics' and 'the god of
love'. 9 The realists followed this conception closely in their formulation of a political ethic.10 This influence is particularly clear in
Morgenthau.11 In terms of the first element of this conception, the rejection of a purely deontological ethic, Morgenthau echoed Weber's
formulation, arguing tha/t:the
political actor has, beyond the general moral duties, a special moral responsibility to act
wisely ... The individual, acting on his own behalf, may act unwisely without moral reproach as long as the consequences of his inexpedient
action concern only [HER OR] himself. What is done in the political sphere by its very nature concerns others who must
suffer from unwise action. What is here done with good intentions but unwisely and hence with disastrous
results is morally defective; for it violates the ethics of responsibility to which all action affecting others, and hence political action par
excellence, is subject.12 This led Morgenthau to argue, in terms of the concern to reject doctrines which advocate that the end justifies the
means, that the impossibility of the logic underlying this doctrine 'leads to the negation of absolute ethical judgements altogether'.13