ASU Finals
1NC
1NC
Legalize means production, distribution, sale, and use must be legal for all or most people
Caulkins et al 12 (Jonathan, H. Guyford Stever Professorship of Operations Research and Public Policy at
Carnegie Mellon, Angela Hawken (Author), Beau Kilmer (Author), Mark Kleiman, 7-13-12, “Marijuana Legalization:
What Everyone Needs to Know” Print [Fill in Pg. Numbers])
What does it mean to legalize a drug?
Legalization is the opposite of prohibition . It avoids the costs of prohibition—loss of liberty, criminal enterprise, and
the need for enforcement—at the risk of increased drug abuse.
Legalization means treating a drug (not necessarily all drugs) more or less the way we treat other commodities:
production, distribution, retail sale, possession, and use would all be legal for all or most people (e.g., for adults but
not for minors).
Restricting Congress’s commerce clause authority does not legalize marijuana—the CSA is
independently supported by Treaty Power—proves the courts plank of the plan is extra-topical
Dupont et al 04 [Robert L. DuPont et al 4, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School,
President of the Institute for Behavior and Health, Inc. and Vice-president of Bensinger, DuPont and Associates, was
the first Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the second Director of the White House Special
Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, 2004, Brief of Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, John Ashcroft et al v.
Angel McClary Raich et al, Supreme Court of the United States, No. 03-1454,
http://www.ibhinc.org/pdfs/ARAmicusBrief.pdf]
I. The Treaty Power Provides a Separate and Independent Source of Congressional Power in This Case. While
Congress must certainly regulate in accordance with its enumerated powers, the Commerce Clause does not provide
the sole source of congressional authority in this case. The United States may enter into treaties governing matters of
international concern and impact. Such treaties, in conjunction with the federal Constitution and federal legislation,
comprise the supreme law of the land. U.S. Const. Art. II, sec. 2. cl. 2 (power of the President to enter into treaties);
U.S. Const. Art. VI, cl. 2. Congress has the power to enact all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution...all...Powers granted by this Constitution." U.S. Const. Art. I, sec.8, cl. 18. Accordingly, Congress has the
power to enact laws implementing the United States' obligations under treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. The
Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. sec. 801 et seq. (1970), ("CSA") is such a law, and its regulation of the class of
activity in this case is necessary to fulfill those obligations. Federal laws, like the CSA, which implement U.S. treaty
obligations, are unquestionably a valid exercise of congressional power, even in the face of conflicting state laws." In
Missouri v. Ho/land, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), this Court upheld the power of Congress to enact legislation, pursuant to a
treaty, despite contrary state law. The Court stressed that such legislation—in that case the Migratory Bird Treaty
Act—stands on a separate basis of congressional power, and rejected the argument that Congress must have
independent constitutional authority separate from a treaty as a basis for enacting legislation . Id. at 432-33. The CSA's
comprehensive regulatory structure, too, is supported by the Treaty Power, as well by Congress' authority under the
Commerce Clause.
Vote neg
1. Limits—there are infinite procedural ways to reduce federal authority to regulate marijuana—
explodes the neg research burden and makes prep impossible
2. Ground—they garner unpredictable advantages based limiting Congressional authority
1NC
TPA will pass now—Obama PC key—key to success of TPP and other trade deals
Hickey, 12-31-2014
[Jennifer, newsmax staff writer, Obama Eyes Smoother Ride in New Congress on Trade Deals,
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/trade-agreements-Asia-Democrats/2014/12/31/id/615800/] /Bingham-MB
The silver lining for President Barack Obama in the dark cloud of the 2014 midterm elections is that with Republicans holding
control of Congress, chances to move forward on approval of trade promotion authority (TPA) and other key
trade deals have greatly improved. One of the top items on the administration's agenda is the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), a comprehensive trade deal that is in its fifth year of intense negotiations, and has seen deadlines to reach agreement pass by the last three
years. With little hope of pushing a major trade deal through Congress during a presidential election year, supporters and opponents recognize
the coming year is critical. “ This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for the administration. They need to get out
and educate members and address the concerns they might have . I’ve been advising colleagues who are
skeptical and not supportive of trade to at least engage in conversations and feedback,” Democrat Rep. Ron Kind of
Wisconsin, who is pro-trade, told The Washington Post. A sign of the importance the administration places on achieving progress on
the trade front is that U.S. Trade Representative Michael B. Froman and his staff have held 1,500 meetings on Capitol Hill to
push for TPP and TPA, according to The New York Times. If signed, the TPP would become the largest trade deal ever passed. The deal would ease
trade barriers between the U.S. and 12 Asian nations that together comprise close to 40 percent of the world’s GDP. In working to secure its passage, one of
Froman's key allies on Capitol Hill will be incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who indicated after the election his willingness to work
with Obama. “I’ve
got a lot of members who believe that international trade agreements are a winner for America
and the president and I discussed that right before I came over here. I think he’s interested in moving
forward. I said, ‘send us trade agreements, we’re anxious to look at them,’ ” said McConnell in November, according to U.S.
News & World Report. Obama told the Business Roundtable earlier this month that he has committed to actively pushing
for trade deals and is confident that the TPP, as well as a trade deal with Europe, can be achieved in the next
year. If he is to be successful, he must first take on members within the Democrat caucus. "It should help move TPA
along both because it will help persuade wavering Democrats that supporting it is the right thing to do and
because it will demonstrate to Republicans that the president is willing to wade into the fight," National Foreign
Trade Council President Bill Reinsch told Reuters. With TPA's primary opponent, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
no longer controlling the agenda, the path forward for TPA, or "fast track" trade authority, is much
smoother. It also is one of the priorities of incoming Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. "Renewing TPA and
advancing other parts of our trade agenda also represents an opportunity for a fully Republican Congress to
work with the administration. So, trade will almost certainly take up much of the Finance Committee’s agenda
as next year gets underway, " said Hatch recently during a Financial Services Roundtable event, The Hill reported.
The plan wrecks Obama’s PC
Jeremy Daw 12, J.D. from Harvard Law School, Dec 15 2012, “Marijuana Not A Priority For Obama,”
http://cannabisnowmagazine.com/current-events/politics/marijuana-not-a-priority-for-obama
Some hope for even more radical change. With the most recent polls suggesting that a majority of Americans favor reform of pot laws, why not seize the
moment and end federal prohibition entirely? Obama could order the DEA to reschedule cannabis out of Schedule I to a less restrictive
classification, which would effectively end the conflict with the federal government in medical marijuana states. Such a move could harness political will for change and put the president
on the winning side of public opinion.¶ But
such moves would have serious downsides . The politics of pot, rife with cultural and political
divisions since the tumultuous 1960s, remain bitterly divisive; any politician who proposes liberalization of cannabis laws risks
becoming saddled with labels borne out of a long history of ingroup/outgroup dynamics and which can rapidly drain a
leader’s store of political capital. Given Obama’s susceptibility to an even older tradition of racial stereotyping which
associates cannabis use with African Americans, any kind of green light to relaxed marijuana laws will cost the
president dearly .
TPA is key to future trade negotiations and agreements
Bush – 13 (Juliana Bush is coordinator of Policy and Student Programs at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
The Miller Center recently hosted a conference titled “The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: A
Multilateral Perspective” that include a keynote panel with former USTRs; “TTIP advice to Obama from four former
USTRs”; December 20, 2013; http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/193682-ttip-advice-to-obamafrom-four-former-ustrs) CJC
The USTRs also emphasized
the importance of the procedural step of securing trade promotion authority (TPA) from
Congress in order to streamline trade negotiations. As Ambassador Schwab explained it, “The U.S. cannot
conclude and get through Congress any kind of a detailed trade agreement without the
president having TPA—or fast-tracking authority-- in hand.”¶ TPA is the process through which the House and Senate agree to certain rules
by which a trade agreement is moved through Congress with an up-or-down vote and without filibuster. Kantor echoed the importance of TPA: “No one is
going to sit down and negotiate with you if they think you’re going to go back to the Congress of
the United States and they’re going to amend your trade agreements. Therefore, what you’ve
negotiated is no good.”
Impact is global war
Griswold 9
(Daniel, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, “Mad About Trade: Why Main Street America
should Embrace Globalization,” 2009, pgs 141-142//wyo-mm)
Free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways. First, trade and globalization have
reinforced the trend towards democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights with each other. A second and
even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by raising the cost of war. As national economies
become more intertwined, those nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world
means not only the loss of human lives and tax dollars but also ruptured trade and investment ties that
impose lasting damage on the economy. Trade and economic integration have helped to keep the peace in Europe for
more than 60 years. More recently, deepening economic ties between China and Taiwan are drawing those two
governments closer together and helping to keep the peace. Leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait seem to understand that
reckless nationalism would jeopardize the dramatic economic progress that the region has enjoyed. A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it
has reduced the spoils of war. Trade
allows nations to acquire wealth through production and exchange rather than
conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in terms of intellectual
property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In contrast, hard
assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in high-tech, service economies. If people need resources outside their natural
borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by freely trading what they can produce best at home.
1NC
The instrumental logic of the 1AC reduces the world to utilitarian ends as a profane denial
of existence.
Biles in 2011 (Jeremy, PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School, “The Remains of God:
Bataille/Sacrifice/Community”, Culture, Theory and Critique, 2011, 52(2–3), 127–144, rcheek)
All such expenditures – useless, diverted from any utilitarian ends –¶ obviously ‘go against judgments that
form the basis of a rational economy’¶ (Bataille 1991: 22). Indeed, the imperative to waste and the related glorious¶
modes of expenditure that fascinate Bataille are inimical to the calculations¶ that define a restricted economy
based on the tenets of limited resources and¶ concern for securing future interests. But it is this consideration
of the future,¶ of advantageous utility, that deprives humans of sovereignty. Sovereignty, by¶ Bataille’s account, is
linked with experience of the sacred, and refers to¶ escape from the realm of work, subjugation to labour, calculation, and
instrumental¶ reason – in short, the realm of the profane. Following Emile Durkheim,¶ Bataille posits a radical heterogeneity between
the sacred and the profane,¶ while also dividing the sacred between what subsequent scholars have called¶ the right sacred – the powers of order, power, purity,
eternity, and life – and¶ the left sacred, aligned with the dangerous forces of corrosion, decay, impurity,¶ time, and death (see Durkheim 1965: 455–6).¶ Bataille
argues that the
divide between the sacred and the profane arises in¶ conjunction with the advent of labour. He
relates labour to the establishment of¶ the subject/object dichotomy in human consciousness, suggesting
that ‘the positing¶ of the object [or the “thing”], which is not given in animality, occurs in the¶ human use of
tools’ (Bataille 1992a: 27). Subordinated to the one who uses it, a¶ tool is assigned a utility, a telos beyond its
immediate existence, and thus takes¶ its place within a newly emergent sphere of ‘discontinuous’ objects
that now¶ includes oneself and others. ‘With work’, Michel Surya has written, ‘mankind¶ discovered ends . . . . And all ends are a
calculation speculating on the benefits¶ of the future, . . . all ends separate humanity from itself’ (2002: 383).With
the rise¶ of self-consciousness, of oneself as a separate, distinct individual, also comes¶ the fear of death
and the corresponding desire for durable, even eternal, existence.¶ Subjugated to mortal anxiety, ‘man
becomes a thing’; gripped by the fear¶ of death and the yearning to endure, humans are rendered servile –
relegated,¶ like tools, to the world of instrumental utility (Bataille 1993: 218).¶ The desire for durable – even eternal
– existence is thus vouchsafed to¶ instrumental reason. Bataille identifies the realm of instrumental reason with¶ the sphere of the
profane; it is the realm of discontinuous objects and individuals.¶ The sacred, on the other hand, is characterised by a sense of intimacy;¶ it is the sphere of
continuity, which objects, in their distinct forms,¶ transcend. For
Bataille, then, ‘existence is profane when it lives in the face¶ of
transcendence; it is sacred when it lives in immanence’, or continuity (Hollier 1998: 65).
And, the imagination of a better world establishes an ascetic hatred of existence.
Turanli in 2003 (Aydan, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty of Letters and Sciences
Istanbul Technical University, “Nietzsche and the Later Wittgenstein: An Offense to the Quest for Another World”,
The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 26 (2003), 55-63)
The craving for absolutely general specifications results in doing metaphysics. Unlike Wittgenstein, Nietzsche provides an account of how this craving
arises. The creation of the two worlds such as apparent and real world, conditioned and unconditioned world, being and becoming is the creation of the
ressentiment of metaphysicians. Nietzsche
says, "to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of
hatred for a world that makes one suffer: the ressentiment of metaphysicians against actuality is here
creative" (WP III 579). Escaping from this world because there is grief in it results in asceticism. [End Page 61]
Paying respect to the ascetic ideal is longing for the world that is pure and denaturalized. Craving for
frictionless surfaces, for a transcendental, pure, true, ideal, perfect world, is the result of the
ressentiment of metaphysicans who suffer in this world. Metaphysicians do not affirm this world as it is,
and this paves the way for many explanatory theories in philosophy. In criticizing a philosopher who pays homage to the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche says, "he
wants to escape from torture" (GM III 6). The traditional philosopher or the ascetic priest continues to repeat, "'My kingdom is not of this world'" (GM III 10).
This is a longing for another world in which one does not suffer. It
is to escape from this world; to create another illusory,
fictitious, false world. This longing for "the truth" of a world in which one does not suffer is the desire for a world of constancy. It is
supposed that contradiction, change, and deception are the causes of suffering; in other words, the
senses deceive; it is from the senses that all misfortunes come; reason corrects the errors; therefore
reason is the road to the constant. In sum, this world is an error; the world as it ought to be exists. This will to truth, this quest
for another world, this desire for the world as it ought to be, is the result of unproductive thinking. It is
unproductive because it is the result of avoiding the creation of the world as it ought to be. According to Nietzsche , the will to truth is "the
impotence of the will to create" (WP III 585). Metaphysicians end up with the creation of the "true" world in contrast to the actual, changeable,
deceptive, self-contradictory world. They try to discover the true, transcendental world that is already there rather
than creating a world for themselves. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, the transcendental world is the
"denaturalized world" (WP III 586). The way out of the circle created by the ressentiment of metaphysicians is the will to life rather
than the will to truth. The will to truth can be overcome only through a Dionysian relationship to
existence. This is the way to a new philosophy, which in Wittgenstein's terms aims "to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle" (PI §309).
The alternative is to sacrifice the 1AC.
Politics operates from a standpoint of reason. This profane world of utility denies the
possibility of intimate expenditure. We must sacrifice the God of reason to restore
sovereignty. In being destroyed, we render the 1AC useless, which frees us from servility to
instrumental utility.
Biles in 2011 (Jeremy, PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School, “The Remains of God:
Bataille/Sacrifice/Community”, Culture, Theory and Critique, 2011, 52(2–3), 127–144, rcheek)
The anxious desire for durability corresponds to a demeaning substantialisation¶ of the sacred. According to Bataille, genuine
sacrality is not a
‘substantial¶ reality’, but is, on the contrary, ‘an element characterized by the¶ impossibility of its enduring’
(Bataille 1985: 241). The ascendancy of reason,¶ the fear of death, and the will to securing the future bring about a
corresponding¶ elevation of these profane concerns to the status of the ‘right’ sacred.¶ Indeed, the profane
world of utility is projected into an idea of God as a substantial¶ and eternal being, transcending the sacred
world of immanence and¶ the lethal forces of time. It is for this reason that Bataille characterises the personal¶ God as the ‘hypostasis of
work’ and the ‘profanity of this world’ (1994:¶ 82; Surya 2002: 384). ‘God’, Bataille claims, is ‘the end of things, is caught up in¶ the
game that makes each thing the means of another. In other words, God . . .¶ becomes a thing insofar as he is
named, a thing, put on the plane with all other¶ things’ (1993: 383).¶ Within Bataille’s thought, then, God is an expression
of the fear of death ¶ and the corresponding will to shore up one’s individual self, attempting to¶ procure, through reasoned
calculations that would secure the future, a sense¶ of enduringness, eternity. In making God the elevated figure of reason,¶
duration, and eternity, Christianity, claims Bataille, ‘made the sacred substantial’¶ – a mere thing (1985: 242). God becomes an expression not of the¶ sacred, but
rather a ‘tenacious obsession with the lastingness’ of our individual¶ selves (Bataille 1986: 16). Understood this way, God
represents an
impediment¶ to what Bataille refers to as communication, the intimacy afforded by the¶ dissolution of the self
in experiences of sovereign expenditure. It is thus this¶ ‘God of reason’ – the God of salvation, of enduring
forms, of eternal life –¶ that must be the victim of an ‘incessant sacrifice’ that will restore sovereignty ¶ (Bataille
1988: 88; 1993: 378).¶ Bataille’s theory of sacrifice illuminates this point. According to Bataille,¶ the victim of a sacrifice is always something
subjected to the ‘domination of¶ labor’ – rendered a mere thing. The sacrificial object, whether human or¶
animal, is drawn out ‘of the world of utility’ and restored to the realm of¶ the sacred, for sacrifice annuls an
object’s ‘ties of subordination’. Although¶ sacrifice destroys the object it renders sacred, its aim is not mere
obliteration.¶ Bataille makes the crucial point that ‘the destruction that sacrifice is intended¶ to bring about is not
annihilation. The thing – only the thing – is what sacrifice¶ means to destroy in the victim’ (1992a: 43). This is to say
that in being¶ destroyed, what had been made servile, an instrument or tool withi0n the¶ realm of utility and
reason, is rendered useless . In this sense, then, death is¶ the realm of the sacred, of immanence, for it is in death
that the boundaries¶ that delineate and separate objects in the world are temporarily transgressed,¶
destroyed, thus returning those objects to the intimate domain of continuity.¶ The contagious force of sacrifice is such that
its lethal effects extend from¶ the victim to those who witness its immolation. Bataille argues that in sacrificial¶ rituals, the
consecrated sphere promotes a sense of heightened attention¶ by which the participants in the ritual identify with the victim being put to¶ death. At the moment
that the throat of a sacrificial animal is slashed, for¶ example, the witnesses to the sacrifice likewise undergo an experience ‘on¶ the level of death’; their
sense of enclosed subjectivity is, for a time, ruptured,¶ and intimacy is restored in an experience of deep
communication. ‘The individual¶ identifies with the victim in the sudden movement that restores it to¶ immanence (to intimacy)’; he undergoes a fleeting
experience of dissolution¶ in the realm of the sacred.
And, we are already dead. Means there is no impact to the aff and the only question is how
you relate to existence.
Bahder in 2007(Paul, Medical Doctor, “We Are Already Dead”,
http://www.homeopathyusa.com/we_are_already_dead.htm, rcheek)
What we call “our life” is really the experience that takes place in time and space. The ever-changing character of our
physical experience has led the Buddha to formulate the Law of Impermanence and Jesus to say, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The underlying commonality
between these pointers to truth is the
realization that the physical experience of being alive is temporary, changing and
in a deeper way not the ground reality of what is. It is the realization that behind this world of appearances
there exists a realm, a context that is changeless, not limited by time or space.¶ When we are fixated and
bound by the impermanent flow of experience we are in fact unaware of the changeless context of
consciousness. The relentless passing of what we see, hear, taste, touch, smell, of what we imagine or think
means that we are already possessed by time and dead to the timeless. It means that time, the condition of
passing on and ending everything without an exception is really the realm of death – the end of what we
know.¶ We are in fact already dead and it is only our unresolved issues that keep us attached to the world of
images and sounds that we know . Our family, the places we know, the settings that have served as the background to the story of our life –
these are the emotional attachment points keeping us in the past and preventing us from recognizing that this
past is in fact already GONE. We are already dead to the past . The past is no longer here. It is gone as we
know it. It exists only as reflections in our mind bringing up emotional content and drawing us into the
dream we call “our life.”¶ The future likewise is not here. We do not have life in the future simply because the
future is not here. We cannot live in the future. We cannot eat, or kiss or cry in the future. Our experience is
always now even if it involves images symbolic of another time. The past is gone, the future is not yet here.
Time removes us from living to dreaming. “ Don’t look back. Move on. You are already dead.” This is the
priceless advice we receive about our experience in the physical realm.¶ Tibetan Book of the Dead is in fact the book of the
living. It calls adepts to awake into a higher sense of reality, out of the temporal to life eternal. It reminds us over and over again saying, “You are dead.
Keep moving toward the light. Do not look back. Recognize you are already dead.” It assures us that the
sensory-mental experience we may be having is a delusion, a mirage engaging out attention in empty,
lifeless images. True life lies ahead, in the unknown. True life is being revealed to us in the present moment.
It is timeless and it cannot exist in time. That is why it has no duration. Its appearance is signaling at the
same time its dissolution and end. Time does not exist in the eternal. The eternal is timeless. The eternal is
not a whole lot of time. Time has no entrance into eternal even though eternal permeates time.
1NC
The 1AC is imbued with Orientalism
Said in 1978
(Edward W., former Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, “Orientalism”, p. 321322)
The system of ideological fictions I have been calling Orientalism has serious implications not only because
it is intellectually discreditable. For the United States today is heavily invested in the Middle East, more heavily than
anywhere else on earth: the Middle East experts who advise policy-makers are imbued with Orientalism almost to a
person. Most of this investment, appropriately enough, is built on foundations of sand, since the experts instruct
policy on the basis of such marketable abstractions as political elites, modernization, and stability, most of
which are simply the old Orientalist stereotypes dressed up in policy jargon, and most of which have been completely
inadequate to describe what took place recently in Lebanon or earlier in Palestinian popular resistance to Israel. The Orientalist now tries to see
the Orient as an imitation West which, according to Bernard Lewis, can only improve itself when its nationalism "is
prepared to come to terms with the West." If in the meantime the Arabs, the Muslims, or the Third and Fourth Worlds go unexpected ways
after all, we will not be surprised to have an Orientalist tell us that this testifies to the incorrigibility of Orientals and therefore proves that they are not to be
trusted. The methodological failures of Orientalism cannot be accounted for either by saying that the real Orient is different from Orientalist portraits of it, or by
saying that since Orientalists are Westerners for the most part, they cannot be expected to have an inner sense of what the Orient is all about. Both of these
propositions are false. It is not the thesis of this book to suggest that there is such a thing as a real or true Orient (Islam, Arab, or whatever); nor is it to make an
assertion about the necessary privilege of an "insider" perspective over an "outsider" one, to use Robert K. Merton's useful distinction.'" On the contrary, I have
been arguing that "the
Orient" is itself a constituted entity, and that the notion that there are geographical spaces
with indigenous, radically "different" in habitants who can be defined on the basis of some religion, culture,
or racial essence proper to that geographical space is equally a highly debatable idea. I certainly do not believe the
limited proposition that only a black can write about blacks, a Muslim about Muslims, and so forth. And yet despite its failures, its lamentable jargon,
its scarcely concealed racism, its paper thin intellectual apparatus, Orientalism flourishes today in the forms I have tried to describe.
Indeed, there is some reason for alarm in the fact that its influence has spread to "the Orient" itself: the pages of books and journals in
Arabic (and doubtless in Japanese, various Indian dialects, and other Oriental languages) are filled with second order analyses by Arabs of "the Arab mind,"
"Islam," and other myths. Orientalism
has also spread in the United States now that Arab money and resources have
added considerable glamour to the traditional "concern" felt for the strategically important Orient. The fact is that
Orientalism has been successfully Accommodated to the new imperialism, where its ruling paradigms do not
contest, and even confirm, the continuing imperial design to dominate Asia.
The ontology of security coupled with the epistemology of strategy produces a totalizing
and metaphysical violence.
Burke in 2007
(Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney, “Ontologies of War: Violence,
Existence and Reason”, Theory & Event, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, pMUSE, cheek)
This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes,
Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger),
showing how they crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and justification, especially in the thought
of Clausewitz. This creates both a profound ethical and pragmatic problem. The ethical problem arises because
of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin
Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image of technology and being in which humans are merely utilitarian
instruments for use, control and destruction, and force -- in the words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of
as a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the linear system of effects
#
imagined in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon itself in a
nihilistic spiral of pain and
destruction. In the era of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt (that
violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn against those
that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are made to coincide, other
than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but
What I am trying to describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and
interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in
the social field named by security, statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually
referring back on each other, like charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of knowledge with particular systemic roles
and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity. Positivistic or scientific claims to epistemological truth
supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and political action, which in turn support larger
ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a common horizon of certainty that is
one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more
totalising and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and
instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being)
has analytical value, it tends to break down in action.
their own substance'. 21 #
And, Orientalism destroys all value to life and makes every atrocity thinkable
Said in 2003
(Edward, former Professor of English and Comparative Literature @ Columbia University, “An Unacceptable
Helplessness”, http://www.counterpunch.org/said01182003.html, rcheek)
In this entire panorama of desolation, what catches the eye is the utter passivity and helplessness of the
Arab world as a whole. The American government and its servants issue statement after statement of
purpose, they move troops and material, they transport tanks and destroyers, but the Arabs individually and
collectively can barely muster a bland refusal (at most they say, no, you cannot use military bases in our territory) only to reverse
themselves a few days later. Why is there such silence and such astounding helplessness? The largest power in history is about
to launch and is unremittingly reiterating its intention to launch a war against a sovereign Arab country now ruled by a dreadful regime, a war the clear purpose of
which is not only to destroy the Baathi regime but to re-design the entire region. The
Pentagon has made no secret that its plans are to
re-draw the map of the whole Arab world, perhaps changing other regimes and many borders in the process.
No one can be shielded from the cataclysm when it comes (if it comes, which is not yet a complete certainty). And yet, there is only
long silence followed by a few vague bleats of polite demurral in response. After all, millions of people will be affected. America contemptuously
plans for their future without consulting them. Do we reserve such racist derision? This is not only unacceptable: it is impossible to believe. How can a region of
almost 300 million Arabs wait passively for the blows to fall without attempting a collective roar of resistance and a loud proclamation of an alternative view? Has
the Arab will completely dissolved? Even a prisoner about to be executed usually has some last words to pronounce. Why is there now no last testimonial to an
era of history, to a civilisation about to be crushed and transformed utterly, to a society that despite its drawbacks and weaknesses nevertheless goes on
functioning. Arab babies are born every hour, children go to school, men and women marry and work and have children, they play, and laugh and eat, they are
sad, they suffer illness and death. There is love and companionship, friendship and excitement. Yes, Arabs are repressed and misruled, terribly misruled, but
they manage to go on with the business of living despite everything. This
is the fact that both the Arab leaders and the United
States simply ignore when they fling empty gestures at the so-called "Arab street" invented by mediocre
Orientalists. But who is now asking the existential questions about our future as a people? The task cannot be left to a cacophony of religious fanatics and
submissive, fatalistic sheep. But that seems to be the case. The Arab governments -- no, most of the Arab countries from top to
bottom -- sit back in their seats and just wait as America postures, lines up, threatens and ships out more
soldiers and F-16's to deliver the punch. The silence is deafening. Years of sacrifice and struggle, of bones broken in
hundreds of prisons and torture chambers from the Atlantic to the Gulf, families destroyed, endless poverty
and suffering. Huge, expensive armies. For what? This is not a matter of party or ideology or faction: it's a matter of what the great theologian
Paul Tillich used to call ultimate seriousness. Technology, modernisation and certainly globalisation are not the answer for
what threatens us as a people now. We have in our tradition an entire body of secular and religious discourse that treats of beginnings and
endings, of life and death, of love and anger, of society and history. This is there, but no voice, no individual with great vision and moral authority seems able now
to tap into that, and bring it to attention. We
are on the eve of a catastrophe that our political, moral and religious leaders
can only just denounce a little bit while, behind whispers and winks and closed doors, they make plans
somehow to ride out the storm. They think of survival, and perhaps of heaven. But who is in charge of the present, the
worldly, the land, the water, the air and the lives dependent on each other for existence? No one seems to be in charge. There is a wonderful
colloquial expression in English that very precisely and ironically catches our unacceptable helplessness, our passivity and
inability to help ourselves now when our strength is most needed. The expression is: will the last person to leave please turn out
the lights? We are that close to a kind of upheaval that will leave very little standing and perilously little left
even to record, except for the last injunction that begs for extinction. Hasn't the time come for us collectively to demand and try
to formulate a genuinely Arab alternative to the wreckage about to engulf our world? This is not only a trivial matter of regime change, although God knows that
we can do with quite a bit of that. Surely it can't be a return to Oslo, another offer to Israel to please accept our existence and let us live in peace, another
cringing crawling inaudible plea for mercy. Will
no one come out into the light of day to express a vision for our future that
isn't based on a script written by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, those two symbols of vacant power and overweening
arrogance? I hope someone is listening.
The alternative is to embrace our criticism of the Orientalist rhetoric embedded in the 1AC.
Voting negative opens up spaces of resistance to the Orientalist meta-narrative of the 1AC
Shome in 1996
(Raka, Visiting Scholar in the Social and Cultural Analysis Department @ New York University, “Postcolonial
Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An “Other” View”, Communication Theory, Volume 6, Issue 1, pp. 40-59,
rcheek)
Second, the
postcolonial critique of western discursive imperialism that constructs racial “others” and that
legitimizes the contemporary global power structures has important implications for rhetorical criticism in
that it beckons us to recognize postcolonialism as a timely and important critical and political perspective. As
Williams and Chrisman (1994) emphasizes with great urgency in their introduction to Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, it is alarming “how many of
the attitudes, the strategies, and even how much of the room for maneuver of the colonial period [still] remain in place” (p. 3) in contemporary social, cultural, and
I would add, academic practices. Given this, it
is unfortunate that in our literature we hardly find articles, especially in our
mainstream journals, that examine neocolonial representations of racial “others” or that analyze, for instance, the
discursive processes through which the (white) “West” gets constantly legitimized in political, cultural, and
social discourses. For instance, it is significant that while other kinds of analyses were done on George Bush's Gulf War rhetoric,8 there were
hardly any analyses of how the U.S. rhetoric on the Gulf war constructed the Middle Eastern people (and different
Muslim cultures) as uncivilized and immoral and always already inclined toward barbaric terrorist activities. (The
recent depictions of Muslims and Middle Eastern people in the media during the World Trade Center bombing is also an example of this kind of rhetoric.) Nor
am I aware of any rhetorical study that examines how the U.S. political and media discourse always
constructs the countries with whom U. S. foreign relations reach an impasse, as devilish “others” bent on
destroying the world order envisioned by U.S. imperialism. (The media coverage of North Korea as “The headless beast” [my
emphasis], a caption that Newsweek ran on its cover after the death of Kim ii Sung, North Korea's former head of state, is a recent example.)9 My Point here is
not necessarily to condone the activities of any of these groups or countries but rather to suggest that when
the rhetoric of cultural “othering”
is manifest in almost every aspect of public discourse, it is unfortunate that rhetorical scholars have not
done much to expose and decry the neocolonial strategies through which such discourse operates. At a time
when every form of bigotry (racial, cultural, and sexual) prevail in our discipline, by not adequately focusing
on issues of neocolonialism and racism seems to be imprisoning itself in an ivory tower from which it seems
more and more unable to hear the many oppressed who are struggling to be heard. The implications of all
this for our discipline is simple. We simply need to engage in postcolonial analyses of texts. we need to
develop critical perspectives that now seek to examine and expose to what extent neocolonial forces,
whether they be representations of “others” or representations of self, underwrite cultural, political, and
academic discursive practices, for as I have already suggested, if texts are sites of power that are reproduced by their
social conditions, then neocolonial and racial forces are, to some extent, always already written into our
texts. It is only when we embrace postcolonialism as a significant critical perspective that rhetorical studies
will be able to adequately engage in the present historical and social conditions.
Adv 1
Structural uncertainty makes ilaw ineffective
Goldsmith 09
Jack Goldsmith, Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Daryl Levinson, Fessenden Professor of
Law, Harvard Law School, Harvard Law Review, May 2009, vol. 122, no. 7, "LAW FOR STATES: INTERNATIONAL
LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, PUBLIC LAW", 1792-1868
International law lacks a centralized and hierarchical lawmaker akin to the legislature inside a state to
specify authoritative sources of law and the mechanisms of legal change and reconciliation. It also lacks centralized and
hierarchical judicial institutions to resolve the resulting legal uncertainty . As a result, its norms are imprecise,
contested, internally contradictory , overlapping, and subject to multiple interpretations and claims. International
law’s inability to resolve this uncertainty has fueled skepticism about its status as law ; law that is unclear or
unknowable, many believe, cannot be described as a real legal system, and in any case cannot be effective .32 States coordinate public
A. International Law
understandings of what counts as law largely through the institutional mechanism of an authoritative legislature. But of course there exists no global legislature.
International legal rules are created through two decentralized mechanisms: treaties and customary international law (CIL). A treaty results from the consent of
two or more nations, and binds only those nations that ratify it.33 A small handful of treaties — the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, for example —
have been ratified by practically every nation in the world. But even these universal laws are laboriously constructed through the same decentralized process of
negotiation and consent. CIL also originates through a decentralized process; its content is derived from those customary state practices that states follow out of
a sense of legal obligation (opinio juris).34 These decentralized lawmaking processes
give rise to fundamental uncertainty
about the content of international legal norms. The problem of uncertainty is most severe with respect to CIL,
which lacks any clear rule of recognition. Little agreement exists as to what types of state action count as state
practice.35 Official pronouncements, certain types of legislation, and diplomatic correspondence are relatively (but not entirely) uncontroversial sources of
CIL, but international law has no settled method for weighing or ordering these sources or for determining when they
count as evidence of opinio juris. Bilateral and multilateral treaties are sometimes invoked as evidence of CIL, though rarely consistently or
coherently.36 The writings of jurists are a secondary source of CIL, but jurists rarely agree even on supposedly settled rules.37 Nonbinding statements and
resolutions of multilateral bodies, most notably the resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly, are also invoked as a basis for CIL, as are moral and ethical claims.
each potentially relevant source of CIL may point in a different direction , and there is no formula or
agreed-upon set of principles for reconciling them. Nor is there any authoritative institutional mechanism — the equivalent
of a legislature or supreme court — for definitively resolving CIL’s content. The unsurprising result is frequent and
persistent contestation over the content of CIL. By comparison, the secondary rules for treatymaking are relatively well-settled, and there
is much less disagreement over what counts as a treaty.38 But there is still a great deal of disagreement about the content of treatybased international law because the relationships between different treaties, and between treaties and CIL, are
subject to no settled rules . The U.N. Charter is among the most fundamental of international laws, and its Article 103
provides that Charter obligations trump other international law obligations.39 But when NATO countries bombed Kosovo in violation of the
U.N. Charter’s prohibition on the use of force, many scholars contended that there was a developing CIL exception for
humanitarian intervention, and there has been much disagreement — among both scholars and nations — about this point ever since.40 There are also
Needless to say,
many unsettled questions about the validity of important treaty obligations that conflict with the Charter. 41 Similarly, different human rights treaties (for example
the European Convention on Human Rights42 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights43) contain different and in some respects
contradictory rights, and there is disagreement among courts, legal institutions, and scholars about which prevails.44 The same is true of obligations imposed by
the World Trade Organization that conflict with obligations imposed by other treaty regimes.45 Thus, even
when the relevant rules of
international law can be clearly identified, it often remains unclear how overlapping and inconsistent rules are
to be reconciled and systematized . In theory, the international legal system has a set of meta-rules — rules of
nonretroactivity, last-in-time, the priority of lex specialis, and normative hierarchy (prioritizing the U.N. Charter or jus cogens norms) — that are supposed
to help sort out these conflicts.46 But in practice these rules are often contested and indeterminate. 47 Lacking a
centralized legislative process, the international legal system commonly allows for the unbridled proliferation of
contradictory norms.
No military response in Ukraine– not a NATO member and sanctions solve escalation
Pace 14 [JULIE PACE (AP White House Correspondent); “Obama expresses concern that Russia will move deeper
into Ukraine, warns Putin not to”; 3/25/14; http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/03/25/us-allies-seek-toisolate-russia-moscow-shrugs]
While Putin did not attend the long-planned Nuclear Security Summit, his provocative actions in Ukraine dominated the two
days of talks in
The Hague. Western nations have used their long-planned meetings here to project a united front in their
dispute with the West, banking that diplomatic and political isolation might prevent Putin from launching
further incursions into eastern and southern Ukraine. Russia has amassed thousands of troops on its border near those regions, raising anxieties in
Washington, as well as in other former Soviet territories. Obama sought to reassure some of those nations that NATO would come to
the defense of any member of the 28-nation alliance. "When it comes to a potential military response, that is
defined by NATO membership," he said. "That's what NATO's about." The West's preferred method for
preventing an escalation of the conflict continued to be economic sanctions , both on individuals close to Putin and the Russian
economy
No ISIS capabilities – can’t attack US
Benjamin, 8-17 (Daniel, “Hawks exaggerate Islamic State threat to the United States,” Boston Globe,
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/08/17/hawks-exaggerate-isis-threat-united-states/yICJ0bpzRhoK88GtauyHLO/story.html)
To judge by the doom-laden prophecies cascading in from Washington, the United States faces a towering
and imminent threat in the form of the militant group calling itself the Islamic State, or ISIS. “They are coming here,”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina intoned on Fox News Sunday. “I think of an American city in flames because of the terrorists’ ability to
operate in Syria and Iraq.” Senator Graham’s friend Senator John McCain is no less alarmist. Calling for immediate air strikes in Iraq and Syria, he declared,
“They are getting stronger all the time . . . And their goal . . . is destruction of the United States of America.” Stoking the panic has been a very excitable press.
On CNN last week, I was asked if Islamic State fighters represented an “existential threat” to the United States. Set
aside that absurdity; no
terrorist group threatens our existence. (America has faced one existential threat in modern times — the Soviet nuclear arsenal — and that is
it.) But is the Islamic State (IS) a huge and menacing terrorist threat? Certainly not to the United States today.
The danger to Iraq and its neighbors is real. The Islamic State has shown itself to be a formidable insurgency. Its focus is on ripping apart Iraq and Syria, sowing
sectarian conflict, and creating in its midst a new jihadist state or caliphate. (That very word seems to incite fearmongers: “Every day that goes by, ISIS builds up
its caliphate, and it becomes a direct threat to the United States,” said New York Representative Peter King, conjuring an image of a new Golden Horde with
nuclear-tipped scimitars.) If the insurgency grows, and the threat to Jordan or Lebanon increases, we may have to act. But, for now, it’s important to understand
that even
if marauding operatives in Land Cruisers may be humiliating Iraq’s hollowed-out military, that
doesn’t mean they have genuine terrorist skills. Consider the details: The Islamic State has never carried out a
significant attack outside of its neighborhood. In 2005, when its operatives were still part of Al Qaeda in Iraq, operatives carried out hotel
bombings in Jordan and tried and failed to attack an American warship in the Red Sea. More recently, four people were killed in an apparent lone-wolf attack at
the Jewish museum in Brussels by a young man trained in Syria. In other words, we’ve
seen no demonstrated ability to carry out the
kind of complex international strike that kills dozens or hundreds, let alone engulfs a US city in flames.
No nuclear terror—deterrence and prevention solves
Mearsheimer ’10 John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the
University of Chicago, “Imperial by Design,” The National Interest, 12/16/2010,
http://nationalinterest.org/print/article/imperial-by-design-4576
This assessment of America’s terrorism problem was flawed on every count. It was threat inflation of the highest order. It made no sense to declare war against
groups that were not trying to harm the United States. They were not our enemies; and going after all terrorist organizations would greatly complicate the
daunting task of eliminating those groups that did have us in their crosshairs. In addition, there was no alliance between the so-called rogue states and al-Qaeda.
In fact, Iran and Syria cooperated with Washington after 9/11 to help quash Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. Although the Bush administration and the
neoconservatives repeatedly asserted that there was a genuine connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, they never produced evidence to back up
their claim for the simple reason that it did not exist. The fact is that states have strong incentives to distrust terrorist groups, in part
because they might turn on them someday, but also because countries cannot control what terrorist organizations do, and they may do something that gets their
patrons into serious trouble. This is
why there is hardly any chance that a rogue state will give a nuclear weapon to
terrorists. That regime’s leaders could never be sure that they would not be blamed and punished for a
terrorist group’s actions. Nor could they be certain that the United States or Israel would not incinerate them
if either country merely suspected that they had provided terrorists with the ability to carry out a WMD
attack. A nuclear handoff, therefore, is not a serious threat. When you get down to it, there is only a remote possibility that terrorists
will get hold of an atomic bomb. The most likely way it would happen is if there were political chaos in a
nuclear-armed state, and terrorists or their friends were able to take advantage of the ensuing confusion to snatch a loose nuclear weapon. But even
then, there are additional obstacles to overcome: some countries keep their weapons disassembled,
detonating one is not easy and it would be difficult to transport the device without being detected. Moreover,
other countries would have powerful incentives to work with Washington to find the weapon before it could
be used. The obvious implication is that we should work with other states to improve nuclear security, so as to make this slim possibility even more unlikely.
Finally, the ability of terrorists to strike the American homeland has been blown out of all proportion. In the
nine years since 9/11, government officials and terrorist experts have issued countless warnings that
another major attack on American soil is probable—even imminent. But this is simply not the case.3 The only
attempts we have seen are a few failed solo attacks by individuals with links to al-Qaeda like the “shoe
bomber,” who attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001, and the “underwear bomber,” who tried
to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in December 2009. So, we do have a terrorism problem, but it is hardly
an existential threat. In fact, it is a minor threat. Perhaps the scope of the challenge is best captured by Ohio State political scientist John Mueller’s
telling comment that “the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s . . . is about the
same as the number killed over the same period by lightning, or by accident-causing deer, or by severe
allergic reactions to peanuts.”
US Legalization doesn’t create a spillover to international policies
Haase 2014 Heather Haase, New York consultant for the International Drug Policy Consortium and the Harm
Reduction Coalition, 2014, “The 2016 Drugs UNGASS: What does it mean for drug reform?,”
http://drogasenmovimiento.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/13-10-14-the-2016-drugs-ungass-e28093what-does-itmean-for-drug-reform_.pdf)
But beyond the idea of simple respect
for international law, there are practical aspects of reform to consider. The drug
problem is a global one, involving not only consuming countries but producing and transit countries as well.
Without global cooperation, any changes will at best be limited (marijuana reform in Washington and Colorado hardly
affects the issue of human rights abuses in Singapore or the limitations on harm reduction measures in Russia ). At worst,
reform efforts enacted ad hoc around the world could be contradictory and incompatible - as might be the
result if, for example, Colombia and the US opted for a regulated market without the cooperation of Costa
Rica or Honduras, both transit countries.
They won’t cause modeling or spill over to other drugs
Miron 14 Jeffrey Miron is Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics
at Harvard and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Cato Institute, January 27, 2014, “Is the War on Drugs Over?”,
http://object.cato.org/publications/commentary/war-drugs-over
In December 2013, Uruguay
legalized marijuana, Earlier, in 2012, Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana under the laws of their states, and
decriminalized all drugs
in 2001, and the Netherlands has practiced de facto legalization for marijuana for decades. More broadly, many countries have deescalated their “Wars on Drugs.” Indeed, President Obama hinted strongly in a recent interview that he supports marijuana legalization. Legalization
advocates, therefore, are feeling optimistic: Many expect full legalization, at least for marijuana, within a few years. This euphoria is
understandable, but premature . Legalizers are correct that prohibition is a terrible approach to balancing the costs of drug abuse against the costs
21 additional states and the District of Columbia have now decriminalized or allowed medical use of marijuana. Portugal
of policies that attempt to reduce drug abuse. Prohibition drives drug markets underground, thereby generating violence and corruption. Participants in black
markets cannot resolve their disputes with courts and lawyers, so they resort to violence instead. Prohibition makes quality control difficult, so the incidence of
accidental poisonings and overdoses is higher than in a legal market. People who purchase alcohol know what purity they are getting; people who purchase
cocaine or heroin do not. Prohibition spreads HIV. Elevated drug prices incentivize injection (users get a big bang for the buck), while fostering restrictions on
clean needles. Users therefore share dirty needles, which accounts for a large fraction of new HIV infections in the United States. Prohibition harms those who
use drugs despite prohibition, since they risk arrest and imprisonment in addition to the negatives of drug use itself. Prohibition encourages racial profiling and
other infringements on civil liberties. Neither party to a drug transaction wants to notify the police, who therefore use more intrusive tactics in the attempt to
enforce the law. Prohibition wastes criminal justice resources and prevents collection of taxes on the production or purchase of drugs, thus adversely impacting
government budgets. And abundant evidence from America’s experiment with Prohibition, from state decriminalizations, and medicaliziations; from comparisons
across countries with weak versus strong prohibition regimes; and from experience with other prohibited commodities suggests that prohibitions generates only
moderate reductions in drug use. Some of that reduction, moreover, is a cost of prohibition, not a benefit—since many people consume drugs without ill effects
on themselves or others. Prohibition is therefore a terrible policy, even if one endorses government attempts to reduce drug use. Prohibition has large costs with
minimal “benefits” at best in terms of lower use. So legalizers are right on the merits, and recent opinion polls show increasing public support for legalization (at
least for marijuana). But the
negatives of prohibitions have been widely understood at least since the 1933 repeal of
alcohol prohibition, yet this has not stopped the U.S. from pushing drug prohibition both at home and
abroad. In addition, further progress toward legalization faces serious impediments. The first is that recent deescalation of the Drug War addresses marijuana only . Yet much prohibition-induced harm results from prohibitions of cocaine, heroin,
and methamphetamine. Public opinion is less open to legalizing these drugs. Even worse, drug warriors might respond
to marijuana legalization by ramping up hysteria toward still-prohibited drugs , increasing prohibition-induced ills in those
markets. The public would then observe increased drug-market violence in the wake of marijuana legalization, which would appear to show that legalization
causes violence. A different worry is that while public opinion currently swings toward legalizations, public opinion can change. And
marijuana remains
illegal under federal law, so a new president could undo President Obama’s “hands off” approach. Perhaps the
greatest threat to legalization is that many people—including some legalizers—believe policy can eliminate the black market and its negatives while maintaining
strict control over legalized drugs. That is why recent legalizations include restrictions on production and purchase amounts, retail locations, exports, sales to
tourists, high taxes, and more. If these restrictions are so weak that they rarely constrain the legal market, they do little harm. But if these restrictions are serious,
they re-create black markets. Legalizers must accept that, under legalization, drug use will be more open and some people will misuse. The incidence of use and
abuse might be no higher than now; indeed, outcomes like accidental overdoses should decline. But legalizers
should not oversell, since that
risks a backlash when negative outcomes occur. None of this is meant to deny that recent policy changes
constitute real progress. But these gains will evaporate unless the case for legalization includes all drugs
and is up front about the negatives as well as the positives.
Adv 2
Marijuana legalization isn’t key to resolving federalism
Kamin 2012 [Sam Kamin, “- Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Rights & Remedies Program, University of Denver Keynote: Marijuana
at the Crossroads,” Denver University Law Review, Volume 89 Issue 4 (2012)
Thus, the
state has permitted (or at least tacitly endorsed) that which the federal government has officially prohibited—the
possession of mari-juana.8 This development is both contradictory and unproblematic from a federalism perspective . That
is, it is a matter of black letter constitutional law that the federal government cannot commandeer state governments
into helping federal officials enforce the CSA’s continuing marijuana prohibition.9 And the federal government, although free to prohibit
mari-juana under its Commerce Clause power,10 cannot force the states to pro-hibit particular conduct that they do not wish to
prohibit. Thus, there is nothing inherently illegitimate or inappropriate about the states choosing to decriminalize or
even permit conduct that violates federal law.11 pg. 979
Federalism stable now –Obama is sustaining it
Schwartz 13 - [David S. Schwartz is a Professor of Law @ University of Wisconsin, “Presidential Politics as a Safeguard of Federalism,” University of
Wisconsin, Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Paper No. 1229 (September 16, 2013)
I do not contend that the President necessarily and always the best positioned of the three branches to protect federalism, as a structural matter or in practice. In
the case of marijuana legalization, however, events have clearly shown the President to be the most politically
sensitive to policy initiatives in a small number of states, and the best-positioned to craft a flexible response.
As we have seen,. the policy preference of a relatively small number of electoral swing states has commanded the
attention of both political parties It appears to have motivated the incumbent administration to markedly alter its enforcement
practices in deference to state legalization experiments . And it appears to have caused the Republican party to back
away from its traditional “tough on crime” posture, as its platforms and candidates have opted to avoid the marijuana
legalization question as much as possible – thereby giving the Obama administration more latitude to play to the interests and
preferences of the marijuana legalization states. It seems unlikely that the Republicans would have abandoned their historical “red meat” issue
had marijuana legalization been localized in safe-Democratic states; and the Democrats might well have determined they could count on winning states like
Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont even if the Obama administration had taken a tougher enforcement line on marijuana legalization. In other words, the
policy preference of a relatively small number of swing states may have had decisive influence on presidential politics on this issue. It is entirely possible that
presidential politics would have taken the same approach to marijuana legalization if that had been limited to a single state – Colorado. It is thus fair to say that
the presidential politics has shown a high degree of sensitivity to state autonomy in this area. ¶ Looking at how a sitting president can respond to such political
signals, what we see is significant flexibility filtered through a seemingly limited category of prosecutorial discretion. It is no secret that the on-the-ground
enforcement of the law has a tremendous impact on a law’s ability to influence behavior. Robert Mikos
has argued that executive branch
under-enforcement of a federal regulation can be protective of federalism , where, as here, full enforcement of a criminal
prohibition requires a significant commitment of resources in the form of law enforcement agents and prosecutors. While Mikos’s point is not doubt correct
as far as it goes, it doesn’t fully capture the reality of the Obama administration’s approach to marijuana legalization. Nor does his
argument fully appreciate the significant difference between under-enforcement as an epiphenomenon of resource contraints (Mikos’s description) and underenforcement stemming from a conscious, announced policy choice. More people will be deterred by the law on the books than will be deterred when told
expressly the law will not be enforced. ¶ In theory, the interpretive and enforcement discretion of the Executive Branch gives it a range of options for
accommodating state policies that contradict the letter of federal law, constrained by the President’s duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The
Obama administration has not chosen to follow the statutorily authorized path of removing marijuana from Schedule I.99 The Justice Department has stopped
short, though not far short, of announcing a formal waiver of the CSA to accommodate state legalization laws. By
couching the policy determination
in terms of prosecutorial discretion, the Obama administration avoids judicial administrative law review of the action,100 while
minimizing the political risk inherent in a more formal shift in the governing law or in a charge that the
President is not enforcing the law in good faith. The prosecutorial discretion / enforcement priorities
approach is thus more flexible that the formal legal avenues available to the other branches, because it can
achieve far-reaching practical effects while minimizing political backlash. ¶ CONCLUSION ¶ The decades-old debate over
whether federalism is best protected by judicial or political processes – and hence, over whether the Supreme Court should apply a deferential approach to
questions regarding the scope of national legislative jurisdiction – has become prominent again. Although it upheld “Obamacare” as an exercise of the taxing
power, a majority of the Court held that a key element of the national health law fell outside Congress’s commerce power, raising significant questions for future
economic legislation. This debate over the “political safeguards of federalism” has, up to now, virtually ignored the impact of the Electoral College and “electoral
math” as an important element strengthening the argument that political processes protect the policymaking autonomy of the states. ¶ The example of state
marijuana legalization offers strong evidence supporting the notion that presidential politics can safeguard
federalism under certain conditions. The medical marijuana example illustrates what those conditions are. Where a salient state policy choice is in tension
with the prevailing national policy and is centered in electorally significant swing states, presidential aspirants anticipating a reasonably close election (not a
landslide) are likely to stake out positions deferential to state policy autonomy. The presidential aspirant might be an out-of-power candidate seeking the office for
the first time, or an incumbent seeking re-election. The policies may be reflected in campaign statements or in actions taken by the re-election-conscious
incumbent. The statements and actions may be equivocal. But, in
the case of marijuana legalization, the 2012 presidential
campaign reflected an environment in which state policy choices were given considerable latitude: neither
party expressed unequivocal opposition to medical marijuana legalization, nor did either party make
opposition to recreational marijuana legalization a focal point issue. ¶ It might thus be said that presidential
electoral politics can be a significant factor in safeguarding federalism. To the extent that presidential
electoral politics affect presidential policies, the marijuana example illustrates how even a low-key approach
to enforcement of federal law can go a long way toward creating a space for state policy autonomy. And on
the marijuana legalization issue in particular, presidential electoral politics seems to have done far more to
preserve state policy autonomy than judicial review has. pg. 33-35
No bioterror
Schneidmiller ‘9 Chris Schneidmiller, “Experts Debate Threat of Nuclear, Biological Terrorism,” Global Security
Newswire, 1/13/2009, Experts Debate Threat of Nuclear, Biological Terrorism
Panel moderator Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, said academic
and governmental discussions of acts of
nuclear or biological terrorism have tended to focus on "worst-case assumptions about terrorists' ability to
use these weapons to kill us." There is need for consideration for what is probable rather than simply what is
possible, he said. Friedman took issue with the finding late last year of an experts' report that an act of WMD terrorism would "more likely than not" occur in
the next half decade unless the international community takes greater action. "I would say that the report, if you read it, actually offers no analysis
to justify that claim, which seems to have been made to change policy by generating alarm in headlines." One
panel speaker offered a partial rebuttal to Mueller's presentation. Jim Walsh, principal research scientist for the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, said he agreed that nations would almost certainly not give a nuclear weapon to a nonstate group, that most terrorist organizations have
no interest in seeking out the bomb, and that it would be difficult to build a weapon or use one that has been stolen. However, he disputed Mueller's assertion
that nations can be trusted to secure their atomic weapons and materials. "I don't think the historical record shows that at all," Walsh said. Black-market networks
such as the organization once operated by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan remain a problem and should not be assumed to be easily
defeated by international intelligence services, Walsh said (see GSN, Jan. 13). It is also reasonable to worry about extremists gaining access to nuclear
blueprints or poorly secured stocks of highly enriched uranium, he said. "I worry about al-Qaeda 4.0, kids in Europe who go to good schools 20 years from now.
Or types of terrorists we don't even imagine," Walsh said. Greater consideration must be given to exactly how much risk is tolerable and what actions must be
taken to reduce the threat, he added. "For all the alarmism, we haven't done that much about the problem," Walsh said. "We've done a lot in the name of nuclear
terrorism, the attack on Iraq, these other things, but we have moved ever so modestly to lock down nuclear materials." Biological Terrorism Another two analysts
offered a similar debate on the potential for terrorists to carry out an attack using infectious disease material. Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the
Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, played down the threat in comparison to other health risks. Bioterrorism
has
killed five U.S. citizens in the 21st century -- the victims of the 2001 anthrax attacks, he said. Meanwhile, at
least 400,000 deaths are linked each year to obesity in this country. The United States has authorized $57 billion in spending
since the anthrax mailings for biological prevention and defense activities, Leitenberg said. Much of the money would have been better used to prepare for
pandemic flu, he argued. "Mistaken threat assessments make mistaken policy and make mistaken allocation of financial resources," Leitenberg said. The
number of states with offensive biological weapons programs appears to have stabilized at six beginning in
the mid-1970s, despite subsequent intelligence estimates that once indicated an increasing number of
efforts, Leitenberg said. Caveats in present analyses of those states make it near-impossible to determine the
extent to which their activities remain offensive in nature, he added. There has been minimal proliferation of
biological expertise or technology to nations of concern in recent decades, Leitenberg said. He identified roughly 12 Russian
scientists who ended up in Iran and shipments of technology and pathogen strains to Iraq from France, Germany, the former Soviet Union and the United States
between 1980 and 1990. No
evidence exists of state assistance to nonstate groups in this sector. Two prominent extremist
organizations, al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, failed to produce pathogenic disease strains that could be
used in an attack, according to Leitenberg. Terrorists would have to acquire the correct disease strain, handle it
safely, correctly reproduce and store the material and then disperse it properly, Leitenberg said. He dismissed
their ability to do so. "What we've found so far is that those people have been totally abysmally ignorant of
how to read the technical, professional literature," Leitenberg said. "What's on the jihadi Web sites comes from
American poisoners' handbooks sold here at gun shows. Which can't make anything and what it would make
is just garbage."
Their gene research is a form of ableism, dismissing body difference in utopian fashion
Sandra Levi and Mark Sherry 2005 [Sandra, Associate Professor at Midwestern University, and mark, dept of sociology at university of Toledo, definitions
of ableism http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/9671_022850_Albrecht_EntriesBeginningWithA.pdf
The emerging field of enhancement medicine pushes the boundaries of what is the human norm through genetic
manipulation (genomic freedom) and biological bodies (morphological freedom) through surgery, pharmaceuticals, implants and other means (Sandberg, 2001;Wolbring, 2005).
Such scientific endeavours fit well with the existing medicalization of the human body where more and more variations of
human body structure and functioning are labelled as deviations or diseases. This means that more and more‘healthy’ people feel ‘unhealthy, feel
bad about their bodily structure and functioning’ (Wolbring, 2005). The transhumanized version of ableism elevates the medicalization dynamic to
its ultimate endpoint, namely, to see the enhancement beyond speciestypical body structures and functioning as a
therapeutic intervention (transhumanization of medicalization) (Wolbring, 2005). As more powerful, less invasive and more sophisticated enhancements become available, the
market share and acceptance of enhancement products will grow. For any given enhancement product there will not be a bell curve distribution, but rather a distribution jump from the
‘have nots’ to the ‘haves’, which will lead directly to an ability divide.Whatwill change ^ depending on the social reality such as GDP of the economy, income levels and other parameters ^
is how many people end up as ‘haves’or ‘non-haves’ (intrinsic and external techno-poor disabled). The
ability divide will be complex between high- and low-
income countries and between the poor and richwithin every country. Not everyone can afford enhancing one’s body, and no society can afford to
enhance everyone’s body if everyone so wishes. Those deemed able by most people today, but who cannot afford or do not want the technological enhancements tomorrow will became
the new class of ‘techno-poor disabled’. Billions
of people, who today are seen as able, will become disabled not because their bodies
have changed, but precisely because they have not changed their bodies in accordance with the transhumanist norm. Such a
future will lead to a transhumanized version of disableism where those who do not have or do not want certain enhancements
(the intrinsically techno-poor disabled) will be discriminated against, given negative labels and suffer oppressive and abusive
behaviour and other consequences.
2NC
2NC---Orientalism K
Orientalist ontology is imbued in American foreign policy on the Middle East
Rotter in 2000
(Andrew J., professor of history at Colgate University, “Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic
History”, The American Historical Review, October 2000,
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/105.4/ah001205.html, rcheek)
American diplomatic historians may not be interested in Edward Said, but he is interested in them. While Orientalism
was primarily a study
of British and French representations of Middle Eastern Others in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, Said nevertheless devoted a good deal of space to the period after 1945, when American power supplanted that
of Great Britain and France, and Americans, he argued, inherited the Western Orientalist
apparatus. American Orientalism went well beyond vaguely populist stereotypes that Arabs or
Muslims were prone to violence, incapable of rational thought, untrustworthy, devious, and
unclean. Instead, "the Middle East experts who advise [U.S.] policymakers are imbued with
Orientalism, almost to a person." Since 1978, as Said has refined his thinking about imperialism and
paid increasing attention to its American version, he has read broadly in the field of U.S. foreign
relations. Footnotes in his Culture and Imperialism (1993) include works by William Appleman Williams, Richard Van Alstyne, Walter LaFeber, Michael
Hunt, and Paul Kennedy, all of them scholars of American foreign relations.1
The Eurocentricity of the law constructs whiteness as a necessary means for salvation
which creates the worst forms of colonial violence
Nunn 1997 [Kenneth B. "Law as a eurocentric enterprise." Law & Ineq. 15 (1997): 323. LEXIS//BlackMagic]
The law supports Eurocentricity through its false universalism and its privileging of the European historical
experience. Eurocentric law presents itself as rational, transcendent, objective, without ideological content
and applicable to all. n211 The law is depicted as a necessity; without it, chaos would reign and civilization
would perish. Consider for example the following comments from a leading American legal historian: The rule of law is one of our culture's most important
concepts and one of the great forces in the history of western civilization... The rule of law meant that there existed a body of rules
and procedures governing human and governmental behavior that have an autonomy and logic of their own.
The rule of law - the rule of rules, if you will - proposed to make all persons equal before a neutral and
impartial authority. Its legitimacy derived largely from the possibility of applying it on a reasoned basis free from the whim and caprice of both individuals
and government [independent of considerations of] social position, governmental office, family of birth, wealth, and race ... n212 [*359] Notwithstanding
such heady rhetoric, the law's autonomy and universality may be brought into question. The law's claim to
universality is merely its thinly disguised cultural chauvinism. This is especially evident in the law's
treatment of the doctrine of precedent, or stare decisis. Stare decisis, or the assumption that the law is best built
piece by piece on the decisions of the past, supposedly guides and shapes the development of the law. n213 It
is assumed that reliance on past precedents gives a greater degree of certainty to legal decisions. n214 But the doctrine of precedent has an
ideological function as well. n215 This can be seen by considering the origins of legal precedents. In commonlaw jurisdictions, the precedents come from England. Thus, a link is established between United States
jurisprudence and England that gives English law priority and elevates it to a special place of privilege in the
decision-making process. n216 Precedent serves to tie United States jurisprudence to its place of origin. n217 If law were truly
universal, then courts in the United States would cast around and choose their precedents from among the
world's best reasoned decisions. By relying solely on English precedents, n218 United States law makes the ideological
assertion that English law - white law - is superior to all others. Looked at objectively, this reverence for the
common law seems bizarre. It is absurd to argue that the historical and cultural developments of English
landholders and peasants are so universal, and so transcendent that they can be called upon to resolve
problems and settle disputes in Nigeria, Ghana or Singapore. n219 This state of affairs is acceptable only if the culture of England is
accepted as a paradigm for all other cultures, everywhere. And English
culture can only be accepted as paradigmatic if it is
believed in some way to be superior or "better" than others. In this way, the law becomes an instrument of
cultural hegemony. It celebrates the superiority of European culture in an allegedly multicultural world. This
problem is replicated in any attempt to address law as a discipline, whether one is in a common law or a civil law jurisdiction. To speak of law, one must pay
homage to all the great white thinkers who laid its foundation, or added to its reach: Cicero, Holmes, Pound, Hand, Austin, Rawls, to name but a few. No
matter how illustrious the career of a nonwhite jurist or how well-developed the legal philosophy of nonWestern cultures, they are not so acknowledged. To understand why, one need only consider the essentially
racist character of Eurocentric thought. Racism, Fitzpatrick shows, is the consequence of Eurocentricity's hunger
for dichotomy: n220 "With the creation of modern European identity ... the world was reduced to European terms and those terms were equated with
universality. That which stood outside of the absolutely universal could only be absolutely different to it." n221
Difference, however, can only be tolerated in European culture if it is subsumed in hierarchy. n222 That is what
Eurocentricity does with those it perceives as "other." This is done through the elevation of European standards to the level of
the universal. As European standards are elevated, non-European standards are lowered, n223 a process in which the law plays a central role. Again, to
quote Fitzpatrick: "True' nationalism ... resides with the nations of the West. It sets norms of performance which
other "newer' nations can [*361] seek to achieve but to which they only, so far and in varying degrees,
approximate. These norms exemplified by the West are transcendent and universal yet also specifically
national. So, the use of "objective' criteria, the achievement of a rational and "industrial' culture, "the
establishment of an anonymous, impersonal society,' institutional differentiation and the depersonalization
of power are all values and achievements which can both typify the West yet be universal because of their
ultimate constitution in the negation of what is local and personal, status-ridden, traditional, irrational,
undifferentiated, agricultural, and so on. n224 Over the course of their history, and even to this day, European and Europeandominated countries have shown no hesitancy in imposing their laws and customs on other peoples, usually
on the grounds that indigenous law was inferior. In 1900, President McKinley gave instructions to the Philippine Commission established
to revise the laws of the Philippines, then a colony of the United States. n225 He stated: The Commission should bear in mind, and the people of the Islands
should be made plainly to understand, that there are certain great principles of government which have been made the basis of our governmental system, ... and
that these principles and these rules of government must be established and maintained in their islands for the sake of their liberty and happiness, however much
they may conflict with the customs or laws of procedure with which they are familiar. n226 Thus, law
in European and European-derived
countries was considered to be part of a grand, transcendent tradition. Although it was different and considered superior to the
legal concepts found in the rest of the world, it was also considered universal. And so there was little reason not to export
this "gift," often through force of arms, to the majority peoples of the world. Although the European was liberal with his law,
he was parsimonious with his rights, and this is especially true in regard to the right of self-determination. n227 This potent combination is a
constant feature of European contact with other cultures and thus merits further attention. European
colonizers dominated the majority peoples of the [*362] world, took their land, and destroyed or corrupted their
cultures. n228 Yet these colonizers always proceeded "legally" through treaties or the dictates of international law.
n229 Ani argues convincingly that the European preoccupation with "legalizing" their conquests served the double
purpose of disarming their victims and bolstering the European self-image. n230 A key part of the European
belief system is faith in the linear notion of "progress," n231 the belief that later historical developments are
superior to preceding ones and that the course of human history flows from worse to better. This, in
combination with the European conviction that white culture was superior to the world's other cultures made
European conquest a matter of pride and self-esteem. n232 Their conquests needed to be "legal" in order to
provide the full psychological benefits. In addition, the export of European law was deemed as synonymous with the export of European
"civilization" and thus synonymous with progress: The concept of "codified law" is a definite ingredient of that of civilization;
for with civilization, according to European ideology, comes order and legality assures "lasting order" - not moral
conduct but consistent and predictable conduct. So that the "civilized" way - the European way - is to bring
laws, however forcibly, and the structures of European culture ("civilization") to those whom one treats immorally
and for whom one has no respect. n233 From a pragmatic perspective, then, the law cannot be viewed as a positive force
for change. The law must be viewed for what it is, a necessary component for the extension of white power
around the globe. Although the introduction of law into indigenous societies brought order, it did not - it
could not - bring peace. Instead "law was in the vanguard of what its own proponents saw as a "belligerent
civilization,' bringing "grim presents' with its penal regulation and, in the process, inflicting an immense
violence." n234 Consequently, the best choice for people of color who choose to resist white dominance is to
reject the law, to become "out/laws," since "by refusing to relate to Western order, these individuals [*363] ...
succeed in robbing [Europeans] of a potent tool for psychological and ideological enslavement." n235
The perm’s inclusion of calculative thought still reduces the world to utility
Schurmann in 1987
(Reiner, Professor of Philosophy @ The New School for Social Research in New York, “Heidegger on Being and
Acting: From Principles to Anarchy.” P.279-280)
2. To
grant the thing an open field means furthermore to free thinking from representations of an end. If technology is
the triumph of telic rationality and if thinking that triumph requires a step back to its conditions, then
thinking has no identifiable goal. It does not enter the telic network, either to enforce or negate it. The constitution, retention, possession and
master of objects is not its task. In its essence and its activity it remains free from teleocratic dominion. Its essence is far too poor, and the task is
accomplishes far too modest, to weigh on technology since to think is to follow things as they emerge into their world.
It is to follow the emerging from absence into presence, i.e., presencing. Its poverty is nevertheless instructive. It instructs us
about an origin without a telos; an origin that is always other and always new; on which one cannot count
and which thereby defies the technico-scientific complex born from telic rationality. Heidegger’s counsel to grant the
thing an open field, then, also yields an imperative. Things that enter their world are other than products that enter a planning
scheme. Products have a use. That operational purpose constitutes their very being. To speak of things
instead of objects given for handling or subsistent as stock is to disengage entities from the frame of finality.
How can such disengagement or dis-enframing be carried out? With the imperative contained in this question: “Are we in our existence historically at the origin?”
To be at the origin would be to follow in thinking and acting the phenomena’s oriri, their emergence ‘without
why’. Concerning the “open field” into which things emerge Heidegger cites Goethe: “Seek nothing behind the phenomena would be the noumena, and only
divine intelligence would know the role I has assigned them among the marvels of creation. In conversation, Heidegger also quoted Rene Char: “Look only once
at the wave casting anchor in the sea.” “Of call clear waters, poetry is the one that dallies least in the reflections of its bridges.” Thinking and poetry corrode
teleocracy as rust from a gentle rain corrodes iron. Again, it is Meister Eckhart who dared translate such corrosion into a discourse on action: “The just man
seeks nothing in his works. Those are serfs and hirelings who seek anything in their works and who act for the sake of some ‘why.’”
Calculative thought is zero-sum with the alternative – it is a totalizing approach to being
Thiele in 1995
(Leslie Paul, – Professor of Political Science at University of Florida Timely Meditations, p.200-1)
The Midas touch of technology is ontologically devastating. Its defining characteristic is not simply that it reveals the world in a
particular way, but that it usurps all other modes of revelation. In the most fundamental event of the contemporary age, the world
becomes totally enframed as a picture. Worldly life becomes the analogue of film production, a celluloid
reality whose boundaries depend only on our own imaginations and technological skills. With everything
standing in reserve for our use, "distance" disappears. Heidegger is speaking here not of distance as a literal extension
in space, but as an existential sense of our proximity to horizons: chiefly those between earth and sky, mortals and immortals. Indeed,
as our relation to the world becomes technologized, we gradually cease to differentiate distance and
nearness. With everything awaiting production or made ready for consumption, we find ourselves without the means to discriminate
between what sits within our court and what remains beyond our ken. This blurring and transgression of borders is the chief
indicator of an unconditioned anthropomorphism. Heidegger writes: "In the absence of distance, everything becomes equal and indifferent in consequence of the
one will intent upon the uniformly calculated availability of the whole earth. This is why the battle for the dominion of the earth has now entered its decisive phase.
The all-out challenge to secure dominion over the earth can be met only by occupying an ultimate position
beyond the earth from which to establish control over the earth. The battle for this position, however, is the
thoroughgoing calculative conversion of all connections among all things into the calculable absence of distance.
This is making a desert of the encounter of the world's fourfold—it is the refusal of nearness" (WL 105-6). In other words, enframing brings the world completely
within our grasp. Like a closely held picture, Heidegger foresaw early on, everything becomes "overseeable, controllable, definable, connectable, and explicable."
The refusal of nearness marks a lost sense of relatedness to the world as a place of boundaries.
1NR
Predictions
Embrace ignorance of the future. The fall into the void of certainties may lead to another
kind of spending on the scale of the universe. We understand all that depletion implies, and
yet throw ourselves into the future, laughing at and with death. This affirmation of chance
opens the possibility for a postsustainable world
Stoekl in 2007
(Allan, professor of French and comparative literature at Penn State University, “Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion,
and Postsustainability”, p. 204-205, rcheek)
Following Bataille, we can argue that the future,
the fall into the void of certainties (God, Man, quantifiable and usable
energy) may lead to another kind of spending, “on the scale of the universe,” which, in spite of itself, would
entail what I have called postsustainability. We do not know; what is clear is that one kind of matter, one
energy, one plenitude, is dying; another, monstrous, already here, already burning, announces itself. Hubbert’s
peak announces it, yet betrays it, for Hubbert envisaged only one version of energy. Up until now the development of thought, of philos
ophy, has been inseparable from the fossil fuel– powered growth curve, from “civilization.” The downside of
the bell curve is non -knowledge because the event of the decline of knowledge, the disengagement of
philosophy from economic and social growth, cannot be thought from within the space of knowledge growth
(the perfection of modern truth) or its concomitant absence. We are in unknowable, unthinkable territory—an era of dis propor tion, as
Pascal might call it. The era of Bataille’s peak. “I love the ignorance concerning the future,” wrote Nietzsche, and
Bataille seconded him. For Bataille, any assurances concerning the future, either good or bad, were beside
the point, even silly; instead, there was the play of chance, the affirmation of what has happened, what will
happen. The left hand spends, in gay blindness as well as science, and the future is affirmed, in the night of non -knowledge.36 Does this mean that
we should despair, and use this “ignorance” as an excuse to do nothing? Not at all; we know the difference
between sustainability and catastrophic destruction; we know the difference between global warming and a
chance for some, even limited, species survival. But we also recognize, with Bataille, the inseparability of
knowledge and non -knowledge , the tilt point at which, rather than cowering in fear, we throw ourselves gaily into
the future, accepting whatever happens, embracing everything, laughing at and with death. We will a return
of recalcitrant bodily and celestial energy, of the sacrifice of the logic of the standing reserve; we bet against
the vain effort to will an endless autonomist freedom. We know that sustainability, if such a thing ever were to come
about, would be inseparable not from simple calculation and planning but from the blowback of the movement
of an embrace of the transgressed limit, the intimacy of the world willed to ritual consumation, the embrace of
death -bound bodies: post sustainability.37 In other words, after Bataille, we refuse to take the downside of the bell
curve as a simple and inevitable decline into feudalism, fundamentalism, extinction. We understand all that
depletion implies, and we embrace it, affirming the movement of expenditure at its Varda -esque heart.38
AT---Perm
Ascribes a utility to the alt
Stoekl, 7
(Allan Stoekl is a Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University. “Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability,”
pg. 143) Henge
For Bataille, in 1949, peace was the unforeseen, unplanned aftereffect of spending without return on a national scale. By expending excess energy through the
Marshall Plan, the world was (according to Bataille) spared yet another buildup of weapons. But—and this perhaps was the weakness of Bataille’s argument—
the Marshall Plan distributed money, the ability to buy manufactured goods, energy stored in products and things. For us today, expenditure
entails
the eroticized, fragmented object, the monstrous body that moves and contorts and burns off energy in its death
-driven dance. Expenditure cannot be mass -produced because in the end it cannot be confused with
mechanisms of utility: mass production, mass marketing, mass destruction. All of these involve, are
dependent on, and therefore can be identified with a calculation, a planning, a goal orientation that is foreign
to expenditure as analyzed by Bataille. At best they afford us a simulacrum of the dangerous pleasure of
sacred expenditure (and thus their inevitable triumph over sustainability as austere renunciation). If then we affirm Bataille’s
expenditure, we affirm an energy regime that burns the body’s forces, that contorts, distorts, mutilates the
body, and we affirm as well the forces that are undergone rather than controlled and mastered. The energy of
these forces spreads by contagion; it cannot be quantified and studied “objectively.”14 Which is not to say that it does
not make its effects felt quite literally; the blood -covered voodoo priest in a trance (a photograph reproduced in Erotism), L’Abbé C. squirming in agony, and Dirty
retching violently (in Blue of Noon [1978]) bear witness to this shuddering force.15