Tournament: College Prep | Round: 3 | Opponent: Nueva AK | Judge: Olson, Ryan
A. Interp: the AFF may not claim that the NEG must concede their ethical framework

B.  Violation: they read AFC

C.  Standards:

1.  Ground – they will always choose frameworks that are one sided or extremely narrow – empirically proven since _ give example of why offense flows AFF under their chosen FW.  They’ll also always be ahead on a debate on their terms since they can choose cards and frontlines but we can’t under their advocacy.

Tournament: Damus | Round: 2 | Opponent: Albany EK | Judge: Crucilla, Sarah
The 1AC perpetuates the exact abstraction that recreates anti-black violence by ignoring the underlying antagonism inherent to its structure – asking historically racist institutions to try and fix problems is blind optimism that dooms them to recreate anti-blackness. Curry 13
Dr. Tommy J. Curry 13, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Texas AandM, "In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope, the Reality of Anti-Black Violence and the Demands of the Anti-Ethical", 2013. CC

Despite the rhetorical strategies adopted by both Black and white political theorists which urge Blacks and whites alike to demand Americans to continue their allegiance to the foundational de-racialized ethos of the post-Civil Rights era, the reality of the American racism—its sheer recurring violence against Black people—demands more than symbolic rhetorical allusion. To seriously grasp the reality of racist oppression and the sempiternal machinations of anti-Blackness throughout American society be it in its institutions like the prison industrial complex, its policies like Affirmative action, or its manipulation of Black social degradation and economic disadvantage to support pathological theses about disasters like Katrina or cultural deviance as in the death of Trayvon Martin, Darius Simmons, or Jordan Davis, the study of the matter itself—racism—must be a study of a conceptual disengagement with the myth of racial equality and the “automatic progressivism” of the American liberal project. This disengagement is not simply the refusal to accept the idealism of civil rights myth held beyond the realm of fact, but the disengagement with the illusions of democracy and equality that continue to ignore the role that violence has played and continues to play in the subjugation, incarceration, and vilification of Black life. As Dr. A.J. William Myers reveals in his work groundbreaking work entitled Destructive Impulses, Until at such time white America (and Black America) is openly willing to confront a historical legacy of its own violence (perpetrated against an American people of color), any venture into and/ or expository on race relations becomes an exercise in futility…As a result, therefore, white violence, confined to the subliminal recesses of the American psyche, continues to prevent the transition necessary for the country to move beyond the idea of race. In America, Blackness and the racism that continues to condemn those historical racialized peoples is violence—it is the forceful and coercion enclosing of human beings to an inferior social, political, and economic status of which their own humanity exceeds. This dehumanizing relegation of the raced citizen is not a gradual or incremental debasement, but rather the historically immediate condition of inferiority that presents progress to be attainable by the cyclical degrees of physical violence against the racialized population. For these racially oppressed peoples, violence is the permanent fixture of existence in America, since it is the vitiation of their humanity that rationalizes the varying techniques of their cultural erasure, birthing the emergent symbolic associations of degradation that replace their invisibility, and empowering the intentional enforcements of their societal exclusions. In fact, it is precisely this triumvirate that gauges what we take to be the negation of the necessity of revolutionary change--since the raced is taken to be present, as a result of a critical redefining of humanity, integrated into society.

Their framework arguments are another link – their ethics are colorblind and abstract from reality in a way in a way that is inaccessible to oppressed bodies – they serve as another hoop to jump through before we can engage in racism and are exactly what keeps that oppression prevalent. Curry 2
Dr. Tommy J. Curry 13, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Texas AandM, "In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope, the Reality of Anti-Black Violence and the Demands of the Anti-Ethical", 2013. CC

 In the post-structuralist era, post-colonial thinking about racism specifically, and difference/otherness generally, has given a peculiar ameliorative function to discourse and the performance of “other-ed” identities. In this era, the dominant illusion is that discourse itself , an act that requires as its basis the recognition of the “other” as “similar,” is socially transformative—not only with regard to how the white subject assimilates the similitude of the “other-ed,” but as an actual activity gauged by the recognition by one white person or by a group of white people in any given scenario, is uncritically accepted and encouraged as anti-racist politics.. In actuality such discourse appeals, which necessitate—become dependent on—(white) recognition, function very much like the racial stereotype, in that the concept of the Black body being the expression and source of experience and phenomena (existential-phenomenological-theorization) is incarcerated by the conceptualization created the discursive catalyst yearning to be perceived by the white thing seeing the Black. Such appeals lend potentiality-hope-faith to the already present/demonstrated ignorance-racism-interest of the white individual, who in large part expresses the historical tone/epistemology of their racial group’s interest. When morality is defined, not by the empirical acts that demonstrate immorality, but the racial character of those in question, our ethics become nothing more than the apologetics of our tyrannical epoch. Ought implies a projected (futural) act. The word commands a deliberate action to reasonably expect the world to be able to sustain or support. For the Black thinker, the Black citizen-subject-slave-(in)human, ought is not rational but repressive. For the oppressed racialized thinker, the ethical provocation is an immediate confrontation with the impossibility of actually acting towards values like freedom, liberty, humanity, and life, since none of these values can be achieved concretely for the Black in a world controlled by and framed by the white. The options for ethical actions are not ethical in and of themselves, but merely the options the immorality of the racist world will allow, thus the oppressed is forced to idealize their ethical positions, eliminating the truth of their reality, and the peeling away the tyranny of white bodies, so that as the oppressed, the can ideally imagine an “if condition,” whereby they are allowed to ethical engage racism from the perspective of: “if whites were moral and respected the humanity of Blacks, then we can ethically engage in these behaviors. Unfortunately, this ought constraint only forces Blacks to consciously recognize the futility of ethical engagement, since it is in this ought deliberation that they recognize that their cognition of all values are dependent not on their moral aspirations for the world, but the determined by the will of white supremacy to maintain virtue throughout all ethical calculations. In short, Black ethical deliberation is censored so that it can only engage moral questions by asserting that whites are virtuous and hence capable of being ethically persuaded towards right action, hence all ethical question about racism, white supremacy and anti-Blackness is not about how Blacks think about the world, but what possibility the world allows Blacks to contemplate under the idea of ethics. These ethics, the ethics that result from this vitiated morality, are not arbiters of oppression at all. They are not a rational calculus that is capable of revealing a categorical imperative, rather they function as the Kantian constraints upon human experience; the synthetic apriori upon which the phenomena of whiteness is the landscape of thinking about Blackness under the Western anthropos. There is an implicit appeal to a hierarchy of being that is both empirical and universal—all man is superior to non-man. Hence, ethics emerges as the product of the overrepresentation of Western man thinking itself—projecting itself—into the future. These ethics, theorized away from the anti-Blackness not within it, only uphold an overdetermined virtue of whiteness. They hold within them no actual delineation between good or bad, only a Puritanical call to reason to turn its attention towards the other-ed created. This attention however relies on the perceptions and caricatures of Black torment that appeal to the whites’ self-assuring imagining of themselves, so that even when confronted with racism and their role as whites thinking about Black people incarcerated within a racist society and dying, these whites can claim that their conceptualization of racism itself, or (inter-sectionally) next to other injustices like poverty, sexism, homophobia, etc. makes them (whites) virtuous. It is the process of, the appeal to, “getting whites to recognize” (racist) oppression that allows the destruction of reality, Black death, to continue unabated, since it is the exact moment that whites are forced to engage racist problems in America, be it the anti-Black violence of American society, which animates the aversion of the justice system, the police state, the white citizenry, or the practice of American democracy itself—where the death of Black people/criminals/deviants/thugs remain normal and justified by whites—that they, the white(s) thinking about racism, get to impose upon Black reality, a racist moral maxim, namely that racism is not death and beyond –the end of--ethical calculus or moral evaluation, but ultimately contingent in America and of measurable consequence so much so that must be weighed next to the other democratic values that preserve this great white society: security, safety, individuality, property, profit, and freedom, the very values that when enacted by whites continue to perpetuate one ultimate end, the death of Blacks. 

The 1AC’s colorblindness is itself a form of racism – it acts to shut off conversations about oppression and only allows the voices of whites to be heard. Williams
Monica Williams, "Colorblind Ideology Is a Form of Racism," Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/colorblind/201112/colorblind-ideology-is-form-racism, December 27, 2011. 

Racial issues are often uncomfortable to discuss and rife with stress and controversy. Many ideas have been advanced to address this sore spot in the American psyche. Currently, the most pervasive approach is known as colorblindness. Colorblindness is the racial ideology that posits the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity. At its face value, colorblindness seems like a good thing — really taking MLK seriously on his call to judge people on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It focuses on commonalities between people, such as their shared humanity. However, colorblindness alone is not sufficient to heal racial wounds on a national or personal level. It is only a half-measure that in the end operates as a form of racism. Problems with the colorblind approach Racism? Strong words, yes, but let's look the issue straight in its partially unseeing eye. In a colorblind society, White people, who are unlikely to experience disadvantages due to race, can effectively ignore racism in American life, justify the current social order, and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society (Fryberg, 2010). Most minorities, however, who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, experience colorblind ideologies quite differently. Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives. Let's break it down into simple terms: Color-Blind = "People of color — we don't see you (at least not that bad ‘colored' part)." As a person of color, I like who I am, and I don't want any aspect of that to be unseen or invisible. The need for colorblindness implies there is something shameful about the way God made me and the culture I was born into that we shouldn't talk about. Thus, colorblindness has helped make race into a taboo topic that polite people cannot openly discuss. And if you can't talk about it, you can't understand it, much less fix the racial problems that plague our society. Colorblindness is not the answer Many Americans view colorblindness as helpful to people of color by asserting that race does not matter (Tarca, 2005). But in America, most underrepresented minorities will explain that race does matter, as it affects opportunities, perceptions, income, and so much more. When race-related problems arise, colorblindness tends to individualize conflicts and shortcomings, rather than examining the larger picture with cultural differences, stereotypes, and values placed into context. Instead of resulting from an enlightened (albeit well-meaning) position, colorblindness comes from a lack of awareness of racial privilege conferred by Whiteness (Tarca, 2005). White people can guiltlessly subscribe to colorblindness because they are usually unaware of how race affects people of color and American society as a whole.

Thus the alternative is to embrace anti-ethics; we must refuse the notion that historically racist institutions can help minorities and stop exploitation—fiat is illusory, so we need to destroy and demystify the concept of the white man and white virtue.  Curry 3 

Dr. Tommy J. Curry 13, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Texas AandM, "In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope, the Reality of Anti-Black Violence and the Demands of the Anti-Ethical", 2013. CC

The shift out of our present conception of Man, out of our present “World System”—the one that places people of African descent and the ever-expanding global, transracial category of the homeless, jobless, and criminalized damned as the zero-most factor of Other to Western Man’s Self—has to be first and foremost a cultural shift, not an economic one. Until such a rupture in our conception of being human is brought forth, such “sociological” concerns as that of the vast global and local economic inequalities, immigration, labor policies, struggles about race, gender, class, and ethnicity, and struggles over the environment, global warming, and distribution of world resources, will remain status quo. ¶ Anti-ethics; the call to demystify the present concept of man as illusion, as delusion, and as stratagem, is the axiomatic rupture of white existence and the multiple global oppressions like capitalism, militarism, genocide, and globalization, that formed the evaluative nexus which allows whites to claim they are the civilized guardians of the world’s darker races. It is the rejection of white virtue, the white’s axiomatic claim to humanity that allows the Black, the darker world to sow the seeds of consciousness towards liberation from oppression. When white (in)humanity is no longer an obstacle weighed against the means for liberation from racism, the oppressed are free to overthrow the principles that suggest their paths to liberation are immoral and hence not possible. To accept the oppressor as is, the white made manifest in empire, is to transform white western (hu)man from semi-deitous sovereign citizen to contingent, mortal, and un-otherable. Exposing the inhumanity of white humanity is the destruction/refusal of the disciplinary imperative for liberal reformism and dialogue as well as a rejection of the social conventions that dictate speaking as if this white person, the white person and her white people before you are in fact not racist white people, but tolerable—not like the racist white people abstracted from reality, but really spoken of in conversations about racism. The revelatory call, the coercively silenced but intuitive yearning to describe the actual reality set before Black people in an anti-Black society, is to simply say there is no negotiating the boundaries of anti-Blackness or the horizons of white supremacy. Racism, the debasement of melaninated bodies and nigger-souls, is totalizing. ¶ But such a reality can never be spoken or written about without fear. In order to preserve the possibility of being recognized by whites, be it as citizen-not-terrorist or as a scholar, colleague, human-not-angry-nigger, the Black philosopher, Blackened person must offer to whites vindication—acknowledgement that he recognizes and will speak of-write about whites as having the potentiality for virtue. The revolutionary activity, if that is how we understand the efforts to change the material-physical relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor, making one’s individual assertion of white inhumanity—the local act of critique—real and socially transformative beyond the dialogical (conversations between colleagues, within a discursive space, or disagreements between critics), is not convincing the white subject in dialogue with, the supposed rational ethical subject, that they-it can potentiality to be different, or better. This is a dead end appeal over-determined by trying to “win over,” “be recognized by,” the white subject. The revolutionary activity is to demonstrate as a matter of ontology (this is whiteness as is) that whiteness is irredeemable. In relativizing Western MAN, showing the ethnoclass limitation of Europe’s cultural invention, Black humanity is freed to begin thinking itself anew without the fear of falling into mimicry. In short, seeing whites as they are is the proof that Black consciousness has shifted our present conception of man and has found a new teleological/cultural orientation; an endarkening path towards a new humanity. 

The role of the ballot is to vote for the debater that best deconstructs power relations – pedagogical contexts like debate are uniquely political and your ballot promotes a true opportunity for change. Trifonas

Trifonas, Peter. PEDAGOGIES OF DIFFERENCE: RETHINKING EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE. New York, London. 2003.

Domination and subordination, I imply that they are relations of power. In an educational context, the exercise of power is accomplished in interactions (i.e., in a social organization), manifesting itself as acts of exclusion, marginalization, silencing, and so forth. Thus, paying attention to how power operates along axes of gender, race, class, and ability (that is, recognizing that social differences are not given, but are accomplished in and through educational settings) is a step toward educational equity. What does the above discussion mean in the educational context? It means that in the interactions of teachers with students in the classroom, or in other contexts, attention needs to be directed toward how dominant and subordinate relations (be they based on race, gender, class, or ability) permeate these contexts and intersect in complicated ways to produce inequality and marginalization. The frequently used and well-meaning phrase, “I treat everyone the same, ” often used by teachers and administrators to indicate their lack of bias in a diverse educational setting, in fact masks unequal power relations. Similarly, educational policies that assume that people are the same or equal may serve to entrench existing inequality precisely because people enter into the educational process with different and unequal experiences. These attempts, well meaning though they may be, tend to render inequality invisible, and thus work against equity in education. In her exploration of white privilege in higher education in the United States, Frances Rains (1998), an aboriginal-Japanese American woman, states emphatically that these benign acts are disempowering for the minority person because they erase his or her racial identity. The denial of racism in this case is in fact a form of racism. Thus, in moving toward equity in education that allows us to address multiple and intersecting axes of difference and inequality, I recommend that we try to think and act “against the grain” in developing educational policies and handling various kinds of pedagogical situations. 5 To work against the grain is to recognize that education is not neutral; it is contested. Mohanty puts it as such: … Education represents both a struggle for meaning and a struggle over power relations. It is a central terrain where power and politics operate out of the lived culture of individuals and groups situated in asymmetrical social and political positions. (Mohanty 1990:184) We need to develop a critical awareness of the power dynamics operative in institutional relations-and of the fact that people participate in institutions as unequal subjects. Working against the grain is to take a proactive approach to understanding and acting upon institutional relations, whether in the classroom, in other interactions with students, or in policy development. Rather than overlooking the embeddedness of gender, race, class, ability, and other forms of inequality that shape our interactions, working against the grain makes explicit the political nature of education and how power operates to privilege, silence, and marginalize individuals who are differently located in the educational process. In her exploration of feminist pedagogy, Linda Briskin (1990) makes a clear distinction between nonsexist and antisexist education critical to our understanding here. She asserts that nonsexism is an approach that attempts to neutralize sexual inequality by pretending that gender can be made irrelevant in the classroom. Thus, for instance, merely asserting that male and female students should have equal time to speak-and indeed giving them equal time-cannot adequately rectify the endemic problem of sexism in the classroom. One of Briskin's students reported that in her political science tutorials that when the male students spoke, everyone paid attention. When a female student spoke, however, the class acted as if no one was speaking (13). Neutrality is an attempt to conceal the unequal distribution of power. An against the grain approach would acknowledge explicitly that we are all gendered, racialized, and differently constructed subjects who do not participate in interactional relations as equals. This goes beyond formulating sexism, racism, abilism, and class privilege in individualist terms and treating them as if they were personal attitudes. Terry Wolverton (1983) discovered the difference between nonracism and antiracism in her consciousness-raising attempt: I had confused the act of trying to appear not to be racist with actively working to eliminate racism. Trying to appear not racist had made me deny my racism, and therefore exclude the possibility of change. (191) Being against the grain means seeing inequality as systemic and interpersonal (rather than individual), and combatting oppression as a collective responsibility, not just as a personal attribute (so that somehow a person can cleanse herself or himself of sexism, racism, abilism, or class bias). It is to pay attention to oppression as an interactional property that can be altered (see Manners 1998). Roger Simon (1993) suggests, in his development of a philosophical basis for teaching against the grain, which shares many commonalities in how I think about an integrative approach to equity in education, that teaching against the grain is fundamentally a moral practice. By this he does not mean that teachers simply fulfill the mandate and guidelines of school authorities. He believes that teachers must expose the partial and imperfect nature of existing knowledge, which is constructed on the basis of asymmetrical power relations (for instance, who has the power to speak and whose voices are suppressed?). It is the responsibility of the teacher or educator to show how dominant forms of knowledge and ways of knowing constrict human capacities. In exposing the power relations integral to the knowledge construction process, the educator, by extension, must treat teaching and learning as a mutual and collaborative act between teachers and students. What may this ideal look like in practice? Marilyn Cochran-Smith (1991) also explores the notion of teaching against the grain in her research on how teachers and students worked together in a preservice program in the Philadelphia area. Borrowing from Gramsci's formulation that action is everyone's responsibility, she asserts that teaching is fundamentally a political activity. In practical terms, she outlines what it may mean to teach against the grain in an actual teaching and learning situation. Her succinct articulation is worth quoting at length: To teach against the grain, teachers have to understand and work both within and around the culture of teaching and the politics of schooling at their particular schools and within their larger school system and communities. They cannot simply announce better ways of doing things, as outsiders are likely to do. They have to teach differently without judging the ways other teach or dismissing the ideas others espouse…. They are not at liberty to publicly announce brilliant but excoriating critiques of their colleagues and the bureaucracies in which they labor. Their ultimate commitment is to the school lives and futures of the children with whom they live and work. Without condescension or defensiveness, they have to work with parents and other teachers on different ways of seeing and measuring development, connecting and dividing knowledge, and knowing about teaching and schooling. They have to be astute observers of individual learners with the ability to pose and explore questions that transcend cultural attribution, institutional habit, and the alleged certainty of outside experts. They have to see beyond and through the conventional labels and practices that sustain the status quo by raising unanswerable and often uncomfortable questions. Perhaps most importantly, teachers who work against the grain must name and wrestle with their own doubts, must fend off the fatigue of reform and depend on the strength of their individual and collaborative convictions that their work ultimately makes a difference in the fabric of social responsibility. (Cochran-Smith 1991:284-85) For me, to be against the grain is therefore to recognize that the routinized courses of action and interactions in all educational contexts are imbued with unequal distribution of power that produce and reinforce various forms of marginalization and exclusion. Thus, a commitment to redress these power relations (i.e., equity in education) involves interventions and actions that may appear “counter-intuitive.” 6 Undoing inequality and achieving equity in education is a risky and uncomfortable act because we need to disrupt the ways things are “normally” done. This involves a serious (and frequently threatening) effort to interrogate our privilege as well as our powerlessness. It obliges us to examine our own privilege relative though it may be, to move out of our internalized positions as victims, to take control over our lives, and to take responsibilities for change. It requires us to question what we take for granted, and a commitment to a vision of society built on reflection, reform, mutuality, and respect in theory and in practice. Teaching and learning against the grain is not easy, comfortable, or safe. It is protracted, difficult, uncomfortable, painful, and risky. It involves struggles with our colleagues, our students, as well as struggles within ourselves against our internalized beliefs and normalized behaviors. In other words, it is a lifelong challenge. However, as Simon (1993) puts it, teaching against the grain is also a project of hope. We engage in it with the knowledge and conviction that we are in a long-term collaborative project with like-minded people whose goal is to make the world a better place for us and for our children.
The aff’s attempt to whitewash history by ignoring the racist foundations that underlie their theory allows for racial domination to remain invisible – you as a judge must reject the aff’s epistemology and acknowledge the reality of oppression. That’s a voting issue. Leonardo
Leonardo, Zeus. "The souls of white folk: Critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, and globalization discourse." Race, ethnicity and education 5.1 (2002): 29-50. CC

The fragmenting effects of the global economy work in tandem with the fragmenting tendencies of whiteness. As a perspective, whiteness is historicaly fractured in its apprehension of racial formations. In order to ‘see’ the formation in full view, whites have to mobilize a perspective that begins with racial privilege as a central unit of analysis. Since starting from this point would mean whites engage in a thorough historical understanding of ‘how they came to be’ in a position of power, most whites resist such an undertaking and instead focus on individual merit, exception- alism, or hard work. The act of interpreting the totality of racial formations is an apostasy that white students and educators must undertake but one which does not come easy or without costs. The costs are real because it means whites would have to acknowledge their unearned privileges and disinvest in them. This is a different tack from saying that whites benefit from renouncing their whiteness because it would increase their humanity. Whites would lose many of their perks and privileges. So, the realistic appraisal is that whites do have a lot to lose by committing race treason, not just something to gain by forsaking whiteness. This is the challenge. In his discussion of gender and race, Terry Eagleton (1996) provokes a distinction between identity politics and class relations. He calls class position relational in a way that gender and race are not, because possessing a certain skin color or body configuration does not prevent another person from owning such traits. By contrast, a landless laborer occupies a material position because the gentleman farmer owns the land or property. Eagleton goes on to say that being black does not mean one is of a different species from a white person. Pigmentation is not definitive of a general human experience in the same way that freckle-faced people do not constitute an essentialy different human category. In this, Eagleton exposes the racist and patriarchal imagination by highlighting its contradictions and ilogics. However, his analysis leaves out a more powerful explanation of how racism actualy works. Like most oppressive systems, racism functions through an illogical rationalization process. For instance, the one-drop rule, or the Rule of Hypodescent, demarcates blacks from whites by drawing an artiŽ cial and arbitrary line between them in order both to create more slaves and limit people’s power to achieve whiteness. Thus, the power of whiteness comes precisely from its ability to usurp reason and rational thought, and a purely rationalistic analysis limits our understanding of the way it functions. Despite its contradictions, the contours of racism can be mapped out and analyzed and this is what Cheryl Harris (1995) attempts when she compares whiteness to owning property. First, whiteness becomes property through the objectiŽ cation of African slaves, a process which set the precondition for ‘propertizing’ human life (Harris, 1995, p. 279). Whiteness takes the form of ownership, the deŽ ning attribute of free individ- uals which Africans did not own. Second, through the reification and subsequent hegemony of white people, whiteness is transformed into the common sense that becomes law. As a given right of the individual white person, whiteness can be enjoyed, like any property, by exercising and taking advantage of privileges co-extensive with whiteness. Third, like a house, whiteness can be demarcated and fenced off as a territory of white people which keeps Others out. Thus, caling a white person ‘black’ was enough reason, as late as 1957, to sue for character defamation; the same could not be said of a black person being mistaken for ‘white.’ This was a certain violation of property rights much like breaking into someone’s house. In al, whites became the subjects of property, with Others as its objects. As Charles Mils (1997) explains, the Racial Contract is an agreement to misinter- pret the world as it is. It is the implicit consensus that whites frequently enter into, which accounts for their fragmented understanding of the world as it is racialy structured. When confronted with the reality of racial oppression, according to Hurtado, whites respond with: I wil listen to you, sometimes for the Ž rst time, and wil seem engaged. At critical points in your analysis I wil claim I do not know what you are talking about and wil ask you to elaborate ad nauseam. I wil consistently subvert your efforts at dialogue by claiming ‘we do not speak the same language’. (cited in McLaren et al., 2001, pp. 211–212; italics in original) The frequent detours, evasions, and detractions from the circuits of whiteness cripple our understanding of the racio-economic essence of schools and society. It is a distortion of perfect communication in Habermas’s (1984) sense of it which creates what I cal an altogether ‘ideological speech situation.’ That is, communi- cation is ideological to the extent that the ‘ideal speech situation’ is systematicaly distorted, which is different from saying that it is always a bit distorted. As Hurtado plainly describes, radical communication about the Contract meets apathy and indifference, perhaps a bit predictably. Admitting the reality of white racism would force a river of centuries of pain, denial, and guilt that many people cannot assuage. In several instances, both in coleagues’ courses as wel as mine, white students have expressed their emotions and frustrations through tears when white privilege is confronted. In fact, Rains (1997) has described the same event occurring in her courses. Although it might seem cynical or unfeeling to analyze criticaly such an occurrence, it is important to deploy such a critique in the name of political and pedagogical clarity. It is imperative to address the local moment and ‘be there’ for al students but in slicing through the pathos, one also beneŽ ts from re ection on the moment in its larger, global signiŽ cance. The times when I have confronted this scenario can be described as the honest interrogation of racial power engaged by both white and non-white students. At certain moments, some anger has been expressed, sometimes frustration. In general, the milieu is emotional and politicaly charged. How can it not be? In one particular case, I witnessed a situation where a black student interrogated the issue of racial privilege and questioned a white coleague’s comments for failing to do the same. By the end of the exchange, the white student left the room crying and the discussion halted. In another case, an earnest discussion took place about racism and ways to address it in schools. A white student cried because she felt frustrated and a little helpless about how she comes into the fold of becoming an anti-racist educator. After a minute of pause, students of color returned to the discussion at hand, not breaking their stride. In a third instance, in the midst of discussing the importance of building solidarity between teachers against racism, a white student cries and asks her coleagues to remember that they must stay cohesive and support each other as comrades in struggle. A coleague reports a fourth instance where, during a dialogue about the experiences of women of color, a white woman repeatedly insisted that the real issue was class, not race, because her experiences as a woman were similar to the women of color. When a faculty of color informed her that she was monopolizing the discussion and in the process invalidated the voices of women of color, the white woman cried and was unable to continue. In al these cases, we observed the guilt of whiteness prompting the women to cry in shame. Made to recognize their unearned privileges and confronted in public, they react with tears of admission. Discussing (anti)racism is never easy and is frequently suppressed in mainstream classroom conditions. The establishment of the right conditions is precious but often precarious. In the Ž rst case, we must keep in mind that it was the black student who felt dehumanized and subsequently felt enough courage to express her anger about comments she perceived to be problematic. The act of crying by the white student immediately positioned the black student as the perpetrator of a hurt and erased/deraced the power of her charge. A reversal of sorts had just occurred. The white student earned the other students’ sympathy and the professor folowed her to the halway to comfort her white the black student nursed her anger by herself. Likewise, I could not help but feel for the white student. Upon re ection, an important difference needs to be discussed. In the act of crying, the student attenuated the centuries of hurt and oppression that the black student was trying to relay. In the act of crying, the student transformed racism into a local problem between two people. I couldn’t help feeling that other students in the class thought the black person was both wrong and racist, erasing/deracing the institutional basis of what she had to say. The room’s energy suddenly felt funneled to the white student. Clearly, there are more ‘harmonious’ ways of teaching the topic of race and racism. However, they also often forsake radical critique for feelings. Feelings have to be respected and educators can establish the conditions for radical empathy. That said, anger is also a valid and legitimate feeling; when complemented by clear thought, anger is frighteningly lucid. Thus, a pedagogy of politeness only goes so far before it degrades into the paradox of liberal feel-good solidarity absent of dissent, without which any worthwhile pedagogy becomes a democracy of empty forms. White comfort zones are notorious for tolerating only smal, incremental dozes of racial confrontation (Hunter and Nettles, 1999). This does not suggest that educators procure a hostile environment, but a pedagogical situation that fails to address white racism is arguably already the conduit of hostility. It fragments students’ holistic understanding of their identity development through the ability of whiteness to deform our complete picture of the racial formation. It practices violence on the racialized Other in the name of civility and as long as this is the case, racial progress wil proceed at the snail pace of white racial consciousness. White race traitors and progressive Others shal piece together a whole from the fragmentary pieces that whiteness has created out of this world. The Contract challenges educators of the new millennium to explain the untruth of white perspectives on race, even a century after Du Bois’s initial chalenge. Obviously, this does not mean that whites cannot grasp the Contract; many do, but they cannot accomplish this from the white point of view, a world-view which, according to Gibson, projects a ‘delusional world,’ ‘a racial fantasyland,’ and ‘a consensual halucination’ (cited in Mils, 1997, p. 18). With the rise of globalization, education—which prides itself for inculcating into students knowledge about the real world—struggles to represent the world in the most real way possible. White epistemology can be characterized as fragmentary and fleeting because white liveli- hood depends on this double helix. It is fragmentary because in order for whiteness to maintain its invisibility, or its unmarked status, it must by necessity mistake the world as non-relational or partitioned (Dwyer and Jones, III, 2000). This allows the white psyche to speak of slavery as ‘long ago,’ rather than as a legacy which lives today; it minimizes racism toward non-white immigrants today through a convenient and problematic comparison with white immigrants, like the Irish or Jews. It is also fleeting because it must deny the history of its own genesis and the creation of the Other. It can only be concerned with ‘how things are and not how they got to be that way.’ As a socio-spatial epistemology, whiteness sees the world upside-down. Mils (1997) and I agree when he says: Thus on matters related to race, the Racial Contract prescribes for its signatories an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance, a particular pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologicaly and socialy functional), producing the ironic outcome that whites wil in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made. (p. 18; italics in original) According to Mils, whiteness concerns itself with racial details and misses the totality of the Racial Contract. Like the way it partitions the world according to its own image, whiteness constructs history as separate racial details without coherence. As a result, it fails to provide our students the language to link together California’s Proposition 187 (anti-immigrant), 209 (anti-afŽ rmative action), and 227 (anti-bilin- gualism) as related to white hegemony. With the exception of particular Asian ethnic groups (to which I wil return later), al three legislations limit the rights of students of color. Fortunately, white and non-white activists have countered such measures with unrelenting protests and public organizing because, as Hopson et al. (1998) remind us, ‘Recognizing and valuing language varieties and multiple ways of speaking among students is a precondition to understanding how to teach them’ (p. 5). As a racial epistemology, whiteness is necessarily idealist in order to construct the Other as abstract, rather than concrete. Enslavement, discrimination, and marginalization of the Other work most efficiently when they are constructed as an idea rather than a people. They can be more easily controled, aggregated as the same, or marked as unchanging and constant when textbooks idealize them as inconse- quential to the history and evolution of humankind. In effect, whiteness eggs us on to yoke together different peoples around the globe under the sign of sameness.

Debate is a speech act – debaters should be held accountable for their discourse in round.  Vincent
Chris Vincent, Re-Conceptualizing our Performances: Accountability in Lincoln Douglas Debate, Vbriefly, 2013.  NS

The question then becomes how does our discourse justify what we believe? For many debaters it is the gaming aspect of debate that allows us to assume that our speech can be disconnected from the speech act. The speech can be defined as the arguments that are placed on the flow, and is evaluated in the context of what is the most logical and rational argument to win the round. The critical distinction is the speech act, which is the performance of that discourse. It’s not what you say, but what you justify. Understanding the speech act requires critically assessing the ramifications of the debaters discourse. Debate is in and of itself a performance. To claim that it is not is to be divorced from the reality of what we do. We must evaluate what a debaters performance does and justifies.  For white debaters it is easy to view the discourse as detached from the body. For those with privilege in debate, they are never forced to have their performance attached to them but instead their arguments are viewed as words on paper. They are taught to separate themselves from any ideologies and beliefs, and feel that there is no consequence to what they say. It becomes the way in which they justify what is deemed as “rational” and “logical” thought. The argument sounds like it will be competitive so it is read but it is deemed as just an argument. Judges evaluate this as just a speech. This becomes what I deem as a performance by the body, rather than a performance of the body.  Performances by the body allow debaters to not be held accountable to the words they say. Words are seen as divorced from any meaning outside of the flow, versus the performance of the body where the words are attached to the body itself. Debaters often insert the performance by the body, when they make arguments that they claim that they do not believe, but think it is the best strategy for the round. This is a false assumption, since for black debaters meaning is always connected to their bodies. The best strategy should never be one that at the same time justifies acts of racism.

Tournament: Tournament of Champions | Round: 1 | Opponent: X | Judge: X
Interp: The affirmative must disclose the plan text and advantage area if they break new at the toc when pairings are released. Or at coin flip
Standard – 

1. Clash
   2. Discourages tricks
   Vote on substantive engagement:  otherwise we’re speaking without debating and there’s nothing to separate us from dueling oratory.   It also creates the most valuable long-term skills since we need to learn how to defend our beliefs in any context, like politics.

Tournament: College Prep | Round: 1 | Opponent: Bentley KS | Judge: Shan, Panny
Framework—Evaluate the round with the question “is the aff more desirable than the squo or a competitive policy option” 

A) Fairness – their RoB arguments are self-serving to moot 6 minutes of AC offense. They force a restart on a ridiculously small question, which prevents us from weighing the case. Kills engagement and is a prereq to their RoB because they arbitrarily exclude our offense and forces a restart in the 1ar. 

B) Law is necessary – speaking the language of the law through reform can empower people to take back control over their own lives. We don’t have to endorse the law, but rather treat it as a tool to hold the powerful accountable. 

The valorization of rage as a political leads to a vicious cycle of repetitive violence
Wenning ’09
(Mario, Phd., Assistant professor of philosophy @ the University of Macau, “The Return of Rage,” Parrhesia No. 8 pg. 89-99)
The valorization of erotic emotions and virtues over thymotic ones is as old as philosophy itself. Aristotle already insists that the virtuous person cultivates mildness of temper “the even tempered person confesses to be calm and not carried away by his feelings, but to be cross only in the way, at the things, and for the length of time that reason dictates.” 15 Compassion is introduced as an antidote to revenge. The virtuous character does not lose the control that is necessary to provide for a self-sufficient emotional economy, which is the precondition for achieving a life that is marked by wisdom, even-temperedness, and justice. Seneca’s influential work on rage, De ira, which was immensely influential for Christian and humanist ethics, calls for a Stoic control of the dangerous affect. The general suspicion against the destructive consequences of this aggressive emotion is not limited to the European tradition. Confucius already warns his students “to let a sudden fit of anger make you forget the safety of your own person or even that of your parents, is that not misguided judgment?” 16 Daoism and ZenBuddhism promote meditative practices and compassion to overcome our fixation on the need of being angry with ourselves and the world surrounding us. More recently, Martha Nussbaum argued that we should aim to understand “how to channel emotional development in the direction of a more mature and inclusive and less ambivalent type of love.” 17 According to Nussbaum, anger should at best operate as a tool of compassion. Acts of punishment are then seen as merciful rather than vindictive because they aim at the good of the victim. These representative examples illustrate that the erotization of the psyche replaced what is regarded as archaic forms of militancy that, it is contended, mistakenly suggest that honor, pride and craving for recognition (and the rage that results from the violation of these) has been considered to be more important than a concern for justice, equality and compassion. We might think that the dislike of negative emotions in general and potentially aggressive ones in particular results from an insight into the misfortunes these emotions bring about. Revenge, then, is undesirable because it tends to be too costly in producing long term damages. Hegel, for example, reminds us in the Philosophy of Right of the infinite chain of violence, the economy of pay-back that results from blind vengeance and selfadministered acts of justice. 18 The excesses of rage can easily lead to tragic repetitions of an original act of violence that might be impossible to get out of. Honor killings often lead to new honor killings rather than the reestablishment of justice and the fight against terror breed more terrorists. 

Utilize rage as a means to mobilize ati-surveillance movements---targeted rage is key Lesage 85
(Julia, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Nelson and Grossberg, http://pages.uoregon.edu/jlesage/Juliafolder/womensRage.html)
Feminism by itself is not the motor of change. Class, anti-imperialist, and antiracist struggles demand our participation. Yet how, specifically, does women's consciousness change? How do women move into action? How does change occur? What political strategies should feminists pursue? How, in our political work, can we constantly challenge sexual inequality when the very social construction of gender oppresses women? In 1981 I visited Nicaragua with the goal of finding out how and why change occurred there so quickly in women's lives. "The revolution has given us everything," I was told. "Before the revolution we were totally devalued. We weren't supposed to have a vision beyond home and children." In fact, many Nicaraguan women first achieved a fully human identity within the revolution. Now they are its most enthusiastic supporters. For example, they form over 50 percent of the popular militias, the mainstay of Nicaragua's defense against United States-sponsored invasions from Honduras and Costa Rica. In the block committees, they have virtually eliminated wife and child abuse. Yet in Nicaragua we still see maids, the double standard sexually, dissatisfaction in marriage, and inadequate childcare. Furthermore, all the women I talked to defined their participation in the revolution in terms of an extremely idealized notion of motherhood and could not understand the choice not to reproduce. I bring up this example of Nicaragua because Nicaraguan women are very conscious of the power of their own revolutionary example. They know they have been influenced by the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions and are very much shaping how Salvadoran women militants are looking at women's role in the Salvadoran revolution. Because of the urgency and violence of the situation, unity between men and women was and is necessary for their survival, but the women also want to combat, in an organized and self-conscious way, specific aspects of male supremacy in the workplace, politics, and daily life. Both here and in Nicaragua, women's daily conversation is about the politics of daily life. They talk to each other often, complaining about men and about managing the domestic sphere. Women's talk also encompasses complaints about poor and unstable work conditions, and about the onerous double day. However, here in the United States that conversation usually circulates pessimistically, if supportively, around the same themes and may even serve to reconfirm women's stasis within these unpleasant situations. Here such conversation offers little sense of social change; yet in our recent political history, feminists have used this preexisting social form--women's conversation in the domestic sphere--to create consciousness-raising groups. But to what degree is consciousness raising sufficient to change women's behavior, including our self-conception and our own colonized minds? We do not live in a revolutionary situation in the United States. There is no leftist political organization here providing leadership and a cohesive strategy, and in particular the struggle against women's oppression is not genuinely integrated into leftist activity and theory. Within such a context, women need to work on another, intermediate level, both to shape our revolutionary consciousness and to empower us to act on our own strategic demands. That is, we need to promote self-conscious, collectively supported, and politically clear articulations of our anger and rage. Furthermore, we must understand the different structures behind different women's rage. Black women rage against poverty and racism at the same time that they rage against sexism. Lesbians rage against heterosexual privilege, including their denial of civil rights. Nicaraguan women rage against invasions and the aggressive intentions of the United States. If, in our political work, we know this anger and the structures that generate it, we can more genuinely encounter each other and more extensively acknowledge each other's needs, class position, and specific form of oppression. If we do not understand the unique social conditions shaping our sisters' rage, we run the risk of divisiveness, of fragmenting our potential solidarity. Such mutual understanding of the different structures behind different women's anger is the precondition of our finding a way to work together toward common goals. I think a lot about the phenomenon of the colonized mind. Everything that I am and want has been shaped within a social process marked by male dominance and female submission. How can women come to understand and collectively attack this sexist social order? We all face, and in various ways incorporate into ourselves, sexist representations, sexist modes of thought. Institutionally, such representations are propagated throughout culture, law, medicine, education, and so on. All families come up against and are socially measured by sexist concepts of what is "natural"--that is, the "natural" roles of mother, children, or the family as a whole. Of particular concern to me is the fact that I have lived with a man for fifteen years while I acutely understand the degree to which heterosexuality itself is socially constructed as sexist. That is, I love someone who has more social privilege than me, and he has that privilege because he is male. As an institution, heterosexuality projects relations of dominance and submission, and it leads to the consequent devaluation of women because of their sex. The institution of heterosexuality is the central shaping factor of many different social practices at many different levels--which range, for example, from the dependence of the mass media on manipulating sexuality to the division of labor, the split between the public and private spheres, and the relations of production under capitalism. Most painfully for women, heterosexuality is a major, a social and psychological mode of organizing, generating, focusing, and institutionalizing desire, both men's and women's. Literally, I am wedded to my own oppression. Furthermore, the very body of woman is not her own--it has been constructed by medicine, the law, visual culture, fashion, her mother, her household tasks, her reproductive capacity, and what Ti-Grace Atkinson has called "the institution of sexual intercourse." When I look in the mirror, I see my flaws; I evaluate the show I put on to others. How do I break through representations of the female body and gain a more just representation of my body for and of myself? My social interactions are shaped by nonverbal conventions which we all have learned unconsciously and which are, as it were, the glue of social life. As Nancy Henley describes it in Body Politics, women's nonverbal language is characterized by shrinking, by taking up as little space as possible. Woman is accessible to be touched. When she speaks in a mixed group, she is likely to be interrupted or not really listened to seriously, or she may be thought of as merely emotional. And it is clear that not only does the voyeuristic male look shape most film practice, but this male gaze, with all its power, has a social analog in the way eye contact functions to control and threaten women in public space, where women's freedom is constrained by the threat of rape. We need to articulate these levels of oppression so as to arrive at a collective, shared awareness of these aspects of women's lives. We also need to understand how we can and already do break through barriers between us. In our personal relations, we often overcome inequalities between us and establish intimacy. Originally, within the women's movement we approached the task of coming together both personally and politically through the strategy of the consciousness-raising group, where to articulate our experience as women itself became a collective, transformative experience. But these groups were often composed mostly of middle-class women, sometimes predominantly young, straight, single, and white. Now we need to think more clearly and theoretically about strategies for negotiating the very real power differences between us. It is not so impossible. Parents do this with children, and vice versa; lovers deal with inequalities all the time. The aged want to be in communion with the young, and third-world women have constantly extended themselves to their white sisters. However, when women come together in spite of power differences among them, they feel anxiety and perhaps openly express previously suppressed hostility. Most likely, such a coming together happens when women work together intensively on a mutual project so that there is time for trust to be established. Yet as we seek mutually to articulate the oppression that constrains us, we have found few conceptual or social structures through which we might authentically express our rage. Women's anger is pervasive, as pervasive as our oppression, but it frequently lurks underground. If we added up all of women's depression--all our compulsive smiling, ego-tending, and sacrifice; all our psychosomatic illness, and all our passivity--we could gauge our rage's unarticulated, negative force. In the sphere of cultural production there are few dominant ideological forms that allow us even to think "women's rage." As ideological constructs, these forms end up containing women. Women's rage is most often seen in the narratives that surround us. For example: Classically, Medea killed her children because she was betrayed by their father. Now, reverse-slasher movies let the raped woman pick up the gun and kill the male attacker. It is a similar posture of dead end vengeance. The news showed Patty Hearst standing in a bank with a gun embodying that manufactured concept "terrorist," and then we saw her marrying her FBI bodyguard long after her comrades went up in flames. In melodrama and film noir, as well as in pornography, women's anger is most commonly depicted through displacement onto images of female insanity or perversity, often onto a grotesque, fearful parody of lesbianism. These displacements allow reference to and masking of individual women's rage, and that masked rage is rarely collectively expressed by women or even fully felt. We have relatively few expressions of women's authentic rage even in women's art. Often on the news we will see a pained expression of injustice or the exploitative use of an image of a third- world woman's grief. Such images are manipulated purely for emotional effect without giving analysis or context. Some great feminist writers and speakers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Tubman have provided models by which we can understand ourselves, but too often the very concept of "heroine" means that we hold up these women and their capacity for angry self-expression as the exception rather than the rule. In Illinois, women chained themselves together in the state house when it was clear that the ERA would not pass; the women sought to express our collective anger at our legislators' cowardice and to do so in a conspicuous, public way. But actions such as these often have little effect beyond their own time span. We need to think beyond such forms to more socially effective ones. It is a task open to all our creativity and skill--to tap our anger as a source of energy and to focus it aesthetically and politically. We may have to combine images of anger with something else--say, images of how women can construct the collectivity as a whole. It is here that, by their example, our third-world sisters have often taken the lead. Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus, Harriet Tubman leading slaves to the North, an Angolan mother in uniform carrying a baby and a rifle, a Vietnamese farmer tilling and defending her land, Nicaraguan women in their block committees turning in wife abusers to the police--these images let us see that women can gain more for themselves than merely negating the bad that exists. And it is in their constant need to attack both sexism and racism, as well as poverty and imperialist aggression, that third-world feminists now make us all see much more clearly both the urgent need for and the possibility of reconstructing the whole world on new terms. Artistically, emotionally, and politically women seem to need to glimpse dialectically the transcendence of our struggle against sexism before we can fully express sexism's total negation, that is, our own just rage. Sometimes our suppressed rage feels so immense that the open expression of it threatens to destroy us. So we often do not experience anger directly and consciously, nor do we accurately aim our rage at its appropriate target. To transcend negation and to build on it means that we have to see what is beyond our rage. An example of such transcendence was demonstrated by Nicaraguan mothers of "martyred" soldiers (those killed by U.S.-paid counterrevolutionaries) to Pope John Paul II when he visited Managua in April 1983. They stood in the rows closest to the podium where the Pope spoke and they all bore large photos of their dead children. As the events of the day unfolded, the women created an image that stirred the whole people, one that the Pope could not go beyond or even adequately respond to. Here is what happened: The Pope spoke on and on to the gathered crowd about obeying the hierarchy and not getting involved with the things of this world. In frustration and anger, the women began to shout, "We want peace," and their chant was taken up by the 400,000 others there. The women's rage at personal loss was valorized by the Nicaraguan people as a whole, as the grieving mother became a collective symbol of the demand for peace. The chant, "We want peace," referred simultaneously to national sovereignty, anti-imperialism, religion, and family life. The women spoke for the whole. This brings me back to my original question about women's political action in the United States today. One of the major areas of investigation and struggle in the women's movement has been the sphere of daily life. This struggle, represented by an early women's movement phrase--"the personal is the political"--derives from women's real material labor in the domestic sphere and in the sphere of social relations as a whole. Women have traditionally done the psychological labor that keeps social relations going. In offices, in neighborhoods, at home, they often seek to make the social environment safe and "better," or more pleasant. That such labor is invisible, particularly that it is ignored within leftist theory and practice, is one of the more precise indices of women's oppression. And it is feminists' sensitivity to and analysis of social process that clarifies for them the sexism on the Left. Often at a leftist conference or political meeting, many men continue to see women and women's concerns as "other," and they do not look at what the Left could gain from feminist theory or from women's subcultural experience or from an analysis of women's labor. Women who come to such an event have already made a commitment to learn and to contribute, so they make an effort to continue along with the group as a whole but are impeded by sexist speakers' intellectual poverty (e.g., use of the generic "he"), macho debating style, and distance from political activism. Furthermore, not only women feel this political invisibility at leftist events. When black labor and black subcultural experience in the United States is not dealt with, nor is imperialism, or when racism is theoretically subsumed under the rubric of "class oppression" and not accorded its specificity, then third-world participants face the same alienation. To demonstrate this process and analyze what divides us, I will describe an incident that occurred at the Teaching Institute on Marxist Cultural Theory in June 1983. It is worth discussing because it is the kind of incident that happens all too often among us on the Left. Early in that summer session, a coalition of students and the two women faculty members, Gayatri Spivak and me, formed to present a protest statement to the faculty. It was read in every class. Here is what it said: The Marxist-Feminist Caucus met on Friday June 17th and concluded that the "limits, frontiers and boundaries" of Marxist cultural theory as articulated by the Teaching Institute excluded and silenced crucial issues of sexism, racism and other forms of domination. We find ourselves reproducing in the classrooms of the Teaching Institute the very structures which are the object of our critique. The Marxist-Feminist Caucus therefore proposes that each class set aside an hour weekly to discuss strategic silences and structural exclusions. A Marxism that does not problematize issues of gender and race, or of class consciousness in its own ranks, cannot hope to be an adequate tool for either social criticism or social transformation. The institute had a format of having famous Marxist intellectuals lecture, specifically males with job security who have never incorporated a feminist analysis into their theoretical work. Both the format and the content of their lectures enraged some of us, but not others. In a sense, writing a protest statement divided the school's participants between the political ones and the consumers of Marxist theory. This is because critical theory itself has become a pathway for elitist advancement in the humanities and social sciences in universities where these areas are facing huge cutbacks. And the canon of that critical theory is based on Marx and Freud and their contemporary interpretants, Althusser and Lacan. Both at the Teaching Institute and at prestigious universities, young academics could get their quick fix of Marxism, the knowledge of which could help greatly in their academic career. This is a capitalist mode of consuming knowledge. Too many students, especially career- pressured graduate students, want only a well conceived lecture, a digest of Marxist theory and social analysis, something that can be written in a notebook, taken home, and quoted from in a future paper or journal article. Furthermore, we intellectuals fall into this capitalist competitive mode. We feel pressured inside ourselves to be the best. Students are told to buy the best. All the faculty at the Teaching Institute felt that they could not make a mistake, that they had to read and show they had read everything, that they had been challenged on their political practice, accused of being racist or sexist or undemocratic. Our control over the classroom and studied theoretical polish became a kind of professional hysteria and worked against the collective building of Marxist knowledge and theory that we have needed for more effective social change. Since the early 1970s women have come together in meetings like these, in feminist seminars, caucuses, and workshops, partly in resistance to a certain macho leftist or academic style and partly to build a new body of knowledge and feminist political practice. And we have been successful at doing this but it has meant double or triple work for us. Feminist scholarship does not usually lead to academic promotion for a woman. The knowledge women produce is easily marginalized, as was made painfully obvious at that summer school. Feminists and third-world students came to the Teaching Institute knowing how much they needed Marxist theory. They understood that abolishing capitalism and imperialism was the precondition for liberation. They came as political participants expecting to learn theoretical tools to use in fighting oppression. But sex and race were too often ignored--I would say stupidly ignored--as social determinants in the theories presented about social change. (Beyond that, students felt intimidated by name-dropping and teachers' and other students' failure to explain terms. They felt they had to give a polished rebuttal or a cohesive "strategic intervention" before they could speak to refute a lecturer's point.) And when students raised issues of sexism or racism, deflection became the all too frequent tactic used by teachers or some of the white male students in response. No wonder that women, with their sex-role socialization, were often too intimidated to speak. This is a sad analysis, but not an infrequent one in academia. It speaks about political theory and academic sexism and racism, and elitism and class privilege. The incident reveals much of what divides politically progressive people in the United States. These differences must be acknowledged in depth if we are to work together politically in a coalition form. In particular, I understand the texture of women's silence in a forum that demanded a highly rational and developed intervention. Many of the women students at the Teaching Institute already produced feminist theory, but the intimidating nature of this kind of aggressive public speaking made them seem like nonparticipants. And it often happens to me, too. I know that we watch and despair of our own colonized psyches which hold us back in silence precisely when we would choose to be political actors, especially in a Marxist forum. What we have seen in the 1970s and 1980s in North America and Europe is a supercession of political forms related to developments in radical consciousness. Conditions have evolved in the United States that make it impossible to conceive of a revolutionary organizing strategy that does not embrace a black and minority revolution and a feminist revolution. The lesson of the civil rights/black power movement was that blacks will organize autonomously. Now it is the offspring of that movement, Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, that has taken the lead in building an anti-imperialist coalition that addresses the specific struggles and organizing forms of blacks, Latinos, women, and gays. Such a coalition relates to the existence of the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the anti-imperialist movement, by supporting these groups' autonomous organizing and granting new respect, not by subsuming or controlling them. Furthermore, at this point in U.S. history, issues of mass culture and mass communication have to be dealt with, so that minority figures such as Jesse Jackson or Harold Washington, Chicago's black major, have developed an ongoing analysis about racism in the press. As a feminist who has worked both in the cultural sphere and in anti-imperialist work, I have experienced this supercession of forms. In the early 1970s a politically active woman was either "on the Left" or "in the independent women's movement." Some socialist feminists within leftist organizations formed caucuses to try to influence their organizations. In the 1970s I chose to work mostly within the independent women's movement, especially in creating a women's studies program at an urban university. In developing feminist media now within the women's movement, I find many of my sisters addressing broader issues of imperialism, racism, class oppression, and the nuclear threat. Many of us are joining progressive coalitions around these issues. Within these coalitions we must be able openly to declare, "I am a feminist and our feminist position represents the most advanced stand. You men have to join us." Indeed, many men, often younger men, have. As feminists, we are the ones who are building a whole theoretical critique of mass culture and mass communication; we are the ones who are learning how to appropriate all of culture in an oppositional way. And because of our historical position in advanced capitalism, we are one of the first social movements to address cultural issues in such a thorough and complex way. Many feminists are eager to participate in coalitions, the major political strategy for us in the 1 980s. In Chicago, we saw the women's movement and the Left work to elect Harold Washington. In the San Francisco area, gays and lesbians have formed a Central America support group. Both in the United States and abroad, the antinuclear movement contains within it all-women's affinity groups. Latinos in various areas identify and organize as Puerto Rican or Mexican-American according to their ethnic origins and concentration, and also unite in Central American solidarity work. This great diversity of sectoral organizing enriches all of us who are working for social change. Some of the best aspects of current progressive organizing have, in fact, derived specifically from the development of the contemporary women's movement. I mentioned the consciousness-raising groups earlier. I think the women's movement has introduced into political discourse an open and direct critique of the macho style and political posturing of many male leaders. As feminist activists, we have created among ourselves new forms of discussion and a creative, collective pursuit of knowledge--in contrast to an older, more aggressive, male debating style. Particularly important for me, the women's movement has pursued and validated as politically important cultural and artistic work. In Chicago, where I live, I experience a strong continuum and network among community-based artists and women in the art world. We have built up intellectual ties between academic women and feminist film- and videomakers who have created an analysis of how sexuality is manipulated in the visual culture that surrounds us. As a consequence, feminist film criticism has developed a new theoretical framework for analyzing ideology and the mass media. In fact, I think that our building of a feminist cultural theory has made a key contribution to the Left and to revolutionary movements throughout the world. When I want to consider how unleashing our anger might capacitate us to act for change, I reconsider Frantz Fanon's essay "Concerning Violence" in The Wretched of the Earth. In that essay he describes decolonization, particularly the process by which the native sheds the colonizer's values and the colonizer's ways. I understand that my black and Latina sisters in the United States experience a rage against the economic and racial violence perpetrated every day against them; in a way that is similar to what Fanon describes: this rage knows its resolution lies in a complete change of the economic order in which we live. At the same time, I must ask what kind of rage it would be that would effectively contest women's oppression--given all the levels at which gender inequality and women's oppression is articulated in social and personal life. What Fanon describes to us is a specific historical moment at which mental colonization can be and is surpassed. As I look at women's mental colonization, I see our internalized sense of powerlessness, our articulation into masochistic structures of desire, and our playing out of personae that on the surface seem "passive," "self-defeating," "irrational," "hesitant," "receptively feminine," or even "crazy." Much of this behavior stems from internalized and suppressed rage. Fanon describes such behavior in the colonized and posits active rage, the violent response to violence, as its cure. What would the overturning of male supremacy and women's colonization mean to women? How would it be accomplished? Fanon understands that a whole social structure and a new kind of person must come into being, and that those with privilege know, fear, and resist this. His call to armed struggle, based on the very clear demarcations and abuses of power that the native always sees, signals a survival struggle that does not characterize the war between the sexes. As I read Fanon for what he can teach me about women's resistance to oppression in nonrevolutionary society, I read him as a communist psychiatrist talking about how social movements can change the mentality of the oppressed. When I ask about revolution for women now, minimally I see that our contestation cannot be conducted in the mode of nice girls, of managing the egos of and patiently teaching those who oppress, which is a skill and duty we learned from our mothers in the domestic sphere. If we do so, once again we will be placed in that very role of "helpmate" that we are trying to overcome. Angry contestation may take us the extra step needed to overcome our own colonized behavior and tardy response. Let me now rewrite for you parts of Fanon's essay to show its power when discussing the relation between psychological and social change. The distance between the violence of colonization and its necessary response in armed struggle, and the emotional rage I am referring to here in combating sexism, marks the distance between the periphery and the center of international capitalism. By using Fanon in this way, I do not wish to co-opt him for the women's movement but to learn from him, just as I learned from the Nicaraguan women's courage and tenacity. If women must learn to be openly angry, we must learn to draw links between ourselves and those who are more oppressed, to learn new methods of struggle and courageous response. Combating women's oppression as we know it is a historical process: that is to say, it cannot become intelligible or clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements that give it historical form and content. Combating women's oppression is the meeting of two intrinsically opposed forces, which in fact owe this originality to that sort of substantification that results from and is nourished by the social construction of gender. The husband is right when he speaks of knowing "them" well--for it is men who perpetuate the function of wife. Men owe the reproduction of their bodies and psyches to the family. Feminist revolution never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms passive femininity crushed with inessentiality into privileged agency under the floodlights of history. A new kind of woman brings a new rhythm into existence with a new language and a new humanity; combating women's oppression means the veritable creation of new women who become fully human by the same process by which they freed themselves. Feminists who decide to put their program into practice and become its moving force are ready to be constantly enraged. They have collectively learned that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called into question by absolute contestation. The sex-gender system is a world divided into compartments. And if we examine closely this system of compartments, we will at last be able to reveal the lines of force it implies and to mark out the lines on which a nonoppressive society will be reorganized. At the level of individuals, anger is a cleansing force. It frees the woman from her inferiority complex and from despair and inaction; it makes her fearless and restores her self-respect. At this point I will stop citing from and reworking Fanon, deliberately at the point of individual rage. Now is a time when we need to work in coalitions, but we must be very honest about what divides us and what are the preconditions we need before we can work together. I have made the decision to work in leftist and feminist cultural work and in Latin American solidarity work. I think in all our strategies we must analyze the relation of that strategy to feminist, antiracist, and anti- imperialist demands. Women comprise over half the population; any class issues in the United States are intimately tied to the question of racism; we all live off the labor of workers, often underpaid women, in the Third World; and socialist revolution is being waged very near us. Personally, I know that it is by my contact with Nicaraguan women, who insist that men and women must struggle together for our mutual liberation, that I have been politically and emotionally renewed. The problems grow more acute. We know that the Right is racist, homophobic, and sexist. We in the women's movement must stop turning our anger against each other and learn the most effective ways to work together for social change. We can focus our anger and harness it, but to do that we must clearly analyze cause and effect. If theory accompanies anger, it will lead to effective solutions to the problems at hand. We have great emotional and social power to unleash when we set loose our all too often suppressed rage, but we may only feel free to do so when we know that we can use our anger in an astute and responsible way.

Anger-filled politics prevents effective coalition-building and causes movement failure
Thomas Lifson 5, Editor and Publisher of the American Thinker, "Anger-based politics", September 3, awww.americanthinker.com/2005/09/angerbased_politics.html
Anger is a terrific motivator. Angry people contribute money, go to events, wear buttons, t—shirts, and funny hats, and readily slap bumper stickers on their Volvos, Beetles, mini—vans, and Lexuses. They enjoy meeting and spending time with others who are in tune with their particular emotional orientation. Some even find that sharing outrage can lead to sharing other passions, via computer dating services linked to the Dean campaign.¶ But anger has many drawbacks as the basis for an American political movement. Americans tend to favor optimism and a sunny disposition in their political leadership. Ours is a nation built on the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right granted us by our Creator. More than two hundred years after this right was articulated in the Declaration of Independence, Ronald Reagan won overwhelming electoral support running on the slogan 'Morning in America.'¶ Let the Balkan peoples define themselves by their ancient wrongs waiting to be avenged. Let clans like the Hatfields and McCoys in the hollows of West Virginia carry their grudges for generations. They are the curious exception to our general rule of concentrating on what we can become, rather than what our ancestors were. Americans take seriously their birthright, and would rather wipe the slate clean than nurture a collective grudge. Anger is like an acid which curdles the sweet mother's milk of happiness, whose pursuit is so much a part of our national character.¶ Of course, there are some who do choose to define themselves by their ancestors' tragedies, and whose vision of a world put right consists of extracting vengeance of some sort. Most prominently, the movement to collect reparations for slavery, payable 150 years later to the presumptive descendents of slaves, is being touted as a path to cosmic justice. But even its most fervent proponents do not foresee the public ever using the democratic process to enact a reparations law. Rather, litigation, giving the judiciary the opportunity to impose reparations on parties found somehow liable for the damages incurred in the past, is the primary tactic being employed.¶ Aside from its limited electoral appeal, anger is operationally a tricky, even dangerous force to harness. 'Blind anger' is a common expression precisely because anger tends to render its carriers insensible to the complexities and subtleties of their environment. Particularly when the angry gather together, their anger feeds on itself and multiplies its force. It is precisely for this reason that mobs are recognized as dangerous.¶ Even if the shared anger is nonviolent, it still is capable of blinding the angry to the probable reactions of others. Convinced of their utter righteousness, seriously angry political movements readily overplay the cards they are dealt. Haters of Bill Clinton learned the hard way that the middle/majority of Americans could not be mobilized to share their passion, even when they held an ace, in the form of their enemy's false testimony under oath.¶ Anger, held by the candidate and shared by his coterie and followers is the probable reason that Howard Dean has proven so gaffe—prone. He honestly does not seem to understand how most people will react to his assertion that Osama bin Laden is innocent until proven guilty, and nobody around him can caution him to watch his step. The rage which brings them together also precludes them from seeing its dangers. Of course, Dean also seems to have a problem with talking before thinking, and acting on impulse is another characteristic of the angry.¶ Anger requires an object. There must be someone or some group at which the anger is directed. By its nature, therefore, anger divides people. If the object of the anger is external to the nation, then anger can unite a people, as it has such nations as the Greeks, Koreans, and Poles. But if the object is internal to a nation, then schism, a rejection of the 'we the people...' ethos, rears its head.
Rage is self-destructive. At root, rage is an expression of the internalization of oppression that they experience. It is impossible to live as long as we live with rage.
Greer 1/8 2k8 (Germaine, “The Rage Epidemic” http://albany.yourguide.com.au/news/national/national/general/the-rage-epidemic/1233455.aspx)
Most people think that suicide is an act of grief; in fact it is part of the spectrum of self-destructive behaviour that we should associate with rage. The prime mover of self-harming is rage. The typical self-harmer has endured physical violence, emotional abuse or sexual abuse as a child or young adult; according to the British charity mental health charity Mind, "They might have been neglected, separated from someone they loved, been bullied, harassed, assaulted, isolated, put under intolerable pressure, made homeless, sent into care, into hospital or to other institutions."
Humans can live with grief but they can't live for long with rage. Part of rage is self-loathing; self-loathing expresses itself in hostility towards those close enough to get hurt. Those who love the enraged person the most can expect the cruellest treatment.
We have learnt how to recognise rage in traumatised children, and to distinguish real rage from the performance of rage, which we call a tantrum. Tantrums can be discouraged; rage is a different matter. Enraged children are a danger to themselves and to others. As rage chemicals flood their bodies they will tremble, clench their fists, go stiff, "zone out", become frenzied, revert to baby talk or gabbling, bang their heads against the wall and do their best to hurt anyone who comes close. They are so unaware of their surroundings that they cannot be allowed outside the house.

Tournament: College Prep | Round: 1 | Opponent: Bentley KS | Judge: Shan, Panny
Interpretation - The AFF may only garner offense from hypothetical enactment of the resolution 

This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine the debate’s subject matter.  Solves their method good offense – they can read  as a framework argument to justify a topical plan, there’s no reason voting off it is key.

Insert topic definitions

Violation: 

They defend  which isn’t the topic.  

Standards:  

1.  Engagement – there are infinite non topical AFFs - a precise and predictable point of difference is key to effective dialogue.  Steinberg and Freeley 13

Steinberg and Freeley 13, * David, Lecturer in Communication studies and rhetoric. Advisor to Miami Urban Debate League. Director of Debate at U Miami, Former President of CEDA. And  Austin, attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, JD, Suffolk University, Argumentation and Debate, Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, 121-4.  NS from file

Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a controversy, a difference of opinion or a conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a feet or value or policy, there is no need or opportunity for debate; the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for example, it would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four,” because there is simply no controversy about this statement. Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions of issues, there is no debate. Controversy invites decisive choice between competing positions. Debate cannot produce effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants live in the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity to gain citizenship? Does illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? How are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification card, or enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this “debate” is likely to be emotional and intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular question and identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively, controversies are best understood when seated clearly such that all parties to the debate share an understanding about the objective of the debate. This enables focus on substantive and objectively identifiable issues facilitating comparison of competing argumentation leading to effective decisions. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor decisions, general feelings of tension without opportunity for resolution, frustration, and emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the U.S. Congress to make substantial progress on the immigration debate. Of course, arguments may be presented without disagreement. For example, claims are presented and supported within speeches, editorials, and advertisements even without opposing or refutational response. Argumentation occurs in a range of settings from informal to formal, and may not call upon an audience or judge to make a forced choice among competing claims. Informal discourse occurs as conversation or panel discussion without demanding a decision about a dichotomous or yes/no question. However, by definition, debate requires "reasoned judgment on a proposition. The proposition is a statement about which competing advocates will offer alternative (pro or con) argumentation calling upon their audience or adjudicator to decide. The proposition provides focus for the discourse and guides the decision process. Even when a decision will be made through a process of compromise, it is important to identify the beginning positions of competing advocates to begin negotiation and movement toward a center, or consensus position. It is frustrating and usually unproductive to attempt to make a decision when deciders are unclear as to what the decision is about. The proposition may be implicit in some applied debates (“Vote for me!”); however, when a vote or consequential decision is called for (as in the courtroom or in applied parliamentary debate) it is essential that the proposition be explicitly expressed (“the defendant is guilty!”). In academic debate, the proposition provides essential guidance for the preparation of the debaters prior to the debate, the case building and discourse presented during the debate, and the decision to be made by the debate judge after the debate. Someone disturbed by the problem of a growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe, “Public schools are doing a terrible job! They' are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as "We ought to do something about this” or, worse, “It’s too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of public education could join together to express their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions, they could easily agree about the sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session would follow. But if a precise question is posed—such as “What can be done to improve public education?”—then a more profitable area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies, The statements "Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities” and “Resolved; That the state of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference. This focus contributes to better and more informed decision making with the potential for better results. In academic debate, it provides better depth of argumentation and enhanced opportunity for reaping the educational benefits of participation. In the next section, we will consider the challenge of framing the proposition for debate, and its role in the debate. To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined. If we merely talk about a topic, such as ‘"homelessness,” or “abortion,” Or “crime,” or “global warming,” we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish a profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement “Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword” is debatable, yet by itself fails to provide much basis for dear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean Iliad the written word is more effective than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose, perhaps promoting positive social change. (Note that “loose” propositions, such as the example above, may be defined by their advocates in such a way as to facilitate a clear contrast of competing sides; through definitions and debate they “become” clearly understood statements even though they may not begin as such. There are formats for debate that often begin with this sort of proposition. However, in any debate, at some point, effective and meaningful discussion relies on identification of a clearly stated or understood proposition.) Back to the example of the written word versus physical force. Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government documents, website development, advertising, cyber-warfare, disinformation, or what? What does it mean to be “mightier" in this context? What kind of physical force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be, “Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our support in a certain crisis?” The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as “Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treaty with Laurania.” Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided

Outweighs:
A. Even if their method is good, it isn’t valuable if it’s not procedurally debatable – they don’t get access to any of their offense
B.  Debate is about process not content – we inevitably switch sides, even if it’s arguing against one method with another.  The individual ideas we learn, like , aren’t as valuable as learning how to effectively apply those ideas outside of round by engaging in precise discussions instead of just asserting opinions.
C.  They force the NEG to extremist generics – this is why cap and anthro are such common responses to their position  - which causes more evasion than if we had a substantive debate about  in the topic.
D.  It’s key to long term activism which turns case and outweighs because of existential threats. Lundberg 10

Christian O. Lundberg 10 Professor of Communications @ University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Tradition of Debate in North Carolina” in Navigating Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century By Allan D. Louden, p. 311

The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and democracy is that it presumes that the primary pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But the democratic capacities built by debate are not limited to speech—as indicated earlier, debate builds capacity for critical thinking, analysis of public claims, informed decision making, and better public judgment. If the picture of modem political life that underwrites this critique of debate is a pessimistic view of increasingly labyrinthine and bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid scientific and technological change outpacing the capacities of the citizenry to comprehend them, and ever-expanding insular special-interest- and money-driven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that these conditions warrant giving up on debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the citizenry's capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that theorists of democracy such as Ocwey in The Public awl Its Problems place such a high premium on education (Dewey 1988,63, 154). Debate provides an indispensible form of education in the modem articulation of democracy because it builds precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to research and be informed about policy decisions that impact them, to sort through and evaluate the evidence for and relative merits of arguments for and against a policy in an increasingly information-rich environment, and to prioritize their time and political energies toward policies that matter the most to them. The merits of debate as a tool for building democratic capacity-building take on a special significance in the context of information literacy. John Larkin (2005, HO) argues that one of the primary failings of modern colleges and universities is that they have not changed curriculum to match with the challenges of a new information environment. This is a problem for the course of academic study in our current context, but perhaps more important, argues Larkin, for the future of a citizenry that will need to make evaluative choices against an increasingly complex and multimediated information environment (ibid-). Larkin's study tested the benefits of debate participation on information-literacy skills and concluded that in-class debate participants reported significantly higher self-efficacy ratings of their ability to navigate academic search databases and to effectively search and use other Web resources: To analyze the self-report ratings of the instructional and control group students, we first conducted a multivariate analysis of variance on all of the ratings, looking jointly at the effect of instmction/no instruction and debate topic . . . that it did not matter which topic students had been assigned . . . students in the Instnictional debate) group were significantly more confident in their ability to access information and less likely to feel that they needed help to do so----These findings clearly indicate greater self-efficacy for online searching among students who participated in (debate).... These results constitute strong support for the effectiveness of the project on students' self-efficacy for online searching in the academic databases. There was an unintended effect, however: After doing ... the project, instructional group students also felt more confident than the other students in their ability to get good information from Yahoo and Google. It may be that the library research experience increased self-efficacy for any searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144) Larkin's study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that debate in the college classroom plays a critical role in fostering the kind of problem-solving skills demanded by the increasingly rich media and information environment of modernity. Though their essay was written in 1992 on the cusp of the eventual explosion of the Internet as a medium, Worthcn and Pack's framing of the issue was prescient: the primary question facing today's student has changed from how to best research a topic to the crucial question of learning how to best evaluate which arguments to cite and rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable cornucopia of materials. There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate as a model for democratic deliberation. But cumulatively, the evidence presented here warrants strong support for expanding debate practice in the classroom as a technology for enhancing democratic deliberative capacities. The unique combination of critical thinking skills, research and information processing skills, oral communication skills, and capacities for listening and thoughtful, open engagement with hotly contested issues argues for debate as a crucial component of a rich and vital democratic life. In-class debate practice both aids students in achieving the best goals of college and university education, and serves as an unmatched practice for creating thoughtful, engaged, open-minded and self-critical students who are open to the possibilities of meaningful political engagement and new articulations of democratic life. Expanding this practice is crucial, if only because the more we produce citizens that can actively and effectively engage the political process, the more likely we are to produce revisions of democratic life that are necessary if democracy is not only to survive, but to thrive. Democracy faces a myriad of challenges, including: domestic and international issues of class, gender, and racial justice; wholesale environmental destruction and the potential for rapid climate change; emerging threats to international stability in the form of terrorism, intervention and new possibilities for great power conflict; and increasing challenges of rapid globalization including an increasingly volatile global economic structure. More than any specific policy or proposal, an informed and active citizenry that deliberates with greater skill and sensitivity provides one of the best hopes for responsive and effective democratic governance, and by extension, one of the last best hopes for dealing with the existential challenges to democracy in an increasingly complex world. 

2.  Procedural Fairness  - Non topical advocacies mean they can defend anything outside the resolution which is unpredictable, and also defend uncontestable offense like _.  This kills NEG ground and thus equal access to the ballot.

This is an independent voting issue which outweighs:

A.  Evaluation – even if their arguments seem true, that’s only because they already had an advantage – fairness is a meta constraint on your ability to determine who best meets their ROB.
B.  Fairness is key to effective dialogue.  Galloway 07

Ryan, “DINNER AND CONVERSATION AT THE ARGUMENTATIVE TABLE: RECONCEPTUALIZING DEBATE AS AN ARGUMENTATIVE DIALOGUE”, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28 (2007)

Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a relatively fair opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements. While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of each topic as its central point of departure. Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the affirmative team. According to fairness norms, each side sits at a relatively balanced argumentative table. When one side takes more than its share, competitive equity suffers. However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the dialogue. When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of the other participant (Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of voice. Far from being a banal request for links to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical thinking not be silenced. Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to “understand what ‘went on…’” and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). Hugh Duncan furthers this line of reasoning: Opponents not only tolerate but honor and respect each other because in doing so they enhance their own chances of thinking better and reaching sound decisions. Opposition is necessary because it sharpens thought in action. We assume that argument, discussion, and talk, among free an informed people who subordinate decisions of any kind, because it is only through such discussion that we reach agreement which binds us to a common cause…If we are to be equal…relationships among equals must find expression in many formal and informal institutions (Duncan, 1993, p. 196-197). Debate compensates for the exigencies of the world by offering a framework that maintains equality for the sake of the conversation (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). For example, an affirmative case on the 2007-2008 college topic might defend neither state nor international action in the Middle East, and yet claim to be germane to the topic in some way. The case essentially denies the arguments that state action is oppressive or that actions in the international arena are philosophically or pragmatically suspect. Instead of allowing for the dialogue to be modified by the interchange of the affirmative case and the negative response, the affirmative subverts any meaningful role to the negative team, preventing them from offering effective “counter-word” and undermining the value of a meaningful exchange of speech acts. Germaneness and other substitutes for topical action do not accrue the dialogical benefits of topical advocacy.

3.  We solve all their offense - 

A.  Arguments don’t injure people, but policies do—voting aff on this is censorship because it says we can’t even introduce ideas without harming them.  Anderson 06

Amanda Anderson 6, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English at Brown University, Spring 2006, “Reply to My Critic(s),” Criticism, Vol. 48, No. 2, p. 281-290 

Probyns piece is a mixture of affective fallacy, argument by authority, and bald ad hominem. There's a pattern here: precisely the tendency to personalize argument and to foreground what Wendy Brown has called "states of injury." Probyn says, for example, that she "felt ostracized by the books content and style." Ostracized? Argument here is seen as directly harming persons, and this is precisely the state of affairs to which I object. Argument is not injurious to persons. Policies are injurious to persons and institutionalized practices can alienate and exclude. But argument itself is not directly harmful; once one says it is, one is very close to a logic of censorship. The most productive thing to do in an open academic culture (and in societies that aspire to freedom and democracy) when you encounter a book or an argument that you disagree with is to produce a response or a book that states your disagreement. But to assert that the book itself directly harms you is tantamount to saying that you do not believe in argument or in the free exchange of ideas, that your claim to injury somehow damns your opponent's ideas. When Probyn isn't symptomatic, she's just downright sloppy. One could work to build up the substance of points that she throws out the car window as she screeches on to her next destination, but life is short, and those with considered objections to liberalism and proceduralism would not be particularly well served by the exercise. As far as I can tell, Probyn thinks my discussion of universalism is of limited relevance (though far more appealing when put, by others, in more comfortingly equivocating terms), but she's certain my critique of appeals to identity is simply not able to accommodate the importance of identity in social and political life. As I make clear throughout the book, and particularly in my discussion of the headscarf debate in France, identity is likely to be at the center of key arguments about life in plural democracies; my point is not that identity is not relevant, but simply that it should not be used to trump or stifle argument.  In closing, I'd like to speak briefly to the question of proceduralism's relevance to democratic vitality. One important way of extending the proceduralist arguments put forth by Habeimas is to work on how institutions and practices might better promote participation in democratic life. The apathy and nonparticipation plaguing democratic institutions in the United States is a serious problem, and can be separated from the more romantic theoretical investments in a refusal to accept the terms of what counts as argument, or in assertions of inassimilable difference. With respect to the latter, which is often glorified precisely as the moment when politics or democracy is truly occurring, I would say, on the contrary democracy is not happening then-rather, the limits or deficiencies of an actually existing democracy are making themselves felt. Acknowledging struggle, conflict, and exclusion is vital to democracy, but insisting that exclusion is not so much a persistent challenge for modern liberal democracies but rather inherent to the modern liberal-democratic political form as such seems to me precisely to remain stalled in a romantic critique of Enlightenment. It all comes down to a question of whether one wants to work with the ideals of democracy or see them as essentially normative in a negative sense: this has been the legacy of a certain critique of Enlightenment, and it is astonishingly persistent in the left quarters in the academy. One hears it clearly when Robbins makes confident reference to liberalisms tendency to ignore "the founding acts of violence on which a social order is based." One encounters it in the current vogue for the work of Giorgio Agamben and Carl Schmitt. Saying that a state of exception defines modernity or is internal to the law itself may help to sharpen your diagnoses of certain historical conditions, but if absolutized as it is in these accounts, it gives you nothing but a negative diagnostic and a compensatory flight to a realm entirely other-the kind of mystical, Utopian impulse that flees from these conditions rather than confronts and fights them on terms that derive from the settled-if constantly evolving-normative basis of democratic modernity. If one is outraged by the flagrant disregard of democratic procedures in the current U.S. political regime, then one needs to be able to coherently say why democratic procedures matter, what principles underwrite them, and what historical movements and institutions have helped us to secure and support them. Argument as a critical practice and as a key component of democratic institutions and public debate has a vital role to play in such a task.

B.  T version of the AFF

Voter: Drop the debater on T – the round is already skewed from the beginning because their advocacy excluded by ability to generate NC offense– letting them sever doesn’t solve any of the abuse

Theory is an issue of competing interpretations because reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters will exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.

Tournament: College Prep | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harker MS | Judge: Tambe, Arjun
Neoliberalism structures academic freedom in the status quo. It sets limits on what is acceptable behavior to quell dissent and any facult truly radical enough to challenge corporate hegemony are tossed out before they can pose a real threat. Chatterjee and Maira 14
Chatterjee, Piya, and Sunaina Maira. "The Imperial University: race, war, and the nation-state." The imperial university: Academic repression and scholarly dissent (2014): 1-50.
Our geopolitical positions—of our immediate workplaces as well as trans- national work circuits—underscore the complex contradictions of our locations within the U.S. academy. These paradoxes of positionality and employment have seeded this project in important ways. We have both taught at the University of California for many years—in addition to other U.S. universities—and have been members of the privileged upper caste of U.S. higher education: the tenured professoriate. We have each used these privileges of class, education, and cultural capital to live and work transna- tionally and have organized around and written about issues of warfare, colo- nialism, occupation, immigration, racism, gender rights, youth culture, and labor politics, within and outside the United States. In fact, we first began working together when we collaborated in 2008 on a collective statement of feminist solidarity with women suffering from the violence of U.S. wars and occupation, during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Israeli siege of Gaza.7 Yet our privileges of entry, of inclusion, and of outside-ness are also always marked by the “dangerous complicities” of imperial privi- lege and neoliberal capital, as the chapters by Julia Oparah; Sylvanna Falcón, Sharmila Lodhia, Molly Talcott, and Dana Collins; Vijay Prashad; and Laura Pulido powerfully remind us. Even as we have recognized the institutional privileges and complicities through which we can do this work, we have experienced at various moments and in different ways—as the chapters by Alexis Gumbs, Clarissa Rojas, Thomas Abowd, and Nicholas De Genova suggest—a keen sense of being “outsiders” within—in the university, in aca- demic disciplines, in different nations.8¶ As scholars and teachers located within “critical ethnic studies” and “women and gender studies,” we are also well aware of a certain politics of value, legitimacy, and marginality at play, especially as the dismantling of the public higher education system and attacks on ethnic studies around the nation accelerate. The struggles to build ethnic studies and women/gen- der/sexuality studies as legitimate scholarly endeavors within the academy, emerging from several strands of the civil rights and antiwar movements, are well chronicled and keenly debated. The precarious positions as well as increasing professionalization and policing of these interdisciplinary fields within the current restructuring of the university is a matter of deep con- cern; for example, in the wake of the assault on ethnic studies in Arizona, the dismantling of women’s studies programs, and in a climate of policing and criminalizing immigrant “others” across the nation.¶ The pressure on academics to fund one’s own research—following the dominant grant-writing models of science and technology—is now even more explicit in a time of fiscal crisis and deepening fissures between faculty in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, education, and business who occupy very different positions in an increasingly privatized university.9 Prashad reminds us in his chapter of the consequences of the fiscal crisis for college students who bear a massive and growing burden of debt. We recognize these pressures on faculty and students as stemming from neolib- eral capitalism and the university’s capitulation to a global “structural adjust- ment” policy that is now coming “home” to roost in the United States, as astutely argued by Farah Godrej in her analysis linking the neoliberal uni- versity to militarism and violence. The academy has also tried to market the notion of “public scholarship,” transforming activist scholarship into a commodifiable form of knowledge production and dissemination that can affirm the university’s civic engagement—confined by the parameters of per- missible politics, as incisively critiqued by Salaita, Rojas, and Abowd. If we cannot—or choose not to—market our scholarship and pedagogies through these programs of funding and institutionalization, we find our work further devalued within the dominant terms of privatization in the academy. Given that neoliberal market ideologies now underwrite the “value” of our research and intellectual work, what happens to scholars whose writing directly tack- les the questions of U.S. state violence, logics of settler colonialism, and global political and economic dominance?¶ We know from stories about campaigns related to tenure or defamation of scholars, often shared in hallways during conferences and sometimes through e-mail listservs and the media, that there are serious costs to writing and speaking about these matters. For far too many colleagues who confront the most taboo of topics, such as indigenous critiques of genocide and settler colonialism or especially the question of Palestine, the price paid has been extraordinarily high. It has included the denial of promotion to tenure, being de-tenured, not having employment contracts renewed, or never being hired and being blacklisted, as this book poignantly illustrates. Coupled with the loss of livelihood or exile from the U.S. academy, many scholars have been stigmatized, harassed, and penalized in overt and covert ways. There are numerous such cases, sadly way too many to recount here—most famously those of Ward Churchill, Norman Finkelstein, David Graeber, Joel Kovel, Terri Ginsberg, Marc Ellis, Margo Nanlal-Rankoe, Wadie Said, and Sami Al- Arian—but it is generally only the handful that generate public campaigns that receive attention while many others remain unknown, not to mention innumerable cases of students who have been surveilled or harassed, such as Syed Fahad Hashmi from Brooklyn College, while again there are countless other untold stories.10 These are the scandals and open secrets, we argue, that need to be revealed and placed in broader frames of analysis of labor and survival within the U.S. university system.11

Free speech is an illusion propagated by corporatists – their model of rights assumes an equal playing field analogous to free market economists view of capital. The promotion of free speech perpetuates the idea that speech is a commodity, which strengthens neoliberalism’s hold on the academy. Brown 15
Brown, Wendy. Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution. MIT Press, 2015.
At times, kennedy raises the pitch in Citizens United to depict limits on corporate funding of PAC ads as “an outright ban on speech”;19 at other times, he casts them merely as inappropriate government inter- vention and bureaucratic weightiness.20 But beneath all the hyperbole about government’s chilling of corporate speech is a crucial rhetorical move: the figuring of speech as analogous to capital in “the political marketplace.” on the one hand, government intervention is featured throughout the opinion as harmful to the marketplace of ideas that speech generates.21 Government restrictions damage freedom of speech just as they damage all freedoms. on the other hand, the unfettered accumulation and circulation of speech is cast as an unqual- ified good, essential to “the right of citizens to inquire...hear... speak...and use information to reach consensus itself a precondi- tion to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.”22 not merely corporate rights, then, but democracy as a whole is at stake in the move to deregulate speech. Importantly, however, democ- racy is here conceived as a marketplace whose goods—ideas, opinions, and ultimately, votes—are generated by speech, just as the economic market features goods generated by capital. In other words, at the very moment that Justice kennedy deems disproportionate wealth irrele- vant to the equal rights exercised in this marketplace and the utili- tarian maximization these rights generate, speech itself acquires the status of capital, and a premium is placed on its unrestricted sources and unimpeded flow.¶ What is significant about rendering speech as capital? economiza- tion of the political occurs not through the mere application of market principles to nonmarket fields, but through the conversion of political processes, subjects, categories, and principles to economic ones. This is the conversion that occurs on every page of the kennedy opinion. If everything in the world is a market, and neoliberal markets con- sist only of competing capitals large and small, and speech is the capital of the electoral market, then speech will necessarily share cap- ital’s attributes: it appreciates through calculated investment, and it advances the position of its bearer or owner. Put the other way around, once speech is rendered as the capital of the electoral marketplace, it is appropriately unrestricted and unregulated, fungible across actors and venues, and existing solely for the advancement or enhancement of its bearer’s interests. The classic associations of political speech with freedom, conscience, deliberation, and persuasion are nowhere in sight.¶ How, precisely, is speech capital in the kennedy opinion? How does it come to be figured in economic terms where its regulation or restriction appears as bad for its particular marketplace and where its monopolization by corporations appears as that which is good for all? The transmogrification of speech into capital occurs on a number of levels in kennedy’s account. First, speech is like capital in its tendency to proliferate and circu- late, to push past barriers, to circumvent laws and other restrictions, indeed, to spite efforts at intervention or suppression.23 speech is thus rendered as a force both natural and good, one that can be wrongly impeded and encumbered, but never quashed.¶ second, persons are not merely producers, but consumers of speech, and government interference is a menace—wrong in prin- ciple and harmful in effect—at both ends. The marketplace of ideas, kennedy repeats tirelessly, is what decides the value of speech claims. every citizen must judge the content of speech for himself or herself; it cannot be a matter for government determination, just as govern- ment should not usurp other consumer choices.24 In this discussion, kennedy makes no mention of shared deliberation or judgment in politics or of voices that are unfunded and relatively powerless. He is focused on the wrong of government “commanding where a per- son may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, using censorship to control thought.”25 If speech generates goods consumed according to individual choice, govern- ment distorts this market by “banning the political speech of millions of associations of citizens” (that is, corporations) and by paternal- istically limiting what consumers may know or consider. Again, if speech is the capital of the political marketplace, then we are polit- ically free when it circulates freely. And it circulates freely only when corporations are not restricted in what speech they may fund or promulgate.¶ Third, kennedy casts speech not as a medium for expression or dialogue, but rather as innovative and productive, just as capital is. There is “a creative dynamic inherent in the concept of free expres- sion” that intersects in a lively way with “rapid changes in technol- ogy” to generate the public good.26 This aspect of speech, kennedy argues, specifically “counsels against upholding a law that restricts political speech in certain media or by certain speakers.”27 Again, the dynamism, innovativeness, and generativity of speech, like that of all capital, is dampened by government intervention.¶ Fourth, and perhaps most important in establishing speech as the capital of the electoral marketplace, kennedy sets the power of speech and the power of government in direct and zero-sum-game opposition to one another. Repeatedly across the lengthy opinion for the majority, he identifies speech with freedom and government with control, cen- sorship, paternalism, and repression.28 When free speech and govern- ment meet, it is to contest one another: the right of speech enshrined in the First Amendment, he argues, is “premised on mistrust of gov- ernmental power” and is “an essential mechanism of democracy because it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people.”29 Here are other variations on this theme in the opinion:¶ The First Amendment was certainly not understood by the framers to condone the suppression of political speech in society’s most salient media. It was understood as a response to the repression of speech.30¶ When Government seeks to use its full power, including criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought.... The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.31 This reading of the First Amendment and of the purpose of political speech positions government and speech as warring forces parallel to those of government and capital in a neoliberal economy.

This turns the case – the commodification of speech reflects the capitalist illusion of freedom. It makes speech meaningless and kills value to life. Smith ‘14
R.C. Smith April 24, 2014 “POWER, CAPITAL and THE RISE OF THE MASS SURVEILLANCE STATE: ON THE ABSENCE OF DEMOCRACY, ETHICS, DISENCHANTMENT and CRITICAL THEORY” Heathwood Institute and Press http://www.heathwoodpress.com/power-capital-the-rise-of-the-mass-surveillance-state-on-the-absence-of-democracy-ethics-disenchantment-critical-theory/ JJN from file
One pressing issue, moreover, is that majority of the popular movements that have emerged in response to the Snowden leaks appear to be reformist in character. As a result, the discourse isn’t so much about fundamental system change; rather it becomes crafted into making mass surveillance less repulsive and more socially acceptable, even marketable. (Consider, for instance, the latest reforms proposed by President Barack Obama). For Adorno, this reformist inclination can be explained in part through an analysis of the logic of the system of capital. We read in Adorno how under modernity – i.e., capitalism – human beings are treated as commodities4 and the political-economy, which is principled on concentrations of power (i.e., ‘contradictory recognition’5), goes over the head of the individual, particularly as ‘coercive society’ aims to ‘shape people’ on behalf of the economic, social and political status quo.6 The system of capital, along with the instrumental use of Enlightenment ideals to promote a rational, efficient system7 have laid a foundation for society wherein the political-economy influences individuals and manufactures consent.8 Accordingly, people are seen as “substitutable entities valued merely for their instrumental uses or ability to command market resources,” and even where “commodification is resisted, the overriding pull of society is toward the status quo and those forms that are valued by society”. 9 As Kate Schick writes: The mind thus shapes itself into socially acceptable, marketable forms and freedom becomes an illusion, made all the more dangerous and difficult to resist because of the appearance of freedom. This is not the fault of Enlightenment ideals as such, but the instrumental use of these ideals in the promotion of a rational, efficient system: ‘The network of the whole is drawn ever tighter, modelled after the act of exchange’ (Adorno 1981: 21).10 Present in the logic of the system of capital itself is not an ‘emancipatory reason’ that aims toward universal guiding principles of an actually egalitarian democracy – i.e., Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice, Rights, etc. Rather, in modern capitalism, with its instrumental reason and positivist logic, such concepts lose their meaning.11 The social narrative no longer accommodates these fundamental principles or judges them to be delusions, because all concepts must be strictly functional in order to be considered “reasonable”.12 In turn, the ideals of a ‘good’ society, for example ideals toward an actual egalitarian democracy, become dependent on the “interests” of the dominant and governing system, which produces and reproduces the epistemic context of its own validity.13

Our critique independently outweighs the case -  neoliberalism causes extinction and massive social inequalities – the affs single issue legalistic solution is the exact kind of politics neolib wants us to engage in so the root cause to go unquestioned. Farbod 15
 ( Faramarz Farbod , PhD Candidate @ Rutgers, Prof @ Moravian College, Monthly Review, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/farbod020615.html, 6-2)
Global capitalism is the 800-pound gorilla. The twin ecological and economic crises, militarism, the rise of the surveillance state, and a dysfunctional political system can all be traced to its normal operations. We need a transformative politics from below that can challenge the fundamentals of capitalism instead of today's politics that is content to treat its symptoms. The problems we face are linked to each other and to the way a capitalist society operates. We must make an effort to understand its real character. The fundamental question of our time is whether we can go beyond a system that is ravaging the Earth and secure a future with dignity for life and respect for the planet. What has capitalism done to us lately? The best science tells us that this is a do-or-die moment. We are now in the midst of the 6th mass extinction in the planetary history with 150 to 200 species going extinct every day, a pace 1,000 times greater than the 'natural' extinction rate.1 The Earth has been warming rapidly since the 1970s with the 10 warmest years on record all occurring since 1998.2 The planet has already warmed by 0.85 degree Celsius since the industrial revolution 150 years ago. An increase of 2° Celsius is the limit of what the planet can take before major catastrophic consequences. Limiting global warming to 2°C requires reducing global emissions by 6 per year. However, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased by about 1.5 times between 1990 and 2008.3 Capitalism has also led to explosive social inequalities. The global economic landscape is littered with rising concentration of wealth, debt, distress, and immiseration caused by the austerity-pushing elites. Take the US. The richest 20 persons have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million.4 Since 1973, the hourly wages of workers have lagged behind worker productivity rates by more than 800.5 It now takes the average family 47 years to make what a hedge fund manager makes in one hour.6 Just about a quarter of children under the age of 5 live in poverty.7 A majority of public school students are low-income.8 85 of workers feel stress on the job.9 Soon the only thing left of the American Dream will be a culture of hustling to survive. Take the global society. The world's billionaires control $7 trillion, a sum 77 times the debt owed by Greece to the European banks.10 The richest 80 possess more than the combined wealth of the bottom 50 of the global population (3.5 billion people).11 By 2016 the richest 1 will own a greater share of the global wealth than the rest of us combined.12 The top 200 global corporations wield twice the economic power of the bottom 80 of the global population.13 Instead of a global society capitalism is creating a global apartheid. What's the nature of the beast? Firstly, the "egotistical calculation" of commerce wins the day every time. Capital seeks maximum profitability as a matter of first priority. Evermore "accumulation of capital" is the system's bill of health; it is slowdowns or reversals that usher in crises and set off panic. Cancer-like hunger for endless growth is in the system's DNA and is what has set it on a tragic collision course with Nature, a finite category. Secondly, capitalism treats human labor as a cost. It therefore opposes labor capturing a fair share of the total economic value that it creates. Since labor stands for the majority and capital for a tiny minority, it follows that classism and class warfare are built into its DNA, which explains why the "middle class" is shrinking and its gains are never secure. Thirdly, private interests determine massive investments and make key decisions at the point of production guided by maximization of profits. That's why in the US the truck freight replaced the railroad freight, chemicals were used extensively in agriculture, public transport was gutted in favor of private cars, and big cars replaced small ones. What should political action aim for today? The political class has no good ideas about how to address the crises. One may even wonder whether it has a serious understanding of the system, or at least of ways to ameliorate its consequences. The range of solutions offered tends to be of a technical, legislative, or regulatory nature, promising at best temporary management of the deepening crises. The trajectory of the system, at any rate, precludes a return to its post-WWII regulatory phase. It's left to us as a society to think about what the real character of the system is, where we are going, and how we are going to deal with the trajectory of the system -- and act accordingly. The critical task ahead is to build a transformative politics capable of steering the system away from its destructive path. Given the system's DNA, such a politics from below must include efforts to challenge the system's fundamentals, namely, its private mode of decision-making about investments and about what and how to produce. Furthermore, it behooves us to heed the late environmentalist Barry Commoner's insistence on the efficacy of a strategy of prevention over a failed one of control or capture of pollutants. At a lecture in 1991, Commoner remarked: "Environmental pollution is an incurable disease; it can only be prevented"; and he proceeded to refer to "a law," namely: "if you don't put a pollutant in the environment it won't be there." What is nearly certain now is that without democratic control of wealth and social governance of the means of production, we will all be condemned to the labor of Sisyphus. Only we won't have to suffer for all eternity, as the degradation of life-enhancing natural and social systems will soon reach a point of no return. 

The alternative is a relentless class-based politics that works against the university’s economic underpinnings – only engaging in a critique that focuses on the economic forces at play in public universities can we resolve capitalism. Sculos and Walsh 16
Sculos, Bryant William a¶ Department of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University , and Sean Noah Walsh Department of Political Science and Economics, Capital University. "The Counterrevolutionary Campus: Herbert Marcuse and the Suppression of Student Protest Movements." New Political Science (2016): 1-17.
¶ The recognition of repressive tolerance as a tool of counterrevolution calls for a careful¶ examination of leftist strategy. For example, so-called ‘microaggressions’, or ‘trigger warnings’,¶ should be taken seriously.65 However, we should and need to ask ourselves: in a world of¶ pervasive macroaggressions and trigger-pulling in a world of wretched poverty, torture and¶ disappeared dissidents—if these concerns should take center stage. We ought to reflect and¶ ask if identity concerns are more important than class or economic concerns. Marcuse would¶ surely argue that class remains a crucial component alongside other dimensions of identity¶ and oppression (for example, race, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, religion et cetera).¶ He would demand that we act locally but organize globally, and that we refuse the lure of¶ divisive identity politics, without eschewing the central importance of criticizing racialized,¶ gendered dimensions to capitalist oppressions. We must principally and aggressively resist¶ the demand that we tolerate the expressions or enactments of these oppressions under the¶ guise of liberal toleration. In response to this revolting, nauseating, murderous demand, we¶ must revolt in all the ways we can, and that is precisely what #BlackLivesMatter, the Black¶ Liberation Collective (a nascent, more radical national student organization, distinct but¶ related to BLM and includes many of the campus protesters from around the United States),¶ and the broader student movements are aiming and struggling for (even if right now what¶ they are struggling for is precisely that focused vision).¶ The claim that free speech is under assault is often deployed as a tool of repressive toleration¶ by the Right. Perhaps we need some more hashtags: #BlackVoicesMatter or¶ #BlackProtestsMatter (though the label ‘black’ here, as it is with BLM, is meant to be inclusive,¶ not exclusive. There are numbers of white and non-black allies of the organization, as can¶ be seen in any cursory examination of these various protests. This is explicitly laid out in the¶ official platform of the BLM organization. This is the case for BDS as well; it is not about identity so much as it is about defending the humanity of all).66 We need more than just¶ hashtags though. Much more. We have seen the foundations of more. BLM’s platform does¶ not, however, include any mention of capitalism or economic exploitation, despite the fact¶ that the leadership of the organization has spoken out against racialized capitalism.67 The¶ Black Liberation Collective already includes a critique of capitalism alongside other forms¶ of oppression in their platform.68 These are the early and precarious stages of a potentially¶ emergent cohesive Left for the twenty-first century. Through Marcuse’s critical gaze, we can¶ observe what these students and activists have already realized, what is truly intolerable:¶ the demand that we all tolerate the intolerable. Today, the path to liberating tolerance¶ requires the refusal to accept such silencing.¶ Importantly, we must not limit ourselves to merely critiquing existing oppressions, or just¶ suggest principled radical reforms that could move us towards an emancipated, just (global)¶ society. As many on the Left have attempted, though sadly without much wider recognition,¶ we need to start building these alternative futures in the counterrevolutionary present wherever¶ and whenever possible. This means first building racially, sexually and gender inclusive¶ communicative and organizational bridges between both nascent and longer established¶ social movements and class-based organizations, including the too often forgotten Left¶ political parties.69 Liberating tolerance could tear open avenues for the development of the¶ ‘new sensibility’ Marcuse heralds in his late work. We see this as crucial for the possibility of¶ a new society, a free, just, and rational society antipodal and antithetical to the unfree, unjust,¶ and irrational confines of neoliberal capitalism. College campuses have, since Marcuse’s time¶ been a potentially key environment for the cultivation of this ‘new sensibility’—a sensibility,¶ a mentality, oriented towards care, compassion, love, justice, cooperation and indeed active¶ disgust at their inverses.70 BLM and BDS and other less well-known organized movements¶ offer us a new hope and opportunity to revitalize a youthful emancipatory disposition with¶ sustainability.¶ Liberating tolerance against repressive tolerance has the potential to open up the material¶ and ideological space for precisely these developments, against every wish of the counterrevolutionary¶ forces that militate against progress through the silencing of the exuberant¶ dissent we are witnessing across college campuses in the United States and around the¶ world. We write in support of these students and their rejection of white supremacy, racial¶ injustice (on campus and beyond), police brutality as standard practice, especially against¶ minorities, and their calls for an egalitarian educational experience, including the extension¶ of that experience for all people in the United States and around the world. Beyond Herbert¶ Marcuse’s words, we have his emancipatory democratic impetus—we hope to have embodied¶ that impetus here and shown it to be more relevant than ever.

The role of the judge is to be a critical analyst testing whether the underlying assumptions of the AFF are valid. This is a question of the whether the AFF scholarship is good – not the passage of the plan. 

First, neoliberalism operates through a narrow vision of politics that sustains itself through the illusion of pragmatism. We should refuse their demand for a plan. Blalock, JD, 2015
(Corinne, “NEOLIBERALISM AND THE CRISIS OF LEGAL THEORY”, Duke University, LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS Vol. 77:71) MG from file
RECOVERING LEGAL THEORY’S RELEVANCE? The lens of neoliberalism not only allows one to see how these narratives fit together to reveal a larger rationality but also to understand why the solutions they propose fail to challenge or even escape that rationality. I address the three most prominent prescriptions being offered by critical legal scholars today: (1) a pragmatic turn to politics, (2) a return to more explicit normative and moral claims, and (3) acceptance in recognition that the decline is merely an ebb in the regular cycles of theory. A. Prescription: More Politics The most common prescription for recovering legal theory’s vibrancy is a greater participation in politics—scholars should eschew descriptive projects, especially those that might be used to bolster the conservative argument on an issue or in a case, as well as those critiques that appear purely academic, in favor of projects intended to influence the courts in progressive ways.134 One can certainly understand why this is a tempting prescription in light of the success of explicitly conservative legal theory and methods135 and concern that left-leaning legal academics have not taken up this charge.136 However, this demand for political engagement has unintended consequences: It legitimizes the current frameworks. As the Roberts Court further embraces neoliberal principles, persuading the Court means functioning within neoliberal logic and is therefore counterproductive for the revitalization of critical legal theory. Moreover, this political prescription tends to produce a reified notion of what counts as politics, limiting the political as well as intellectual potential of theoretical projects. For example, in the wake of the of the Court’s incremental move toward recognition of same-sex marriage in United States v. Windsor, 137 many progressive legal scholars have written on the subject hoping to nudge the Court toward full recognition. But in light of Nancy Fraser’s work, one should ask just what kind of recognition that would be—whether it would displace materialist claims or reify forms of identity.138 Full recognition of same-sex marriage is a destination toward which the Court is already heading and an area where the public discourse has largely already arrived. Emphasizing this area also participates in the ideology of erasure, leading many to believe that the current Court is making progressive interventions because it is progressive on identity and cultural issues, even though Windsor was handed down in a term in which the Court retrenched on significant materialist issues and embodied a number of blatantly neoliberal positions.139 Even if not writing for the Court, a legal scholar’s attempt to be useful to those in the profession who share her political goals risks constraining the legal profession and its own professional and disciplinary norms.140 In this way, the focus on concrete political effects helps foster legal thought’s “considerable capacity for resisting self-reflection and analysis,”141 which has only become more pronounced in the face of the neoliberalization of the academy as instrumental knowledge is increasingly privileged. When attempting to counter hegemony, what one needs to do is disrupt the legible—to expand the contours of what is considered political—not to accept the narrowly circumscribed zone of politics neoliberalism demarcates. Therefore, it is crucial not to judge critical legal scholarship according to whether its political impact is immediate or even known, and thus a turn to politics is not the remedy for legal theory’s marginalization. B. Prescription: More Normativity Some scholars recognize the danger of embracing a reified notion of politics that unwittingly reaffirms the status quo, and instead champion assertions of substantive morality to counteract the cold logics of pragmatism and efficiency.142 This proposed solution advocates a return to more substantive ideals of justice and equality. Although it may be true that change will ultimately require wresting these liberal and democratic ideals from neoliberalism and refilling their hollowed-out forms, this approach entails a number of pitfalls. The first is simply the inevitable question regarding moral claims: Whose morality is to be asserted? This question has created crisis on the left before, even producing some of the schisms among the crits recounted above. Neoliberalism does not have to contend with this issue—it foregrounds its formal nature and holds itself out as not needing to create a universal morality or set of values. More importantly, it claims to provide a structure in which one can keep one’s own substantive morals. Therefore, neoliberalism’s logic cannot be countered by moral claims without first disrupting its illusion of amorality. The ineffectiveness of the progressive critique of law and economics, based in claims of distributive justice and moral imperative, provides a clear example of how the neoliberal discourse can capture normative claims. The work of Martha McCluskey, one of the few legal scholars writing about neoliberalism in the domestic context over the last ten years, highlights the extent to which the “distributive justice” critique, which argues against the privileging of efficiency over equality and redistribution, fails to challenge the underlying logic.143 McCluskey illustrates how critics of law and economics who critique the approach’s inattention to redistribution have already ceded the central point, by arguing within the conventional views that “efficiency is about expanding the societal pie and redistribution is about dividing it.”144 “Neoliberalism’s disadvantage is not, as most critics worry, its inattention to redistribution, but to the contrary, its very obsession with redistribution as a distinctly seductive yet treacherous policy separate from efficiency.”145 In order to challenge this rationality, she explains, one cannot “misconstrue neoliberalism as a project to promote individual freedom and value-neutral economics at the expense of social responsibility and community morality.”146 One must instead recognize that neoliberalism has redefined social responsibility and community morality. Therefore, one must refuse the false dichotomy between the economic and cultural spheres (a division that allows the neoliberal discourse to displace cultural concerns to a moment after the economic concerns have been dealt with). Merely asserting the falsity of this separation is not sufficient. Neoliberalism has real effects in the world that strengthen its ideological claims.147 Therefore, it is not a struggle that can take place solely on the terrain of discourse or ideology. Like neoliberalism generally, law and economics does not hold itself out as infallible or as an embodiment of social ideals, but instead as the best society can do. It functions precisely on the logic that there is no alternative. Like Hayek’s theory, “law and economics is full of stories about how liberal rights and regulation designed to advance equality victimize the all-powerful market, undermining its promised rewards.”148 In light of this, it is a mistake to see neoliberalism as disavowing moral principles in favor of economic ones; it instead folds them into one another: “The Law and Economics movement is rooted in the moral ideal of the market as the social realization of individual liberty and popular democracy.”149 Neoliberalism’s approach presents itself not only as efficient, but also as just. Legal scholars need to recognize neoliberalism’s focus on the market is not only a form of morality, but also a powerful one. They cannot assume that in a battle of moralities the substantive communitarian ideal will win.150 Furthermore, the neoliberal framework, through its reconfiguration of the subject as an entrepreneur, justifies material inequalities—in contrast to liberalism’s mere blindness to them. Consequently, merely asserting the existence of material inequalities does not immediately undermine neoliberalism’s claims. Far from the engaged citizen who actively produces the polis in liberal theory, the neoliberal subject is a rational, calculating, and independent entity “whose moral autonomy is measured by her capacity for ‘self-care’—the ability to provide for her own needs and service her own ambitions.”151 The subject’s morality is not in relation to principles or ideals, but is “a matter of rational deliberation about costs, benefits, and consequences.”152 If efficiency is the morality of our time, the poor are cast not only as “undeserving” but also as morally bankrupt. Therefore, efficiency replaces not only political morality, but also all other forms of value. Therefore, critics are right that other forms of value have been crowded out; but the logic is deeper than they seem to realize. It goes beyond the scope of what is being done in the legal academy. It is a logic that organizes our time and therefore must be countered differently. More normativity is not the answer to legal theory’s marginalization because neoliberalism’s logic can accommodate even radically contradictory moralities under its claims of moral pluralism. Ethical claims of justice and community may need to be made, but one must first recognize that countering hegemony is harder than merely articulating an alternative; hegemony must be disrupted first. Disrupting neoliberalism’s logic thus entails not only recognizing that neoliberalism has a morality, but also taking that morality seriously. C. Prescription: Acceptance The final response of legal theorists to their field’s marginalization is to dismiss it as merely the regular ebb and flow of theory’s prominence.153 Putting it in terms of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts, the contemporary moment is just the “normal science” of the paradigm brought about by the crits’ revolutionary moment in the 1970s and 1980s.154 The vitality, this narrative contends, will return when a competing paradigm emerges. There are several problems with this perspective on the decline. First, it entails an error in logic insofar as it takes an external perspective. Legal theory does not inevitably rise and fall but only according to the work being produced; or, to put it another way, this descriptive account of theory’s ebb can be a selffulfilling prophecy insofar as it decreases scholars’ motivation to pursue and receptivity toward theoretical projects. Second, legal scholars cannot be content with normal science when it has the kinds of consequences for democracy and economic inequality that neoliberal hegemony does. The Court is currently entrenching these principles at an unprecedented rate in areas of free speech, equal protection, and antitrust to name a few.155 At first, such acceptance appears to be what Janet Halley is advocating in “taking a break from feminism,”156 but upon closer inspection it is not. Halley is cautioning against the left’s nostalgia—concluding that operating under the banner of feminism and a preoccupation with “reviving” feminism looks backward instead of forward.157 Critical legal scholarship instead needs to be “self-critical” and to recognize that “how we make and apply legal theory arises out of the circumstances in which we recognize problems and articulate solutions.”158 Theory must arise from engagement with the current circumstances. Acceptance cannot be the solution; legal theory must produce the momentum to move forward. VII CONCLUSION: WHERE WE GO FROM HERE The way forward cannot entail a return to reified notions of theory any more than by a return to reified notions of politics. Critical legal scholars should not attempt to revitalize previous critical movements but, instead, reinvigorate the practice of critique within the legal academy. A. Why Critique Naming neoliberalism is necessary in order to counteract it. Without explicit identification, there can be no truly oppositional position. It also makes legible connections that would otherwise go unseen, as was the case with scholars writing about the decline. But there must also be a step beyond naming: critique. Critique means taking neoliberal rationality seriously. The approach must not be dismissive, merely pointing out neoliberalism’s inconsistencies, but instead must recognize that neoliberal rationality is inherently appealing. One cannot merely indict efficiency as contrary to more substantive values, but one also must recognize that efficiency is inextricably tied to beliefs about liberty, dignity, and individual choice, as well as corresponding beliefs about the capacities and limits of the state to effectuate change. No one is arguing that neoliberalism is the best of all possible worlds; in fact, its power comes precisely from abandoning such a claim. In recognizing its hegemonic status, legal scholars can understand the critical task as being more than just demystification. Neoliberal does not paper over inequalities after all; it justifies them. Ultimately, critique should function as a means of opening the conversation in ways that go beyond the picture of law painted by the Roberts Court—to refuse to allow the legal academy to be merely mimetic of a Court that is clearly embracing a neoliberal vision. Critique provides a means of thinking about law as not limited by what the markets can tolerate; it is the means through which one can discover a form of resistance that goes beyond nostalgia for the liberal welfare state. And finally, critique is simply a means of asserting that things can be different than they are in a world that constantly insists that there is no alternative. 

Second, the knowledge claims of the AC are the jumping off point for the debate – our framework provides a more reasonable neg burden. When a student turns in an F paper, no teacher has an obligation to write an entirely new paper to show it was bad – pointing out major academic deficiencies would justify failing the paper – the ballot asks who did the better debating, so if their analysis is wrong, they haven’t. 

Third, neoliberalism is a conceptual framework that has to be challenged at the level of scholarship. Godrej 14
Farah Godrej Department of Political Science¶ University of California-Riverside “neoliberalism, Militarization, and the Price of dissent¶ Policing Protest at the University of California¶ “Edited by Chatterjee, Piya, and Sunaina Maira. The Imperial University. University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
I have offered here a particular window into the ways in which the interests, mechanisms, and operations of both the university system and the neoliberal state are aligned with those of private capital. Of course, that the academy is made to strategically ally with capital as a key piece of neoliberal consolida- tion should not surprise us. Rather, what is worth noting, I have argued here, is the necessity of the linkages between disinvestment in public education, militarization, and the criminalization of dissent. These necessary link- ages demonstrate this volume’s premise that the university is an institution embedded in the hierarchies and inequalities of U.S. racial, gender, and class politics and shed light on the confluence of military and industrial interests as they appear within the U.S. university. I have sought also to emphasize the systematicity and multilayered complexity of this phenomenon. That is, the various pieces of this picture necessarily go together, as rhetoric, law, bureaucracy, and the force of arms all combine effectively to produce the desired end.¶ The neoliberal logic entailed in the privatization of the University of Cal- ifornia is, I have argued, necessarily interlinked with the logic of militari- zation and the criminalization of dissent, because it employs a militarized enforcement strategy, coupled with a political rhetoric that criminalizes the specific behaviors involved in protest and dissent against these strate- gies. The militarization of the university campus is thus not simply a reflec- tion of the increasing militarization of American law enforcement based on the logic of ongoing threats to public safety encoded in years of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.25 Rather, such militarization is one prong of a necessary enforcement strategy designed to convey that dissent against privatization is meant to be costly in inflicting various forms of legitimized violence upon those who dissent. The second prong of the enforcement strategy also conveys that dissenters will pay a high price by being criminal- ized, either through rhetoric that paints them as violent and therefore mar- ginal, unworthy, and undesirable in the public imagination or through legal machinations that force them to expend tremendous financial resources on extricating themselves from prosecution.¶ The language of cost and price here, of course, reminds us of the ongo- ing hegemony—and perhaps victory—of the conceptual frameworks of neoliberalism and its theoretical accompaniments, such as rational choice theory, predominantly featured in neoclassical economics. These strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on sending signals to adversaries, encoded precisely in these languages, wherein value and worth are measured in terms of indicators such as price or cost, and rational actors are assumed to be guided by a universally comprehensible incentive structure. Thus the strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on de-incentivizing dis- sent, so to speak, assuming that dissenters will measure the costs inherent in their actions and choose rationally to cease from engaging in such dissent. The continued insistence on dissent is therefore resistance to the logic of neoliberal privatization on multiple levels: it not only calls out the complic- ity of the university with the neoliberal state and the forces of private capital but also continues to dissent despite the “incentives” offered in exchange for desisting from dissent. And in so doing, it should be signaling its rejection not simply of privatization but of the entire conceptual baggage of neolib- eralism, including its logics of rational choice, cost, price, and incentive, as well as its logic of structural violence. In other words, the ongoing struggle against the logic of neoliberal privatization requires that dissent continue, despite its high “price.”¶

Tournament: College Prep | Round: 3 | Opponent: Nueva AK | Judge: Olson, Ryan
Their philosophy preaches that everyone is equal – this colorblind ideology perpetuates anti blackness under the myth of American liberalism.  Curry 13

Dr. Tommy Curry, In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope, the Reality of Anti-Black Violence and the Demands of the Anti-Ethical, Academia.edu, 2013.  NS

Despite the rhetorical strategies adopted by both Black and white political theorists which urge Blacks and whites alike to demand Americans to continue their allegiance to the foundational de-racialized ethos of the post-Civil Rights era, the reality of the American racism—its sheer recurring violence against Black people—demands more than symbolic rhetorical allusion. To seriously grasp the reality of racist oppression and the sempiternal machinations of anti-Blackness throughout American society be it in its institutions like the prison industrial complex, its policies like Affirmative action, or its manipulation of Black social degradation and economic disadvantage to support pathological theses about disasters like Katrina or cultural deviance as in the death of Trayvon Martin, Darius Simmons, or Jordan Davis, the study of the matter itself—racism—must be a study of a conceptual disengagement with the myth of racial equality and the “automatic progressivism” of the American liberal project. This disengagement is not simply the refusal to accept the idealism of civil rights myth held beyond the realm of fact, but the disengagement with the illusions of democracy and equality that continue to ignore the role that violence has played and continues to play in the subjugation, incarceration, and vilification of Black life. As Dr. A.J. William Myers reveals in his work groundbreaking work entitled Destructive Impulses, ¶ Until at such time white America (and Black America) is openly willing to confront a historical legacy of its own violence (perpetrated against an American people of color), any venture into and/ or expository on race relations becomes an exercise in futility…As a result, therefore, white violence, confined to the subliminal recesses of the American psyche, continues to prevent the transition necessary for the country to move beyond the idea of race. ¶ In America, Blackness and the racism that continues to condemn those historical racialized peoples is violence—it is the forceful and coercion enclosing of human beings to an inferior social, political, and economic status of which their own humanity exceeds. This dehumanizing relegation of the raced citizen is not a gradual or incremental debasement, but rather the historically immediate condition of inferiority that presents progress to be attainable by the cyclical degrees of physical violence against the racialized population. For these racially oppressed peoples, violence is the permanent fixture of existence in America, since it is the vitiation of their humanity that rationalizes the varying techniques of their cultural erasure, birthing the emergent symbolic associations of degradation that replace their invisibility, and empowering the intentional enforcements of their societal exclusions. In fact, it is precisely this triumvirate that gauges what we take to be the negation of the necessity of revolutionary change--since the raced is taken to be present, as a result of a critical redefining of humanity, integrated into society.
Their notion of the first amendment is colorblind and obscures anti-black violence. Boler 04
Boler, Megan Megan Boler is a Full Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education, at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.. "All Speech Is Not Free: The Ethics of" Affirmative Action Pedagogy"." Counterpoints 240 (2004): 3-13.
On what basis might one justify an affirmative action pedagogy? The first justifica-¶ tion is forwarded by legal scholars in the area of critical race theory. The authors of¶ Words That Wound (Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, and Crenshaw, 1993) address the¶ tension between the First and Fourteenth Amendment. The tension arises because,¶ in fact, all people are not equally protected under the law because of the institu-¶ tionalized inequities within our society. This reality complicates the effectiveness¶ of the First Amendment. Scholarship in critical race theory and educational analy-¶ ses document that in recent years, we find incidents of hate speech primarily to be¶ directed at racial, religious, or sexual minorities. Not surprisingly, one finds in turn¶ that invocations of the right to free speech are most often invocations to protect¶ the right of the members of the dominant culture to express their hatred toward¶ members of minority culture. These authors make important legal and historical¶ cases to support their observation that, in practice, while the rhetoric of the First¶ Amendment is a buzz word that makes all of us want to rally for its principle, in¶ practice "the first amendment arms conscious and unconscious racists - Nazis and¶ liberals alike - with a constitutional right to be racist. Racism is just another idea¶ deserving of constitutional protection like all ideas" (Matsuda et al., 1993, p. 15). A¶ scholar from another discipline addresses classroom dynamics and similarly argues¶ that we must "read the appeal to the First Amendment as itself a kind of panic re-¶ sponse in the same order as hate speech itself" (Roof, 1999, p. 45).¶ A second justification for privileging marginalized voices is based on the meas-¶ urement of the psychological effect of hate speech on targeted groups and individ-¶ uals. As one legal scholar explains, hate speech affects its victim in the visceral ex-¶ perience of a "disorienting powerlessness" (Lawrence, 1993, p. 70), an effect¶ achieved because hate speech is comparable to an act of violence. In reaction to¶ hate speech, the target commonly experiences a "state of semishock," nausea, and dizziness, and an inability to articulate a response. This scholar gives an example of a student who is white and gay. The student reports that in an instance where he¶ was called "faggot" he experienced all of the above symptoms. However, when he¶ was called "honky," he did not experience the disorienting powerlessness. As the¶ scholar remarks, "the context of the power relationships in which the speech takes¶ place, and the connection to violence must be considered as we decide how best to¶ foster the freest and fullest dialogue within our communities" (Lawrence, 1993,¶ p. 70).¶ These considerations bring me to another key point: The analysis of utterance¶ in the classroom requires more than rational dialogue. In fact, the critical race¶ theorists argue that because racism is irrational, no amount of rational dialogue¶ will change racist attitudes. I disagree, in part because I am convinced that class-¶ room discussion must recognize the emotions that shape and construct the mean-¶ ings of our claims, our interchange with one another, and our investments in par-¶ ticular worldviews. Thus, a discussion of racism or homophobia cannot rely¶ simply on rational exchange but must delve into the deeply emotional investments¶ and associations that surround perceptions of difference and ideologies. One is po-¶ tentially faced with allowing ones worldviews to be shattered, in itself a pro-¶ foundly emotionally charged experience 

Rhetoric propagating free speech as the answer to social ills directly trades off with our ability to fight injustice. Free speech is a tool that courts wield in colorblind ways against people. Delgado and Stefancic ‘92
Richard Delgado - Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado. J.D., U. California-Berkeley, 1974. and Jean Stefancic - Technical Services Librarian, University of San Francisco School of Law. M.L.S., Simmons College, 1963; M.A., University of San Francisco, 1989. “IMAGES OF THE OUTSIDER IN AMERICAN LAW AND CULTURE: CAN FREE EXPRESSION REMEDY SYSTEMIC SOCIAL ILLS?” Cornell Law Review. September 1992. http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3571andcontext=clr JJN
III. How THE SYSTEM OF FREE EXPRESSION SOMETIMES MAKES MATTERS WORSE Speech and free expression are not only poorly adapted to remedy racism, they often make matters worse-far from being stalwart friends, they can impede the cause of racial reform. First, they encourage writers, filmmakers, and other creative people to feel amoral, nonresponsible in what they do. 18 8 Because there is a marketplace of ideas, the rationalization goes, another film-maker is free to make an antiracist movie that will cancel out any minor stereotyping in the one I am making. My movie may have other redeeming qualities; besides, it is good entertainment and everyone in the industry uses stock characters like the black maid or the bumbling Asian tourist. How can one create film without stock characters? 18 9 Second, when insurgent groups attempt to use speech as an instrument of reform, courts almost invariably construe First Amendment doctrine against them.1 90 As Charles Lawrence pointed out, civil rights activists in the sixties made the greatest strides when they acted in defiance of the First Amendment as then understood. 191 They marched, were arrested and convicted; sat in, were arrested and convicted; distributed leaflets, were arrested and convicted. Many years later, after much gallant lawyering and the expenditure of untold hours of effort, the conviction might be reversed on appeal if the original action had been sufficiently prayerful, mannerly, and not too interlaced with an action component. This history of the civil rights movement does not bear out the usual assumption that the First Amendment is of great value for racial reformers. 19 2 Current First Amendment law is similarly skewed. Examination of the many "exceptions" to First Amendment protection discloses that the large majority favor the interests of the powerful. 19 3 If one says something disparaging of a wealthy and well-regarded individual, one discovers that one's words were not free after all; the wealthy individual has a type of property interest in his or her community image, damage to which is compensable even though words were the sole instrument of the harm. 194 Similarly, if one infringes the copyright or trademark of a well-known writer or industrialist, again it turns out that one's action is punishable. 19 5 Further, if one disseminates an official secret valuable to a powerful branch of the military or defense contractor, that speech is punishable. 19 If one speaks disrespectfully to a judge, police officer, teacher, military official, or other powerful authority figure, again one discovers that one's words were not free;1 9 7 and so with words used to defraud, 198 form a conspiracy, 1 99 breach the peace, 200 or untruthful words given under oath during a civil or criminal proceeding.20 1 Yet the suggestion that we create new exception to protect lowly and vulnerable members of our society, such as isolated, young black undergraduates attending dominantly white campuses, is often met with consternation: the First Amendment must be a seamless web; minorities, if they knew their own self-interest, should appreciate this even more than others. 20 2 This one-sidedness of free-speech doctrine makes the First Amendment much more valuable to the majority than to the minority. The system of free expression also has a powerful after-the-fact apologetic function. Elite groups use the supposed existence of a marketplace of ideas to justify their own superior position. 203 Imagine a society in which all As were rich and happy, all Bs were moderately comfortable, and all Cs were poor, stigmatized, and reviled. Imagine also that this society scrupulously believes in a free marketplace of ideas. Might not the As benefit greatly from such a system? On looking about them and observing the inequality in the distribution of wealth, longevity, happiness, and safety between themselves and the others, they might feel guilt. Perhaps their own superior position is undeserved, or at least requires explanation. But the existence of an ostensibly free marketplace of ideas renders that effort unnecessary. Rationalization is easy: our ideas, our culture competed with their more easygoing ones and won. 20 4 It was a fair fight. Our position must be deserved; the distribution of social goods must be roughly what fairness, merit, and equity call for.20 5 It is up to them to change, not us. A free market of racial depiction resists change for two final reasons. First, the dominant pictures, images, narratives, plots, roles, and stories ascribed to, and constituting the public perception of minorities, are always dominantly negative. 20 6 Through an unfortunate psychological mechanism, incessant bombardment by images of the sort described in Part I (as well as today's versions) inscribe those negative images on the souls and minds of minority persons. 20 7 Minorities internalize the stories they read, see, and hear every day. Persons of color can easily become demoralized, blame themselves, and not speak up vigorously.208 The expense of speech also precludes the stigmatized from participating effectively in the marketplace of ideas. 20 9 They are often poor-indeed, one theory of racism holds that maintenance of economic inequality is its prime function2 0 -and hence unlikely to command the means to bring countervailing messages to the eyes and ears of others. Second, even when minorities do speak they have little credibility. Who would listen to, who would credit, a speaker or writer one associates with watermelon-eating, buffoonery, menial work, intellectual inadequacy, laziness, lasciviousness, and demanding resources beyond his or her deserved share? Our very imagery of the outsider shows that, contrary to the usual view, society does not really want them to speak out effectively in their own behalf and, in fact, cannot visualize them doing so. Ask yourself: How do outsiders speak in the dominant narratives? Poorly, inarticulately, with broken syntax, short sentences, grunts, and unsophisticated ideas.21' Try to recall a single popular narrative of an eloquent, self-assured black (for example) orator or speaker. In the real world, of course, they exist in profusion. But when we stumble upon them, we are surprised: "What a welcome 'exception'!" Words, then, can wound. But the fine thing about the current situation is that one gets to enjoy a superior position and feel virtuous at the same time. By supporting the system of free expression no matter what the cost, one is upholding principle. One can belong to impeccably liberal organizations and believe one is doing the right thing, even while taking actions that are demonstrably injurious to the least privileged, most defenseless segments of our society.21 2 In time, one's actions will seem wrong and will be condemned as such, but paradigms change slowly.2 1 3 The world one helps to create-a world in which denigrating depiction is good or at least acceptable, in which minorities are buffoons, clowns, maids, or Willie Hortons, and only rarely fully individuated human beings with sensitivities, talents, personalities, and frailties-will survive into the future. One gets to create culture at outsiders' expense. And, one gets to sleep well at night, too. Racism is not a mistake, not a matter of episodic, irrational behavior carried out by vicious-willed individuals, not a throwback to a long-gone era. It is ritual assertion of supremacy, 214 like animals sneering and posturing to maintain their places in the hierarchy of the colony. It is performed largely unconsciously, just as the animals' behavior is. 2 15 Racism seems right, customary, and inoffensive to those engaged in it, while bringing psychic and pecuniary advantages.21 6 The notion that more speech, more talking, more preaching, and more lecturing can counter this system of oppression is appealing, lofty, romantic-and wrong.

And, more speech is not better – speech tends to reinscribe power relations rather than break them down.  Delgado and Yun ‘94
Richard Delgado - Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado. J.D. 1974, University of California, Berkeley. David H. Yun – Member of the Colorado Bar. J.D. 1993, University of Colorado. “Pressure Valves and Bloodied Chickens: An Analysis of Paternalistic Objections to Hate Speech Regulation.” California Law Review. 1994. http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1712andcontext=californialawreview JJN
D. "More Speech"-Talking Back to the Aggressor as a Preferable Solution to the Problem of Hate Speech Defenders of the First Amendment sometimes argue that minorities should talk back to the aggressor.85 Nat Hentoff, for example, writes that antiracism rules teach black people to depend on whites for protection, while talking back clears the air, emphasizes self-reliance, and strengthens one's self-image as an active agent in charge of one's own destiny.8 6 The "talking back" solution to campus racism draws force from the First Amendment principle of "more speech," according to which additional dialogue is always a preferred response to speech that some find troubling.87 Proponents of this approach oppose hate speech rules, then, not so much because they limit speech, but because they believe that it is good for minorities to learn to speak out. A few go on to offer another reason: that a minority who speaks out will be able to educate the speaker who has uttered a racially hurtful remark."8 Racism, they hold, is the product of ignorance and fear. If a victim of racist hate speech takes the time to explain matters, he or she may succeed in altering the speaker's perception so that the speaker will no longer utter racist remarks.8 9 How valid is this argument? Like many paternalistic arguments, it is offered blandly, virtually as an article of faith. In the nature of paternalism, those who make the argument are in a position of power, and therefore believe themselves able to make things so merely by asserting them as true.90 They rarely offer empirical proof of their claims, because none is needed. The social world is as they say because it is their world: they created it that way.91 In reality, those who hurl racial epithets do so because they feel empowered to do so. 92 Indeed, their principal objective is to reassert and reinscribe that power. One who talks back is perceived as issuing a direct challenge to that power. The action is seen as outrageous, as calling for a forceful response. Often racist remarks are delivered in several-on-one situations, in which responding in kind is foolhardy. 93 Many highly publicized cases of racial homicide began in just this fashion. A group began badgering a black person. The black person talked back, and paid with his life.94 Other racist remarks are delivered in a cowardly fashion, by means of graffiti scrawled on a campus wall late at night or on a poster placed outside of a black student's dormitory door.95 In these situations, more speech is, of course, impossible. Racist speech is rarely a mistake, rarely something that could be corrected or countered by discussion. What would be the answer to "Nigger, go back to Africa. You don't belong at the University"? "Sir, you misconceive the situation. Prevailing ethics and constitutional interpretation hold that I, an African American, am an individual of equal dignity and entitled to attend this university in the same manner as others. Now that I have informed you of this, I am sure you will modify your remarks in the future"? 96 The idea that talking back is safe for the victim or potentially educative for the racist simply does not correspond with reality. It ignores the power dimension to racist remarks, forces minorities to run very real risks, and treats a hateful attempt to force the victim outside the human community as an invitation for discussion. Even when successful, talking back is a burden. Why should minority undergraduates, already charged with their own education, be responsible constantly for educating others? 

Turns the case – hate speech does real violence to people of color and necessarily locks in relationships of domination. Delgado and Stefacic ‘09
Richard Delgado - University Professor, Seattle University School of Law; J.D., 1974, University of California, Berkeley. Jean Stefancic – Research Professor, Seattle University School of Law; M.A., 1989, University of San Francisco. “FOUR OBSERVATIONS ABOUT HATE SPEECH.” WAKE FOREST LAW REVIEW. 2009. http://wakeforestlawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Delgado_LawReview_01.09.pdf
II. OBSERVATION NUMBER TWO: THE EVALUATION OF HARMS HAS BEEN INCOMPLETE One way, of course, to end the current standoff is for one of the parties to defer to the other’s point of view. Indeed, by pursuing an aggressive campaign of litigation, the free-speech camp has been implicitly urging that the other side do just that.58 One could also argue that a host of campus administrators, by enacting successive versions of hate-speech codes, are attempting to do the same thing, namely, wear the other side down.59 Ordinarily, though, it is the free-speech faction, with a string of lower-court victories to its credit, who urge the other side to “get over it” and toughen its collective hide.60 Yet, a careful weighing of the costs and benefits of speech regulation suggests that the case for it is closer than the ACLU and some courts seem ready to acknowledge. Before addressing the costs of hate-speech regulation versus the opposite, it is advisable to arrive at an understanding of what hate speech is. A Types of Hate Speech Hate speech, including the campus variety, can take a number of forms—direct (sometimes called “specific”) or indirect; veiled or overt; single or repeated; backed by power, authority, or threat, or not.61 One can also distinguish it in terms of the characteristic— such as race, religion, sexual orientation, immigration status, or gender—of the person or group it targets.62 It can isolate a single individual (“Jones, you goddamned X.”) or group (“The goddamned Xs are destroying this country.”). It can be delivered orally, in writing, on the Internet, or in the form of a tangible thing, such as a Confederate flag, football mascot, or monument.63 It can be anonymous, as with graffiti or a leaflet surreptitiously placed on a bulletin board or under a dormitory door, or its author can be plainly identified.64 The object of the speech may be free to leave, or trapped, as in a classroom or workplace.65 B. The Harms of Hate Speech The various forms of hate speech present different kinds and degrees of harm. The face-to-face kind is the most immediately problematic, especially if the target is not in a position to leave and the one delivering it possesses the power to harm. 1. Direct or Face-to-Face Hate Speech Although some courts and commentators describe the injury of hate speech as mere offense,66 the harm associated with the face-toface kind, at least, is often far greater than that and includes flinching, tightening of muscles, adrenaline rushes, and inability to sleep.67 Some victims may suffer psychosocial harms, including depression, repressed anger, diminished self-concept, and impairment of work or school performance.68 Some may take refuge in drugs, alcohol, or other forms of addiction, compounding their misery.69 2. Hate Speech and Children With children, the harms of hate speech may be even more worrisome. A child victimized by racial taunts or browbeating may respond aggressively, with the result that he or she is labeled as assaultive.70 Or, the child can respond by internalizing the harm and pretending to ignore it. Robbed of self-confidence and a sense of ease, such a child can easily become introspective and morose.71 If the child’s parents suffer the same fate at work, they may bring these problems home so that the parents retain even less energy for their families than before.72 Recent scholarship points out how the pathologies associated with social subordination may be transgenerational, lasting for centuries, if not millennia, and include pain, fear, shame, anger, and despair.73 3. General Hate Speech With general hate speech, such as anonymously circulated flyers or speeches to a crowd, the harms, while diffuse, may be just as serious.74 Recent scholarship shows how practically every instance of genocide came on the heels of a wave of hate speech depicting the victims in belittling terms.75 For example, before launching their wave of deadly attacks on the Tutsis in Rwanda, Hutus in government and the media disseminated a drumbeat of messages casting their ethnic rivals as despicable.76 The Third Reich did much the same with the Jews during the period leading up to the Holocaust.77 When the United States enslaved African Americans and killed or removed the Indians, it rationalized that these were simple folk who needed discipline and tutelage, or else bloodthirsty savages who resisted the blessings of civilization.78 When, a little later, the nation marched westward in pursuit of manifest destiny, it justified taking over the rich lands of California and the Southwest on the ground that the indolent Mexicans living on them did not deserve their good fortune.79 Before interning the Japanese during World War II, propagandists depicted the group as sneaky, suspicious, and despotic.80 It is possible that the connection between general hate speech and instances of mass oppression may not be merely statistical and contingent, but conceptual and necessary.81 Concerted action requires an intelligible intention or rationale capable of being understood by others. One cannot mistreat another group without first articulating a reason why one is doing it—otherwise, no one but a sadist would join in.82 Without a softening-up period, early steps toward genocide, such as removing Jews to a ghetto, would strike others as gratuitous and command little support. Discriminatory action of any kind presupposes a group that labors under a stigma of some kind.83 The prime mechanism for the creation of such stigma is hate speech.84 Without it, genocide, imperialism, Indian removal, and Jim Crow could gain little purchase.85 C. The Harms of Speech Regulation If the harms of hate speech are sobering, what lies on the other side? What happens to the hate speaker forced to hold things in? Will he or she suffer psychological injury, depression, nightmares, drug addiction, and a blunted self image?86 Diminished pecuniary and personal prospects?87 Will hate-speech regulation set up the speaker’s group for extermination, seizure of ancestral lands, or anything comparable?88 The very possibility seems far-fetched. And, indeed, regimes, such as Europe’s and Canada’s, that criminalize hate speech exhibit none of these ills.89 Speech and inquiry there seem as free and uninhibited as in the United States, and their press just as feisty as our own.90 What about harm to the hate speaker? The individual who holds his or her tongue for fear of official sanction may be momentarily irritated. But “bottling it up” seems not to inflict serious psychological or emotional damage.91 Early in the debate about hate speech, some posited that a prejudiced individual forced to keep his impulses in check might become more dangerous as a result.92 By analogy to a pressure valve, he or she might explode in a more serious form of hate speech or even a physical attack on a member of the target group.93 But studies examining this possibility discount it.94 Indeed, the bigot who expresses his sentiment aloud is apt to be more dangerous, not less, as a result. The incident “revs him up” for the next one, while giving onlookers the impression that baiting minorities is socially acceptable, so that they may follow suit.95 A recently developed social science instrument, the Implicit Association Test (“IAT”), shows that many Americans harbor measurable animus toward racial minorities.96 Might it be that hearing hate speech, in person or on the radio, contributes to that result?97 III. OBSERVATION NUMBER THREE: INTEREST BALANCING MUST TAKE ACCOUNT OF RELEVANT FEATURES OF HATE SPEECH If all types of hate speech are apt to impose costs,98 large or small, how should courts and policymakers weigh them? Not every victim of hate speech will respond in one of the ways described above. Some will shrug it off or lash back at the aggressor, giving as good as they got.99 The harm of hate speech is variable, changing from victim to victim and setting to setting.100 By the same token, it is impossible to say with assurance that the cost of hate-speech regulation will always be negligible. Some speakers who might wish to address sensitive topics, such as affirmative action or racial differences in response to medical treatments, might shy away from them.101 The interplay of voices that society relies on to regulate itself may deteriorate. In balancing hate speech versus regulation, two benchmarks may be helpful: a review of current freespeech “exceptions” and attention to the role of incessancy. A. Current Free-Speech Exceptions Not all speech is free. The current legal landscape contains many exceptions and special doctrines corresponding to speech that society has decided it may legitimately punish. Some of these are: words of conspiracy; libel and defamation; copyright violation; words of threat; misleading advertising; disrespectful words uttered to a judge, police officer, or other authority figure; obscenity; and words that create a risk of imminent violence.102 If speech is not a seamless web, the issue is whether the case for prohibiting hate speech is as compelling as that underlying existing exceptions. First Amendment defenders often assert that coining a new exception raises the specter of additional ones, culminating, potentially, in official censorship and Big Brother.103 But our tolerance for a wide array of special doctrines suggests that this fear may be exaggerated and that a case-by-case approach may be quite feasible. How important is it to protect a black undergraduate walking home late at night from the campus library?104 As important as a truthful label on a can of dog food or safeguarding the dignity of a minor state official?105 Neither free-speech advocates nor courts have addressed matters like these, but a rational approach to the issue of hate-speech regulation suggests that they should.106 B. Incessancy and Compounding Two final aspects of hate speech are incessancy—the tendency to recur repeatedly in the life of a victim—and compounding.107 A victim of a racist or similar insult is likely to have heard it more than once. In this respect, a racial epithet differs from an insult such as “You damn idiot driver” or “Watch where you’re going, you klutz” that the listener is apt to hear only occasionally. Like water dripping on stone, racist speech impinges on one who has heard similar remarks many times before.108 Each episode builds on the last, reopening a wound likely still to be raw. The legal system, in a number of settings, recognizes the harm of an act known to inflict a cumulative harm. Ranging from eggshell plaintiffs to the physician who fails to secure fully informed consent, we commonly judge the blameworthiness of an action in light of the victim’s vulnerability.109 When free-speech absolutists trivialize the injury of hate speech as simple offense, they ignore how it targets the victim because of a condition he or she cannot change and that is part of the victim’s very identity. Hate speakers “pile on,” injuring in a way in which the victim has been injured several times before. The would-be hate speaker forced to keep his thoughts to himself suffers no comparable harm. A comparison of the harms to the speaker and the victim of hate speech, then, suggests that a regime of unregulated hate speech is costly, both individually and socially. Yet, even if the harms on both sides were similar, one of the parties is more disadvantaged than the other, so that Rawls’s difference principle suggests that, as a moral matter, we break the tie in the victim’s favor.110 Moreover, the magnitude of error can easily be greater, even in First Amendment terms, on the side of nonregulation. Hate speech warps the dialogic community by depriving its victims of credibility. Who would listen to one who appears, in a thousand scripts, cartoons, stories, and narratives as a buffoon, lazy desperado, or wanton criminal? Because one consequence of hate speech is to diminish the status of one group vis-à-vis all the rest, it deprives the singled-out group of credibility and an audience, a result surely at odds with the underlying rationales of a system of free expression.111

Anti-Blackness is the root cause of white supremacy and social oppression. It outweighs the case. Heitzeg 15

Heitzeg, Nancy A a Professor of Sociology and Director of the¶ interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity Program at St. Catherine¶ University, St. Paul, MN.. "On The Occasion Of The 50th Anniversary Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1964: Persistent White Supremacy, Relentless Anti-Blackness, And The Limits Of The Law." Hamline J. Pub. L. and Pol'y 36 (2015): 54.

While all communities of color suffer from racism in general¶ and its manifestation in criminal justice in particular, “Black” has¶ been the literal and figurative counterpart of “white”. Anti-black¶ racism is arguably at the very foundation of white supremacy; the¶ two constitute the foundational book-ends for the legal, political and¶ every day constructions of race in the United States.12¶ For this¶ reason, in combination with the excessive over-representation of¶ African Americans in the criminal justice system and the prison¶ industrial complex, this analysis will largely focus on the ways in¶ which the law has been a tool for the oppression of African¶ Americans via the furtherance of white supremacy and antiblackness¶ in both law and practice.¶ While race has never reflected any biological reality, it is¶ indeed a powerful social and political construct. In the U.S. and¶ elsewhere, it has served to delineate “whiteness” as the “unraced”¶ norm – the “unmarked marker” – while hierarchically devaluing¶ “other” racial/ethnic categories with Blackness always as the antithesis.13¶ The socio-political construction of race coincides with the¶ age of exploration, the rise of “scientific” classification schemes, and¶ perhaps most significantly capitalism. In the United States, the¶ solidification of racial hierarchies cannot be disentangled from the capitalist demands for “unfree” labor and expanded private property.¶ By the late 1600s, race had been a marker for either free citizens or¶ slave property, and colonial laws had reified this decades before the¶ Revolutionary War.14 The question of slavery was at the center of¶ debates in the creation of the United States and is referenced no less¶ than ten times.15 By the time of the Constitutional Convention of¶ 1787, the racial lines defining slave and free had already been rigidly¶ drawn – white was “free” and black was “slave” – and the result¶ according to Douglass was this: “assume the Constitution to be what¶ we have briefly attempted to prove it to be, radically and essentially¶ pro-slavery”.¶ 16 The Three-Fifths Clause, the restriction on future¶ bans of the slave trade and limits on the possibility of emancipation¶ through escape were all clear indications of the significance of¶ slavery to the Founders. The legal enouncement of slavery in the¶ Constitution is one of the first of many “racial sacrifice covenants”¶ to come, where the interests of Blacks were sacrificed for the nation.¶ 17¶ The social and constitutional construction of white as free and¶ Black as slave has on-going political and economic ramifications.¶ According to Harris, whiteness not only allows access to property,¶ may be conceived of per se as “whiteness as property”.¶ 18 These¶ property rights produce both tangible and intangible value to those¶ who possess it; whiteness as property includes the right to profit and¶ to exclude, even the perceived right to kill in defense of the borders¶ of whiteness.19 As Harris notes:¶ The concept of whiteness was premised on white¶ supremacy rather than mere difference. “White” was¶ defined and constructed in ways that increased its¶ value by reinforcing its exclusivity. Indeed, just as whiteness as property embraced the right to exclude,¶ whiteness as a theoretical construct evolved for the¶ very purpose of racial exclusion. Thus, the concept¶ of whiteness is built on both exclusion and racial¶ subjugation. This fact was particularly evident¶ during the period of the most rigid racial exclusion,¶ as whiteness signified racial privilege and took the¶ form of status property.20¶ Conversely, Blackness is defined as outside of the margins of¶ humanity as chattel rather than persons, and defined outside of the¶ margins of civil society. Frank Wilderson, in “The Prison Slave as¶ Hegemonys (Silent) Scandal,” describes it like this: “Blackness in¶ America generates no categories for the chromosome of history, and¶ no data for the categories of immigration or sovereignty. It is an¶ experience without analog — a past without a heritage.”¶ 21 Directly¶ condemned by the Constitution in ways that other once excluded¶ groups (American Indians, women, immigrants, LGBTQ) were not,¶ Blackness as marked by slavery– as property not person - creates an¶ outsider status that makes future inclusion a daunting challenge.22

The alternative is to embrace the demand of abolitionism – we must recognize that whiteness operates subtly through hands-off policies that preserve the status quo. We choose to challenge the university system at the grassroots intersection with other liberation movements.  Oparah 14

Oparah, Julia. Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies at Mills College and a founding member of Black Women Birthing Justice "Challenging Complicity: The Neoliberal University and the Prison–Industrial Complex." The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent (2014).

¶ In my earlier work on the academic-prison-industrial complex, I suggested that activist scholars were producing and disseminating countercarceral knowledge by bringing academic research into alignment with the needs of social movements and interrogating and reorganizing relationships between prisoners and researchers in the free world.50 Given the history of epistemic and physical violence and exploitation of research subjects by the academy, such a reorganizing of relationships and accountabilities is clearly urgently needed. Yet no matter how radical and participatory our scholarship is, we ultimately fail to dismantle the academic-military-prison-industrial com- plex (academic-MPIC) if we address it only through the production of more knowledge. Since knowledge is a commodity, marketed through books, arti- cles, and conferences as well as patents and government contracts, the pro- duction of “better,” more progressive or countercarceral knowledge can also be co-opted and put to work by the academic-MPIC.¶ An abolitionist lens provides a helpful framework here. Antiprison schol- ars and activists have embraced the concept of abolition in order to draw attention to the unfinished liberation legislated by the Thirteenth Amend- ment, which abolished slavery “except as a punishment for a crime.”51 Aboli- tionists do not seek primarily to reform prisons or to improve conditions for prisoners; instead they argue that only by abolishing imprisonment will we free up the resources and imagine the possibility of more effective and less violent strategies to deal with the social problems signaled by harmful acts. While early abolitionists referred to themselves as prison abolitionists, more recently there has been a shift to prison-industrial complex abolitionism to expand the analysis of the movement to incorporate other carceral spaces— from immigrant detention centers to psychiatric hospitals—and to empha- size the role of other actors, including the police and courts, politicians, corporations, the media, and the military, in sustaining mass incarceration.52¶ How does an abolitionist lens assist us in assessing responses to the academic-MPIC? First, it draws our attention to the economic basis of the academic-MPIC and pushes us to attack the materiality of the militari- zation and prisonization of academia rather than limiting our interventions to the realm of ideas. This means that we must challenge the corporatization of our universities and colleges and question what influences and account- abilities are being introduced by our increasing collaboration with neoliberal global capital. It also means that we must dismantle those complicities and liberate the academy from its role as handmaiden to neoliberal globaliza- tion, militarism, and empire. In practice, this means interrogating our uni- versities’ and colleges’ investment decisions, demanding they divest from the military, security, and prison industries; distance themselves from military occupations in Southwest Asia and the Middle East; and invest instead in community-led sustainable economic development. It means facing allega- tions of disloyalty to our employers or alma maters as we blow the whistle on unethical investments and the creeping encroachment of corporate fund- ing, practices, and priorities. It means standing up for a vision of the liberal arts that neither slavishly serves the interests of the new global order nor returns to its elitist origins but instead is deeply embedded in progressive movements and richly informed by collaborations with insurgent and activ- ist spaces. And it means facing the challenges that arise when our divest- ment from empire has real impact on the bottom line of our university and college budgets. Andrea Smith, in her discussion of native studies, has argued that politi- cally progressive educators often adopt normative, colonial practices in the classroom, using pedagogical strategies and grading practices that rein- scribe the racialized and gendered regulation, policing, and disciplining that PIC abolitionists seek to end.53 In this sense, there could be no “postcarceral” academy. Certainly, sanctions for undergraduate and graduate students and faculty who challenge the university’s regular practices—from failing grades and expulsions to tenure denials and deportation—are systemically distrib- uted, along with rewards for those who can be usefully incorporated. Yet uni- versities and colleges also hold the seeds of a very different possible future, evoked, for example, by the universal admissions movement or by student strikes in Britain and Canada that demand higher education as a right, not a privilege of the wealthy. Rather than seeking to eradicate or replace higher educational institutions altogether, I suggest that we demand the popular and antiracist democratization of higher education.¶ The first step toward this radical transformation is the liberation of aca- demia from the machinery of empire: prisons, militarism, and corporations. Speaking of abolishing the white race, Noel Ignatiev argues that it is neces- sary for white people to make whiteness impossible by refusing the invisible benefits of membership in the “white club.”54 Progressive academics are also members of a privileged “club,” one that confers benefits in the form of a pay- check, health care, and other fringe benefits; social status; and the freedom to pursue intellectual work that we are passionate about. But we can also put our privilege to work by unmasking and then unsettling the invisible, symbi- otic, and toxic relationships that constitute the academic-MPIC.¶ Decoupling academia from its velvet-gloved master would begin the pro- cess of fundamental transformation. Without unfettered streams of income from corporations, wealthy philanthropists, and the military, universities and colleges would be forced to develop alternative fund-raising strategies, relationships, and accountabilities. Can we imagine a college administration aligned with local Occupy organizers to protest the state’s massive spend- ing on prisons and policing and demand more tax money for housing, edu- cation, and health care? Can we imagine a massive investment of time and resources by university personnel to solve the problem of how to decarcerate the nation’s prisons or end the detention of undocumented immigrants in order to fund universal access to higher education? Can we imagine a uni- versity run by and for its constituents, including students, kitchen and gar- den staff, and tenure-track and adjunct faculty? These are the possibilities opened up by academic-MPIC abolition.

The role of the ballot is to interrogate the AFF’s scholarship using the lens of critical race theory. This makes the passage of the plan irrelevant. 

First, their refusal of minority voices is a conscious choice. Delgado 84

Delgado, Richard. "The imperial scholar: Reflections on a review of civil rights literature." University of Pennsylvania Law Review 132.3 (1984): 561-578.

It does not matter where one enters this universe; one comes to the¶ same result: an inner circle of about a dozen white, male writers who¶ comment on, take polite issue with, extol, criticize, and expand on each¶ other's ideas." It is something like an elaborate minuet.¶ The failure to acknowledge minority scholarship extends even to¶ nonlegal propositions and assertions of fact. W.E. DuBois, deceased¶ Black historian, receives an occasional citation.5 Aside from him, little¶ else rates a mention. Higginbotham's monumental In the Matter of¶ Color' might as well not exist. The same is true of the work of Kenneth¶ Clark,1 Black psychologist and past president of the American¶ Psychological Association, and Alvin Poussaint,8 Harvard Medical¶ School professor and authority on the psychological impact of race. One¶ searches in vain for references to the powerful book by physicians Grier¶ and Cobbs, Black Rage,' or to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the¶ Earth,10 or even to writings of or about Martin Luther King, Jr.,1¶ "¶ Cesar Chavez, 2 and Malcolm X."3 When the inner circle writers need authority for a factual or social scientific proposition about race they¶ generally cite reports of the United States Commission on Civil¶ Rights1 4 or else each other.1 5¶ A single anecdote may help to illustrate what I mean. Recently a¶ law professor who writes about civil rights showed me, for my edification,¶ a draft of an article of his. It is, on the whole, an excellent article.¶ It extols the value of a principle I will call "equal personhood." Equal¶ personhood is the notion, implicit in several constitutional provisions¶ and much case law, that each human being, regardless of race, creed, or¶ color, is entitled to be treated with equal respect. To treat someone as¶ an outsider, a nonmember of human society, violates this principle and¶ devalues the self-worth of the person so excluded.¶ I have no quarrel with this premise, but, on reading the one hundred-plus¶ footnotes of the article, I noticed that its author failed to cite¶ Black or minority scholars, an exclusion from the community of kindred¶ souls as glaring as any condemned in the paper. I pointed this out¶ to the author, citing as illustration a passage in which he asserted that¶ unequal treatment can cause a person to suffer a withered self-concept.¶ Having just written an article on a related subject, 8 I was more or less¶ steeped in withered self-concepts. I knew who the major authorities¶ were in that area.¶ The professor's authority for the proposition about withered selfconcepts¶ was Frank Michelman, writing in the Harvard Law Review. I pointed out that although Frank Michelman may be a superb scholar¶ and teacher, he probably has relatively little first-hand knowledge¶ about withered self-concepts. I suggested that the professor add references¶ to such works as Kenneth Clark's Dark Ghetto1¶ " and Grier and¶ Cobbs's Black Rage,"' and he agreed to do so. To justify his selection of¶ Frank Michelman for the proposition about withered self-concept, the¶ author explained that Michelman's statement was "so elegant."¶ Could inelegance of expression explain the absence of minority¶ scholarship from the text and footnotes of leading law review articles¶ about civil rights? Elegance is, without question, a virtue in writing, in¶ conversation, or in. anything else in life. If minority scholars write inelegantly¶ and Frank Michelman writes elegantly, then it would not be¶ surprising if the latter were read and cited more frequently, and the¶ former less so. But minority legal scholars seem to have less trouble¶ being recognized and taken seriously in areas of scholarship other than¶ civil rights theory.19 If elegance is a problem for minority scholars, it¶ seems mainly to be so in the core areas of civil rights: affirmative action,¶ the equality principle, and the theoretical foundations of race relations¶ law.¶ In 1971, Judge Skelly Wright wrote an article entitled, Professor¶ Bickel, the Scholarly Tradition, and the Supreme Court.20 In the article,¶ Judge Wright took a group of scholars to task for their bloodless¶ carping at the Warren Court's decisions in the areas of racial justice¶ and human rights. He accused the group of missing the central point in¶ these decisions-their moral clarity and passion for justice-and labelled¶ the group's excessive preoccupation with procedure and institutional¶ role and its insistence that the Court justify every element of a¶ decision under general principles of universal application, a "scholarly tradition."'2 1¶ I think I have discovered a second scholarly tradition. It consists of¶ white scholars' systematic occupation of, and exclusion of minority¶ scholars from, the central areas of civil rights scholarship. The mainstream¶ writers tend to acknowledge only each other's work. It is even¶ possible that, consciously or not, they resist entry by minority scholars¶ into the field,2 2 perhaps counseling them, as I was counseled, to establish¶ their reputations in other areas of law. I believe that this "scholarly¶ tradition" exists mainly in civil rights; nonwhite scholars in other fields¶ of law seem to confront no such tradition.23

Second, a focus on political action assumes a kind of democratic liberalism that is inaccessible to marginalized voices. Refuse their demand for concrete state action. Lopez 03

López, Gerardo R. University of Utah, Salt Lake City "The (racially neutral) politics of education: A critical race theory perspective." Educational Administration Quarterly 39.1 (2003): 68-94.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of tactics and mechanisms privileged in¶ the field emerge from a strong belief in the democratic process—providing a¶ somewhat optimistic take on the efficacy of political and civic participation.¶ Such strategies not only ignore the political fact that power and influence¶ largely remain the dominion of White, middle-class men (Marshall, 1997a),¶ but they also disregard the fact that the vast majority of underrepresented¶ groups do not largely participate in these kinds of political activity (Arax,¶ 1986; Bush, 1984; Flores and Benmayor, 1997; Gaventa, 1980; Preston,¶ Henderson, and Puryear, 1987). In other words, although these theories support¶ and strengthen our collective beliefs in democracy, political action, representational politics, influence, accountability, and the importance of a¶ whole host of input factors in the decision-making process, they nevertheless¶ fail to address why certain individuals fail to participate in the political process¶ altogether and/or how and why the “democratic” process itself¶ marginalizes and silences diverse peoples, their actions, and their perspectives¶ (Marshall, 1993a; Marshall et al., 1989).¶ Willis Hawley (1977) recognized the limitations of the field almost three¶ decades ago when he stated:¶ Whether one accepts Lasswell’s definition of “who gets what when and how”¶ or other such widely held and related conceptions that politics involves the authoritative¶ allocation of resources and values, my point is the same—political¶ scientists have been more interested in studying the political processes than¶ they have been in studying who receives what benefits from the political process.¶ (p. 319)¶ As Hawley suggested, scholars in the field are more concerned with “input”¶ and “process” factors, and not necessarily with the outcomes and effects of¶ the political process. The focus on one aspect, to the detriment of the other,¶ certainly has been a shortcoming in the field.¶ This is a critically important point, because the outcome of policy can be¶ tangible and identifiable (such as the effects of a public policy on a particular¶ group) or intangible and anomalous (such as people’s perceptions of the¶ political system). As Schram (1995) contended, the field disproportionately¶ suffers from an “overly instrumental view of rationality that masks its latent¶ biases” (p. 375). Certainly, the relentless belief in the effectiveness of political¶ and civic participation is itself a type of bias that is often taken for granted¶ by most scholars in the field.¶ Within the politics of education, we assume that all (legal) citizens of this¶ society have certain inalienable rights—including the right to vote to ensure¶ that government and policies work in their best interest. The field also¶ assumes that all individuals act in politically rational ways and, when necessary,¶ will assert their rights as citizens—through influence, power, conflict,¶ political pressure, voting, or some other mechanism—to minimize real and¶ opportunity costs.¶ Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people of color, the working poor,¶ women, gays/lesbians/bisexuals, and other marginalized groups—who are¶ constantly reminded on a daily basis that they are second-class citizens in this¶ country—the concept of rights is elusive. Their treatment, in historical and¶ contemporary times, attests to the fact that they have never been afforded¶ their full rights as citizens of this country (Delgado, 1997; Flores and¶ Benmayor, 1997; Guinier, 1991; Preston et al., 1987; Spann, 1995; Williams, 1995b). For people of color, their subordination has not only been socially¶ sanctioned but legally sanctioned as well:¶ As the “Other,” racial minorities have often been neither thought of nor treated¶ as Americans. Historically they have by a number of legal and informal means¶ been excluded from buying property in certain areas, prohibited from voting,¶ and restricted as to whom they could marry. In practice, full American citizenship¶ has been restricted to Whites. Over many years of struggle, rights have¶ been extended and the concept of who belongs to America has expanded. Even¶ so, racial and gender discrimination continue to create real differences in opportunities¶ and in people’s perception of their treatment. (Rosaldo and Flores,¶ 1997, p. 58)¶ If having rights is part of being an American citizen (Flores, 1997), then¶ clearly, racial minorities in the United States are far from full incorporation in¶ this regard. They may be equal members of society under the law—but socially,¶ politically, and economically, they are rendered one down by a racist¶ political and legal system that marginalizes them on an everyday basis. As¶ Slater and Boyd (1999) suggested, individuals can be members of the larger¶ polity but may not necessarily be afforded equal status in the larger polity.¶ Therefore, to suggest that all individuals have equal rights under the law¶ and have equal ability and potential to exercise those rights via political¶ action and/or influence—in other words, to suggest that all individuals, irrespective¶ of race or power, act in politically rational ways—is not only shortsighted¶ but disingenuous. It suggests the public space is racially neutral and¶ that contextual factors do not matter in the larger social and political arena.

Third, Debate is a space in which racial identity can be understood—This dynamic is key to confronting racial domination and questioning the underlying aspects of negative racial identities. Reid-Brinkley 08
Shanara Rose. PhD in Philosophy from the University of Georgia. The Harsh Realities Of “Acting Black”: How African-American Policy Debaters Negotiate Representation Through Racial Performance And Style. https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/reid-brinkley_shanara_r_200805_phd.pdf  pgs 2-3. 7/5

The attempts at educational reform are not limited to institutional actors such as the local, state, and federal governments. Non-profit organizations dedicated to alleviating the black/white achievement gap have also proliferated. One such organization, the Urban Debate League, claims that “Urban Debate Leagues have proven to increase literacy scores by 25, to improve grade-point averages by 8 to 10, to achieve high school graduation rates of nearly 100, and to produce college matriculation rates of 71 to 91.” The UDL program is housed in over fourteen American cities and targets inner city youths of color to increase their access to debate training. Such training of students defined as “at risk” is designed to offset the negative statistics associated with black educational achievement. The program has been fairly successful and has received wide scale media attention. The success of the program has also generated renewed 3 interest amongst college debate programs in increasing direct efforts at recruitment of racial and ethnic minorities. The UDL program creates a substantial pool of racial minorities with debate training coming out of high school, that college debate directors may tap to diversify their own teams. The debate community serves as a microcosm of the broader educational space within which racial ideologies are operating. It is a space in which academic achievement is performed according to the intelligibility of one’s race, gender, class, and sexuality. As policy debate is intellectually rigorous and has historically been closed to those marked by social difference, it offers a unique opportunity to engage the impact of desegregation and diversification of American education. How are black students integrated into a competitive educational community from which they have traditionally been excluded? How are they represented in public and media discourse about their participation, and how do they rhetorically respond to such representations? If racial ideology is perpetuated within discourse through the stereotype, then mapping the intelligibility of the stereotype within public discourse and the attempts to resist such intelligibility is a critical tool in the battle to end racial domination.

Tournament: Newark Round Robin | Round: 3 | Opponent: Lexington MB | Judge: Omoregie, Aladekemi and Astacio, Carlos
A: Public universities and colleges should either create policies, or reform their current policies on sexual harassment, to set strict harassment guidelines for in classroom behavior for teachers that prohibits speech that creates a hostile learning environment. They should also implement guidelines prohibiting student-to-student content that creates an hostile learning environment due to the sexual nature of the speech. These regulations will be enforced consistent with Title IX and VII of the Civil Rights Act. Dower 12 J.d
Dower, Benjamin. Assistant Attorney General at Texas Attorney General "Scylla of Sexual Harassment and the Charybdis of Free Speech: How Public Universities Can Craft Policies to Avoid Liability, The." Rev. Litig. 31 (2012): 703.
Sexual Harassment Policy for University Students¶ Students are prohibited from committing sexual harassment.¶ Sexual harassment for students is defined as:¶ (1) Words of a sexual nature directed at the person of the¶ addressee that, by their very utterance, inflict injury, provoke¶ resentment in the addressee, and tend to incite an immediate breach¶ of the peace. Breach of the peace, as contemplated by this provision,¶ is defined as public disorder that involves the outbreak of physical¶ violence.¶ (2) Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors,¶ and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when¶ (a) submission to such conduct is made either¶ explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's¶ academic or employment status; or¶ (b) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an¶ individual is used as the basis for employment or academic¶ decision affecting such individual.¶ (3) Conduct of a sexual nature that is so severe and¶ pervasive-viewed both objectively and from the perspective of the¶ recipient of the remarks and considering the totality of the¶ circumstances-as to create a hostile learning environment.¶ Sexual Harassment Policy for University Employees¶ University employees are prohibited from committing sexual harassment.¶ Sexual harassment for university employees is defined as:¶ (1) Words of a sexual nature directed at the person of the addressee that, by their very utterance, inflict injury, provoke resentment in the addressee, and tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. Breach of the peace, as contemplated by this provision, *746 is defined as public disorder that involves the outbreak of physical violence.¶ (2) Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when¶ (a) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s academic or employment status; or¶ (b) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment or academic decision affecting such individual.¶ ¶ (3) Conduct of a sexual nature that is so severe or pervasive--viewed both objectively and from the perspective of the recipient of the remarks and considering the totality of the circumstances--as to create a hostile learning environment.¶ ¶ Possible Addition¶ ¶ A university employee accused of sexual harassment stemming from speech conducted in the classroom may raise, as a defense, that his or her classroom expression was reasonably related to a legitimate pedagogical interest. If the employee is able to show by a preponderance of the evidence that his or her classroom expression was reasonably related to a legitimate pedagogical interest, the committee shall weigh the value of that interest against the harm of the alleged harassment in determining both guilt and punishment.¶ 

The counterplan resolves a grey area within harassment law – right now professor speech gets protected under the first amendment. The counterplan shifts the precedent to take a stance against harassment. Marcus 08
Kenneth L  Marcus Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America, Baruch College¶ School of Public Affairs. "Higher Education, Harassment, and First Amendment Opportunism." Wm. and Mary Bill Rts. J. 16 (2007): 1025.
These incidents highlight a puzzling phenomenon in contemporary constitutional¶ culture. The puzzle has been the relatively recent appearance and eager¶ acceptance, especially in higher education, of First Amendment or academic¶ freedom arguments in areas which had long been beyond their reach. For at least¶ the "first fifteen years of its development," the law of harassment had been wellunderstood¶ to regulate a sphere of constitutionally unprotected, proscribable¶ conduct, even when it incidentally included the use of words.2' Yet in recent years¶ free-speech arguments have become a favorite topic-changing device for defenders¶ of all forms of harassment, 22 especially in post-secondary education where many are¶ especially sensitized to issues of free speech and academic freedom. The tendency¶ to construct harassing conduct as speech has important ramifications since the¶ appearance of the First Amendment, with its powerful array of standards and¶ presumptions, augurs ill for any area of regulation which is brought within its¶ shifting boundaries. As Frederick Schauer put it, "Once the First Amendment shows¶ up, much of the game is over., 23 And indeed, arguably, the game may now be over¶ for harassment law, which is to say, free speech issues may have obtained too much traction in this area to be dismissed out of hand. On the other hand, it remains at¶ best unclear as to whether the First Amendment is even salient as to this area of law.¶ The appearance of the First Amendment in this area was likely hastened by¶ overreaching on the part of civil rights advocates who, during the 1980s and 1990s,¶ introduced campus speech codes which could not help but raise First Amendment¶ attention.24 For many years, this conflict played itself out in a series of arguments¶ about campus speech codes, which were devised to protect various groups from¶ expressions which might be considered offensive or "hateful."' While these codes¶ drew some support from academic commentators, 26 the courts generally found them¶ to violate the First Amendment and other commentators agreed.27 Interestingly, few institutions have withdrawn speech or harassment codes unless threatened with the¶ risk of litigation or faced with adverse judicial decisions, and many apparently¶ remain on the books.28¶ At the same time, however, most universities have also promulgated antidiscrimination¶ and harassment policies pursuant to the requirements of various¶ federal civil rights statutes (especially Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 196429 and¶ Title IX3¶ " of the Education Amendments Act).3¶ ' Unlike hate speech codes,¶ harassment regulations (such as the federal regulations or public universities'¶ implementing policies) are not directly aimed at speech, although the harassing¶ conduct they regulate may include words.32 Given the prominence of speech¶ interests to the academic setting, however, free speech claims are now regularly¶ raised in response to various allegations of harassment; this is nowhere more true¶ than with respect to allegations of anti-Semitic harassment. Indeed, Justice Kennedy¶ once remarked in dissent that federal education harassment law is "circumscribed by the First Amendment,"33 and federal regulatory policy has assumed this to be so¶ for over a decade. 34 Nevertheless, there is reason to question the validity of this¶ assumption and the salience of free speech to the regulation of education harassment.¶ To the extent that harassment regulation encompasses some speech activities by¶ state actors on the basis of content, the most difficult constitutional question may be¶ whether First Amendment doctrine even applies to such questions or whether they¶ lay outside of the boundaries of First Amendment coverage. 35 This Article will¶ argue that the salience of the First Amendment to questions of academic harassment¶ is at best unsettled; that efforts to apply First Amendment doctrine to harassment¶ law may be seen as a form of what Frederick Schauer has described as "First¶ Amendment opportunism; ' 36 and that such efforts to extend the boundaries of the¶ First Amendment are ultimately unresolvable on the basis of constitutional doctrine¶ alone. Special attention is given to the recently resurgent problem of campus antiSemitism¶ because harassment allegations under this rubric have been subjected to¶ frequent, intense challenge as of late.37z

Tournament: Newark Round Robin | Round: 3 | Opponent: Lexington MB | Judge: Omoregie, Aladekemi and Astacio, Carlos
Harassment cases persist because of a lack of clarity in requirements – a commitment to accountability is key. Saha 8/22

MADHUMITA SAHA The writer is an academic-turned journalist. She taught history at Drexel University and New York University before joining WION. Mon, 22 Aug 2016 http://www.dnaindia.com/world/column-academia-s-feet-of-clay-sexual-misconduct-and-gender-discrimination-in-schools-2247826

In the present context, Tyann Sorrell ’s recourse to legal action seems an obvious choice. But the legal history of sexual harassment shows that the road to public protest had been tough and long. Professor Carrie N. Baker shows in her book, The Women’s Movement against Sexual Harassment, how characterizations of sexual behaviour in workplaces have evolved from being considered a moral problem of a working woman, to a social problem of male lust and seduction, and eventually in the 1970s, such acts came to be interpreted as acts of violence against women and a violation of women’s civil rights.¶ In response to public awakening to the issue, the judges ruled in the William v. Saxbe federal court case of 1976 that sexual harassment is a form of illegal sex discrimination under Title VII. Before this verdict, the US courts were of the opinion that sexual harassment was merely disharmony in a personal relationship, the result of personal urges of individuals, and not part of company policy.¶ We trust in numbers: quantifying sexual harassment in the campus¶ ¶ American universities with the most reports of rape, 2014¶ University campuses are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment of various types. Different sorts of authorities - formal, informal, achieved as well as ascribed- are exercised over students, assistant professors, and administrative assistants. According to the federal campus safety data, nearly 100 US colleges and universities had at least 10 reports of rape on their main campuses in 2014, with Brown University and the University of Connecticut tied for the highest annual total of 43 each.¶ Recently, Association of American Universities (AAU) conducted a Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct among 150,000 students at 27 schools, including most of the Ivy League. Of the female undergraduate student respondents, 23.1 per cent informed the surveyors that they have experienced sexual misconduct due to physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation.¶ 2¶ Per cent of college students reporting sexual assault, 2015¶ One of the most disturbing revelations of the survey indicates that overall rates of reporting to campus officials and law enforcement were rather low.¶ Depending on the specific type of sexual harassment, only five per cent to 28 per cent of respondents claim to have reported their experience of sexual harassment to the appropriate authorities. According to the AAU Climate Survey, the most common reason for not reporting incidents of sexual assault and sexual misconduct was that it was not considered serious enough. Among other reasons, students cited they were “embarrassed, ashamed or that it would be too emotionally difficult,” and because they “did not think anything would be done about it.”¶ Taking it from here to a safer future¶ There is nothing peculiar about sexual harassment and misconduct in the US educational institutions. Embedded in the similar kind of power structure, I am sure, such acts of sexual transgression is common enough occurrence in any university under the sun. So, let’s not point a finger and try to make a case of western sexual promiscuity out of it; we are all living in fragile glass houses.¶ On 14 December 2015, Smriti Irani, the former human resource and development minister of India reported, that as per University Grants Commission (UGC), there have been 295 cases of sexual harassment against women during 2014-15 in various institutes of higher learning in India.¶ As various scholars and activists working on sexual misconduct have already pointed out, we have to be aware that even when a sexual assault has not taken place, a person can experience sexual harassment; a hostile, offensive and intimidating atmosphere - created in academic spaces - does count as sex harassment too.¶ Women belonging to minority groups of different race, caste, and religion are more vulnerable. As are people belonging to the third gender.¶ While acknowledging that women are more vulnerable to sexual conduct, we also need to come up with regulations that look into the harassment suffered by other genders too. Recently, the UGC has taken the right step towards this direction when it introduced the first gender neutral regulation on sexual harassment in India. Under this regulation, both male students and students of the third gender in universities can lodge complaints against sexual harassment faced by them.¶ Tyann Sorrell 's case, and similar other cases reported from academic institutions, should be used to create greater awareness. Sexual harassment is indeed ubiquitous; such heinous crime is not solely committed by blacks, poor and the uneducated, as is widely perceived. Power is deeply entrenched in such actions and, thus, the perpetrators often come from the most privileged section of our societies.

Successful lawsuits force school accountability to fight harassment. Silbaugh 15

Silbaugh, Katharine Law Alumni Scholar¶ BA magna cum laude, Amherst College¶ JD with high honors and Order of the Coif, University of Chicago¶ . "Reactive to Proactive: Title IX's Unrealized Capacity to Prevent Campus Sexual Assault." BUL Rev. 95 (2015): 1049.

In March of 2013, President Obama signed a re-authorization of the¶ Violence Against Women Act.97 Within the re-authorization were amendments¶ to the Clery Act, which requires educational institutions to disclose statistics¶ about the number of sexual assaults on campus in an annual report that must be¶ distributed to students and prospective students, engaging market pressures to¶ press universities into addressing sexual assault.98 The amendments to the¶ Clery Act (entitled the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, or SaVE¶ Act)99 strengthen reporting requirements and go beyond DOE’s¶ “recommendation” that colleges educate staff and students to require¶ educational institutions to educate staff and students about campus sexual assault, including statements that sexual assault is prohibited, definitions of¶ sexual assault and consent, bystander tools, and awareness programs for new¶ students.100 The Clery Act is enforced by the DOE primarily through fines, but¶ it is not a part of Title IX. While the focus of the Clery Act remains the¶ accurate reporting of crimes, it will serve as a limited and defined mechanism¶ for getting colleges to introduce education and prevention strategies to¶ students. However, the Clery Act, unlike Title IX, does not mandate equality in¶ the provision of education; a school can check off requirements under the new¶ Clery Amendments without evaluating their efficacy or revising them toward¶ the particular goal of equal educational opportunity. Title IX has a far greater¶ capacity to address sexual assault prevention because colleges could be¶ compelled to take whatever reasonable steps can be shown to reduce assaults,¶ or combination of steps as research about efficacy continues to develop. The¶ DOE has the ability to develop a far more comprehensive approach to assault¶ prevention under Title IX than the specific prescriptions the Clery¶ Amendments mandate.¶ Does the Gebser framework constrain Title IX from doing prevention work?¶ Not for the DOE. To the contrary, the DOE has effectively used Title IX to¶ change campus culture more broadly already. Consider Title IX as the rest of¶ the world has: as sports law. Title IX applied pressure on institutions to offer¶ equality in programming and in the educational experience. Differences in¶ interest in participation couldn’t be offered as an excuse for noncompliance¶ with Title IX: if there was not a culture of sports for girls and women, schools¶ needed to create that culture to ensure equality.101 While it was not smooth¶ sailing throughout, schools largely achieved that cultural shift. This may have¶ been possible because relative to other institutions, schools are good creators¶ of culture. When schools first tried to say that they simply found the world as¶ is, with girls not wanting to participate in sports at the rate boys did, the DOE¶ pushed back. In response, schools became creative at expanding and¶ cultivating interest in sports among girls and women. The social change around¶ girls in sports resulted in large part from a charge to schools to cultivate that¶ change, taking concrete steps that would have the effect of changing cultural¶ dynamics. The colleges faced cultural resistance to change and allegations that¶ they were going too far in redesigning athletic programs and opportunities,102 much as colleges do today as they deliberate over the right sexual assault¶ prevention measures.103 But they demonstrated a powerful ability to transform¶ the culture and expectations of equality in sports participation.¶ Title IX operates primarily as a spending clause regulation overseen by the¶ DOE. The DOE should not have felt constrained by the doctrine developed to¶ address the individual cause of action. If poor reaction in response to an actual,¶ individual sexual assault can give rise to an individual cause of action, why¶ can’t high rates of sexual assault in a school’s population amount to sex¶ discrimination for purposes of DOE enforcement? If higher rates of assault¶ overall result when a school fails to take evidence-based steps to reduce the¶ overall rate of sexual assault, why wouldn’t the DOE nudge schools to be¶ proactive? What if schools have concrete tools at their disposal to reduce the¶ overall rate of assault? Isn’t that within the DOE’s enforcement purview?¶ Consider, by comparison, the legislative approach to school bullying. In the¶ past decade, nearly every state has passed laws addressing the obligations of a¶ school system to address incidents of bullying and to prevent bullying.104¶ While those statutes are aimed at both prevention and post-incident¶ intervention, the most recent and best-regarded statutes focus substantial¶ energy on requiring schools to deliver evidence-based bullying prevention¶ programming in an effort to reduce the amount of bullying within each¶ school.105 Prevention and culture change are at the core of these legal¶ interventions.106 Ideally, they would be at the core of the DOE’s approach to¶ Title IX’s guarantee of equal access to education on college campuses. Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of this exact reform: the DOE is¶ investigating schools, and, in turn, schools have stepped up their evaluations of¶ their own processes. If so, I would hope the next step will be a DOE guidance¶ on prevention measures, because to date, they’ve drawn colleges far into the¶ weeds on responses without adequately directing them toward prevention.

AFF causes a snowball effect that makes first amendment defenses impossible to beat. Schauer 04
Schauer, Frederick David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law. "The boundaries of the First Amendment: A preliminary exploration of constitutional salience." Harvard Law Review (2004): 1765-1809.
In addition to the properties of First Amendment claims that may¶ make them less likely to appear legally frivolous, the First Amend-¶ ment's magnetism may assist in ensuring that those claims will not¶ arise in isolation. There will often be multiple lawyers, multiple liti-¶ gants, and multiple public actors who perceive the virtues of the same¶ opportunistic strategy at roughly the same time, or who even may be¶ in active coordination with each other - as with the multiple chal-¶ lenges to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, the proliferation of First¶ Amendment rhetoric surrounding legal arguments regarding computer¶ source code, and the panoply of parallel claims about First Amend-¶ ment limitations on copyright. When this is the case, the multiplicity¶ of individually tenuous claims may produce a cascade effect160 such¶ that the claims no longer appear tenuous. The combination of, say,¶ four scarcely plausible but simultaneous court challenges and twenty¶ scarcely plausible public claims of a First Amendment problem could make all these individually implausible claims seem more credible¶ than they actually are.161 From the standpoint of an interest group¶ seeking to achieve change and to mobilize public support or the sup-¶ port of other interest groups,162 winning is better than losing publicly,¶ but losing publicly is perhaps still preferable to being ignored.¶ Once the claim or argument achieves a critical mass of plausibility,¶ the game may be over. Even if individual courts reject the claim, the¶ multiplicity of now-plausible claims may give the issue what is re-¶ ferred to in inside-the-Beltway political jargon as "traction" and in¶ newsroom jargon as "legs." Interestingly, this phenomenon sometimes¶ survives even authoritative rejection of the claim. With respect to the¶ argument that hostile-environment sexual harassment enforcement has¶ serious First Amendment implications, for example, neither the Su-¶ preme Court's rejection of this argument in dicta in R.A. V v. City of¶ St. Paul163 nor the Court's silent dismissal of the same claim in Harris¶ v. Forklift Systems, Inc.164 has slowed the momentum of those who¶ would wage serious First Amendment battle against hostile-¶ environment sexual harassment law.'65 Similarly, decades of judicial¶ rejection of the argument that copyright law must be substantially re-¶ stricted by the commands of the First Amendment have scarcely dis-¶ couraged those who urge otherwise; and in some respects the Supreme¶ Court's recent decision in Eldred v. Ashcroftl66 can be considered not a¶ defeat, but rather one further step toward the entry of copyright into¶ the domain of the First Amendment: the Supreme Court did grant cer-¶ tiorari, in part to determine "whether ... the extension of existing and¶ future copyrights violates the First Amendment;"'67 and the seven-¶ Justice majority, as well as Justice Breyer in dissent,'68 acknowledged¶ that the First Amendment was not totally irrelevant. 

Even if lawsuits get shut down the perception of a clear prohibitive policy deters harassment. Gould 10
Speak No Evil: The Triumph of Hate Speech Regulation; Jon B. Gould; February 15, 2010; University of Chicago Press; https://books.google.com/books?id=tApJtRo2vWsCandpg=PA6andlpg=PA6anddq=removing+speech+codes+would+increase+sexual+harassmentandsource=blandots=NndfoAN6Cmandsig=t6NtkoSjEMrJni0tEQu3b0QyzUYandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwi7vdWui_fQAhVK22MKHVikBNIQ6AEIWTAJ#v=onepageandq=removing20speech20codes20would20increase20sexual20harassmentandf=false

This point would sit well with Kors and Silverglate, who contend that col- leges and universities are still “enforcing their own politically correct world- view through censorship, double standards, and a judicial system without due process!” But Kors and Silverglate's claim is by turns both too broad and too narrow. While many school administrators have failed to enforce their speech policies explicitly or punitively-in part because they are hesitant to create controversy or to run afoul of the court decisions-the policies continue to wield great power. Even if these policies sport few actual teeth, their symbolic power has flourished as student services staff and other college officials continue to advance the underlying message of the speech policies, mainly that hate speech has real and harmful effects and that it should be purged wherever possible. If the speech codes' opponents believe this message is limited to colleges and universities they misunderstand its reach, for the conceptual kernel has taken root in American society, bringing with it greater acceptance of hate speech regulation. Public opinion increasingly favors the informal prohibi- tion of racist and sexist speech,“ newspapers and other media have eschewed expressions that viiify a racial, ethnic, or sexual group, and many internet service providers have voluntarily removed or banned postings that malign another's race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. For that matter, existing law reflects the tenets of hate speech regulation, albeit through a slightly different lens. Although addressed to action and not speech. the penalty enhancement provisions of hate crime legislation can be traced back to col- lege speech codes. Moreover, sexual harassment law has expanded to punish employers when workplace speech denies employees equal opportunity. While some try to explain away this doctrine as an exception in which a ”sub- category" of ‘proscribable speech" is “swept up incidentally within the reach of a statute directed at conduct rather than speech/35 the hostile environ- ment prong of sexual harassment law rests on the same basis as does hate speech regulation: Words not only wound, but severe or pervasive messages may also discriminate. Whether they have recognized it or not, hate speech regulation has quietly surpassed the wildest fears of its opponents to become an accepted norm in American society. 

Sexual harassment in the classroom is a result of patriarchal violence that invades academia. Sexual harassment represents an oppressive use of power by professors and kills the participation and success of the harassed. Benson and Thomson 82

Benson, Donna J., and Gregg E. Thomson. "Sexual harassment on a university campus: The confluence of authority relations, sexual interest and gender stratification." Social problems 29.3 (1982): 236-251.

It is precisely this widespread confluence of authority relations, sexual interest and gender¶ stratification which defines the problem of sexual harassment. There is, in other words, a nexus¶ of power and sexualprerogative often enjoyed by men with formal authority over women. Men¶ in such positions can engage in (or "get away with") overt sexual behaviors that would be rebuffed¶ or avoided were the relationship not one of superior and subordinate. They can also discharge selectively the power and rewards of their positions as a means to obligate women sexualy (Blau,¶ 1964).¶ As well as reward and punish women directly, men can manipulate and obscure their sexual in-¶ tentions toward female subordinates. Women learn that the "official" attention of a male¶ superior is often but a vehicle through which he can "press his pursuits" (Goffman, 1977). In¶ turn, what is often mistakenly perceived by men as an unfounded distrust or suspicion of motives¶ has its basis in previous experience with male "helpfulness." Therefore, as Thorne5 suggests, there¶ is an intrinsic ambiguity between the formal definition of the male superior/female subordinate¶ relationship and a sexual one, in which the gender of the woman can be made salient at the in-¶ itiative of the man.¶ Male Authority and Sexual Interest on the University Campus¶ At major universities, student access to individual instructors can be a scarce resource. Faculty¶ members serve as gatekeepers to the professions, yet an institutional priority on research severely¶ constrains the time and energy that they devote to instruction and interaction with under-¶ graduates (Blau, 1973). Moreover, though students are supposedly evaluated according to merit,¶ the teacher's role permits a wide latitude in the degree of interaction and helpfulness granted to¶ individual students. An instructor enjoys considerable discretionary power to provide or¶ withhold academic rewards (grades, recommendations) and related resources (help, psychological¶ support).6¶ As in the workplace, it is usually men who exercise this discretionary power over female univer-¶ sity students. While women now comprise more than half of all college students,¶ faculty-especially within higher ranks and at major universities-are overwhelmingly male.¶ About 95 percent of university full professors are men (Patterson and Engelberg, 1978). Nor-¶ mative requirements for career advancement at competitive universities are based on traditional,¶ male life-cycle patterns and work schedules that are not convenient to many women (Hochschild,¶ 1975).¶ In the past, it has been difficult for women to successfully enter any prestigious and male-¶ dominated - hence, "non-traditional" - field (Epstein, 1970). Social psychological analyses (Med-¶ nick et. al., 1975) have identified some of the barriers still faced by college women seeking such¶ careers. Yet a recent compendium of student responses to a University of California ad-¶ ministrative query about sex discrimination on campus is replete with testimony from male¶ students that female students' sexuality now gives them an unfair advantage in this competition¶ (University of California, Berkeley, 1977). While women allude to numerous sexist remarks and¶ behaviors by faculty which derogate the abilities of women as a group, the male respondents¶ claim that individual women profit from their sexual attributes because male instructors go out of¶ their way to be "extra friendly" and helpful to them. According to the male perception, then, the¶ latitude permitted in the faculty-student relationship works - at the initiative of either instructor¶ or student - to the advantage of attractive women.¶ Some sociologists of higher education view faculty-student sexual exchanges only as women at-¶ tempting to use their sexuality to compensate for a lack of academic accomplishment:¶ Innumerable girls have found that a pretty face and a tight sweater were an adequate substitute for diligence and cleverness when dealing with a male teacher. Some, having been frustrated in efforts to get¶ by on this basis, have pushed matters further and ended up in bed-though not necessarily with an A¶ (Jencks and Riesman, 1968:427n).¶ Similarly, Singer's (1964:148) empirical study of the relationship between personal attrac-¶ tiveness and university grades relies on unsupported conjecture about female manipulativeness to¶ conclude that ". . . the poor college professor is . . . enticed by the female students ... as he goes¶ about his academic and personal responsibilities." In both studies we find the unquestioned¶ assumption that women (unfairly) capitalize on their sexuality in an otherwise meritocratic and¶ asexual relationship.7¶ Our analysis of sexual harassment as the nexus of power and sexual prerogative implies that,¶ from the woman's perspective, the situation is more complex and decidedly less sanguine. Rather¶ than having a unilateral "sex advantage," female students face the possibility that male instruc-¶ tors may manipulate sexual interest and authority in ways which ultimately undermine the posi-¶ tion of women in academia. Because women can no longer be openly denied access to educational¶ and professional training legally, sexual harassment may remain an especially critical factor of¶ more covert discrimination.

Diversity key to competitiveness. Hyman and Jacobs ‘09
Jeremy S. Hyman – US News Contributor. Lynn F. Jacobs – US News Contributor. “Why Does Diversity Matter at College Anyway?” US News. August 12, 2009. http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2009/08/12/why-does-diversity-matter-at-college-anyway JJN
Henry Louis Gates Jr., President Barack Obama, and Police Sgt. James Crowley have certainly done their part to get race relations into the national discussion. But diversity is hot on college campuses, too—not only race, ethnicity, and gender but also religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and age. But why is diversity important in college at all? Visiting blogger Aaron Thompson, professor of sociology at Eastern Kentucky University and coauthor (with Joe Cuseo) of Diversity and the College Experience, offers eight reasons why diversity matters at college: 1. Diversity expands worldliness. College might be the first time you have had the opportunity to have real interaction with people from diverse groups. Whether we like it or not, many times we find ourselves segregated from other groups in schools, churches, and our own neighborhoods. A college campus is like opening the door to the entire world without traveling anywhere else. 2. Diversity enhances social development. Interacting with people from a variety of groups widens your social circle by expanding the pool of people with whom you can associate and develop relationships. Consider how boring your conversations would be if you only had friends who had everything in common with you. 3. Diversity prepares students for future career success. Successful performance in today's diverse workforce requires sensitivity to human differences and the ability to relate to people from different cultural backgrounds. America's workforce is more diverse than at any time in the nation's history, and the percentage of America's working-age population comprised of members of minority groups is expected to increase from 34 percent to 55 percent by 2050. 4. Diversity prepares students for work in a global society. No matter what profession you enter, you'll find yourself working with employers, employees, coworkers, customers and clients from diverse backgrounds—worldwide. By experiencing diversity in college, you are laying the groundwork to be comfortable working and interacting with a variety of individuals of all nationalities. 5. Interactions with people different from ourselves increase our knowledge base. Research consistently shows that we learn more from people who are different from us than we do from people who are similar to us. Just as you "think harder" when you encounter new material in a college course, you will do the same when you interact with a diverse group of people. 6. Diversity promotes creative thinking. Diversity expands your capacity for viewing issues or problems from multiple perspectives, angles, and vantage points. These diverse vantage points work to your advantage when you encounter new problems in different contexts and situations. Rather than viewing the world through a single-focus lens, you are able to expand your views and consider multiple options when making decisions and weighing issues of, for example, morality and ethics. 7. Diversity enhances self-awareness. Learning from people whose backgrounds and experiences differ from your own sharpens your self-knowledge and self-insight by allowing you to compare and contrast your life experiences with others whose life experiences differ sharply from your own. By being more self-aware, you are more capable of making informed decisions about your academic and professional future. 8. Diversity enriches the multiple perspectives developed by a liberal arts education. Diversity magnifies the power of a general education by helping to liberate you from the tunnel vision of an ethnocentric and egocentric viewpoint. By moving beyond yourself, you gain a panoramic perspective of the world around you and a more complete view of your place in it.

Loss of US competitiveness affects countries all around the world – causes widespread poverty. Porter and Rivkin ‘12
Michael E. Porter is a University Professor at Harvard, based at Harvard Business School in Boston. Jan W. Rivkin is the Bruce V. Rauner Professor at Harvard Business School. “The Looming Challenge to U.S. Competitiveness.” Harvard Business Review. March 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/03/the-looming-challenge-to-us-competitiveness JJN
The American economy is clearly struggling to recover from a recession of unusual depth and duration, as we are reminded nearly every day. But the United States also faces a less visible but more fundamental challenge: a series of underlying structural changes that could permanently impair America’s ability to maintain, much less raise, the living standards of its citizens. If government and business leaders react only to the downturn and fail to confront America’s deeper challenge, they will revive an economy with weak long-term prospects. During the past year, we have examined U.S. competitiveness with the help of a diverse group of scholars, business leaders from around the world, and the first-ever comprehensive survey of Harvard Business School alumni. Our research suggests that the U.S. faces serious challenges. Too often, America’s leaders, in government and business, have acted in ways that neutralize the country’s many strengths. However, the decline of U.S. competitiveness is far from inevitable. The United States remains the world’s most productive large economy and its largest market for sophisticated goods and services, which stimulates innovation and acts as a magnet for investment. To restore its competitiveness, America needs a long-term strategy. This will require numerous policy changes by government, which may seem unlikely with Washington gridlocked. However, many of the crucial steps can and must be carried out by states and regions, where many of the key drivers of competitiveness reside. More important, business leaders can and must play a far more proactive role in transforming competition and investing in local communities rather than being passive victims of public policy or hostages of misguided shareholders. What Is Competitiveness? America cannot address its economic prospects without a clear understanding of what we mean by competitiveness and how it shapes U.S. prosperity. The concept is widely misunderstood, with dangerous consequences for political discourse, policy, and corporate choices that are all too evident today. The United States is a competitive location to the extent that companies operating in the U.S. are able to compete successfully in the global economy while supporting high and rising living standards for the average American. (We thank Richard Vietor and Matthew Weinzierl for helping to articulate this definition.) A competitive location produces prosperity for both companies and citizens. Lower American wages do not boost U.S. competitiveness. Neither does a cheaper dollar. A weakened currency makes imports more expensive and discounts the price of American exports—in essence, it constitutes a national pay cut. Some steps that reduce firms’ short-term costs, then, actually work against the true competitiveness of the United States. Whether a nation is competitive hinges instead on its long-run productivity—that is, the value of goods and services produced per unit of human, capital, and natural resources. Only by improving their ability to transform inputs into valuable products and services can companies in a country prosper while supporting rising wages for citizens. Increasing productivity over the long run should be the central goal of economic policy. This requires a business environment that supports continual innovation in products, processes, and management. Boosting productivity over the short run by firing workers, as many U.S. firms did at the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, is a reflection not of competitiveness but of weakness. An economy in which many working-age citizens cannot find or do not even seek jobs may appear to enjoy high productivity in the short run, but in fact it has underlying competitiveness problems. It is a nation’s ability to generate high output per employable person—not per currently employed person—that reveals its true competitiveness. Improving competitiveness is not the same as creating jobs. Policy makers can stimulate employment in the short run by artificially boosting demand in labor-intensive local industries not exposed to international competition, such as construction. Creating jobs without improving productivity, however, will not result in sustainable employment that raises the nation’s standard of living. Rather than defining the sole goal as job creation, the U.S. must focus on becoming a more productive location, which will generate high-wage employment growth in America, attract foreign investment, and fuel sustainable growth in demand for local goods and services. Government efforts to stimulate demand are also different from improving competitiveness. Governments commonly play an important role by temporarily increasing outlays to soften the impact of recessions. Such moves may hold up living standards and company performance in the short run, but they typically don’t improve the fundamental drivers of productivity and therefore cannot improve living standards and company performance in the long run. American competitiveness is important not only for firms based or founded in the U.S. but also for foreign firms that operate in the country. Foreign firms contribute to U.S. prosperity if they bring productive activities to the U.S. that provide jobs at attractive wages. U.S. affiliates of foreign firms accounted for nearly 5 of U.S. private employment in 2009. Competitiveness is not a zero-sum game, in which one country can advance only if others lose. Long-term productivity—and, along with it, living standards—can improve in many countries. Global competition is not a fight for a fixed pool of demand; huge needs for improving living standards are waiting to be met around the world. Productivity improvements in one country create new demand for goods and services that firms in other countries can pursue. Greater productivity in, say, India can lead to higher wages and profits there, boosting demand for pharmaceuticals from New Jersey and software from Silicon Valley. Spreading innovation and productivity improvement allows global prosperity to grow. Because the global economy is not a zero-sum game, the decline of American competitiveness is a problem not only for the U.S. The global economy will be diminished if its largest national economy is weak, ceases to be an engine of innovation, and loses its influence in shaping a fair and open global trading system.

Tournament: Newark Round Robin | Round: 3 | Opponent: Lexington MB | Judge: Omoregie, Aladekemi and Astacio, Carlos
Neoliberalism structures academic freedom in the status quo. It sets limits on what is acceptable behavior to quell dissent and any facult truly radical enough to challenge corporate hegemony are tossed out before they can pose a real threat. Chatterjee and Maira 14
Chatterjee, Piya, and Sunaina Maira. "The Imperial University: race, war, and the nation-state." The imperial university: Academic repression and scholarly dissent (2014): 1-50.
Our geopolitical positions—of our immediate workplaces as well as trans- national work circuits—underscore the complex contradictions of our locations within the U.S. academy. These paradoxes of positionality and employment have seeded this project in important ways. We have both taught at the University of California for many years—in addition to other U.S. universities—and have been members of the privileged upper caste of U.S. higher education: the tenured professoriate. We have each used these privileges of class, education, and cultural capital to live and work transna- tionally and have organized around and written about issues of warfare, colo- nialism, occupation, immigration, racism, gender rights, youth culture, and labor politics, within and outside the United States. In fact, we first began working together when we collaborated in 2008 on a collective statement of feminist solidarity with women suffering from the violence of U.S. wars and occupation, during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Israeli siege of Gaza.7 Yet our privileges of entry, of inclusion, and of outside-ness are also always marked by the “dangerous complicities” of imperial privi- lege and neoliberal capital, as the chapters by Julia Oparah; Sylvanna Falcón, Sharmila Lodhia, Molly Talcott, and Dana Collins; Vijay Prashad; and Laura Pulido powerfully remind us. Even as we have recognized the institutional privileges and complicities through which we can do this work, we have experienced at various moments and in different ways—as the chapters by Alexis Gumbs, Clarissa Rojas, Thomas Abowd, and Nicholas De Genova suggest—a keen sense of being “outsiders” within—in the university, in aca- demic disciplines, in different nations.8¶ As scholars and teachers located within “critical ethnic studies” and “women and gender studies,” we are also well aware of a certain politics of value, legitimacy, and marginality at play, especially as the dismantling of the public higher education system and attacks on ethnic studies around the nation accelerate. The struggles to build ethnic studies and women/gen- der/sexuality studies as legitimate scholarly endeavors within the academy, emerging from several strands of the civil rights and antiwar movements, are well chronicled and keenly debated. The precarious positions as well as increasing professionalization and policing of these interdisciplinary fields within the current restructuring of the university is a matter of deep con- cern; for example, in the wake of the assault on ethnic studies in Arizona, the dismantling of women’s studies programs, and in a climate of policing and criminalizing immigrant “others” across the nation.¶ The pressure on academics to fund one’s own research—following the dominant grant-writing models of science and technology—is now even more explicit in a time of fiscal crisis and deepening fissures between faculty in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, education, and business who occupy very different positions in an increasingly privatized university.9 Prashad reminds us in his chapter of the consequences of the fiscal crisis for college students who bear a massive and growing burden of debt. We recognize these pressures on faculty and students as stemming from neolib- eral capitalism and the university’s capitulation to a global “structural adjust- ment” policy that is now coming “home” to roost in the United States, as astutely argued by Farah Godrej in her analysis linking the neoliberal uni- versity to militarism and violence. The academy has also tried to market the notion of “public scholarship,” transforming activist scholarship into a commodifiable form of knowledge production and dissemination that can affirm the university’s civic engagement—confined by the parameters of per- missible politics, as incisively critiqued by Salaita, Rojas, and Abowd. If we cannot—or choose not to—market our scholarship and pedagogies through these programs of funding and institutionalization, we find our work further devalued within the dominant terms of privatization in the academy. Given that neoliberal market ideologies now underwrite the “value” of our research and intellectual work, what happens to scholars whose writing directly tack- les the questions of U.S. state violence, logics of settler colonialism, and global political and economic dominance?¶ We know from stories about campaigns related to tenure or defamation of scholars, often shared in hallways during conferences and sometimes through e-mail listservs and the media, that there are serious costs to writing and speaking about these matters. For far too many colleagues who confront the most taboo of topics, such as indigenous critiques of genocide and settler colonialism or especially the question of Palestine, the price paid has been extraordinarily high. It has included the denial of promotion to tenure, being de-tenured, not having employment contracts renewed, or never being hired and being blacklisted, as this book poignantly illustrates. Coupled with the loss of livelihood or exile from the U.S. academy, many scholars have been stigmatized, harassed, and penalized in overt and covert ways. There are numerous such cases, sadly way too many to recount here—most famously those of Ward Churchill, Norman Finkelstein, David Graeber, Joel Kovel, Terri Ginsberg, Marc Ellis, Margo Nanlal-Rankoe, Wadie Said, and Sami Al- Arian—but it is generally only the handful that generate public campaigns that receive attention while many others remain unknown, not to mention innumerable cases of students who have been surveilled or harassed, such as Syed Fahad Hashmi from Brooklyn College, while again there are countless other untold stories.10 These are the scandals and open secrets, we argue, that need to be revealed and placed in broader frames of analysis of labor and survival within the U.S. university system.11

Free speech is an illusion propagated by corporatists – their model of rights assumes an equal playing field analogous to free market economists view of capital. The promotion of free speech perpetuates the idea that speech is a commodity, which strengthens neoliberalism’s hold on the academy. Brown 15
Brown, Wendy. Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution. MIT Press, 2015.
At times, kennedy raises the pitch in Citizens United to depict limits on corporate funding of PAC ads as “an outright ban on speech”;19 at other times, he casts them merely as inappropriate government inter- vention and bureaucratic weightiness.20 But beneath all the hyperbole about government’s chilling of corporate speech is a crucial rhetorical move: the figuring of speech as analogous to capital in “the political marketplace.” on the one hand, government intervention is featured throughout the opinion as harmful to the marketplace of ideas that speech generates.21 Government restrictions damage freedom of speech just as they damage all freedoms. on the other hand, the unfettered accumulation and circulation of speech is cast as an unqual- ified good, essential to “the right of citizens to inquire...hear... speak...and use information to reach consensus itself a precondi- tion to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.”22 not merely corporate rights, then, but democracy as a whole is at stake in the move to deregulate speech. Importantly, however, democ- racy is here conceived as a marketplace whose goods—ideas, opinions, and ultimately, votes—are generated by speech, just as the economic market features goods generated by capital. In other words, at the very moment that Justice kennedy deems disproportionate wealth irrele- vant to the equal rights exercised in this marketplace and the utili- tarian maximization these rights generate, speech itself acquires the status of capital, and a premium is placed on its unrestricted sources and unimpeded flow.¶ What is significant about rendering speech as capital? economiza- tion of the political occurs not through the mere application of market principles to nonmarket fields, but through the conversion of political processes, subjects, categories, and principles to economic ones. This is the conversion that occurs on every page of the kennedy opinion. If everything in the world is a market, and neoliberal markets con- sist only of competing capitals large and small, and speech is the capital of the electoral market, then speech will necessarily share cap- ital’s attributes: it appreciates through calculated investment, and it advances the position of its bearer or owner. Put the other way around, once speech is rendered as the capital of the electoral marketplace, it is appropriately unrestricted and unregulated, fungible across actors and venues, and existing solely for the advancement or enhancement of its bearer’s interests. The classic associations of political speech with freedom, conscience, deliberation, and persuasion are nowhere in sight.¶ How, precisely, is speech capital in the kennedy opinion? How does it come to be figured in economic terms where its regulation or restriction appears as bad for its particular marketplace and where its monopolization by corporations appears as that which is good for all? The transmogrification of speech into capital occurs on a number of levels in kennedy’s account. First, speech is like capital in its tendency to proliferate and circu- late, to push past barriers, to circumvent laws and other restrictions, indeed, to spite efforts at intervention or suppression.23 speech is thus rendered as a force both natural and good, one that can be wrongly impeded and encumbered, but never quashed.¶ second, persons are not merely producers, but consumers of speech, and government interference is a menace—wrong in prin- ciple and harmful in effect—at both ends. The marketplace of ideas, kennedy repeats tirelessly, is what decides the value of speech claims. every citizen must judge the content of speech for himself or herself; it cannot be a matter for government determination, just as govern- ment should not usurp other consumer choices.24 In this discussion, kennedy makes no mention of shared deliberation or judgment in politics or of voices that are unfunded and relatively powerless. He is focused on the wrong of government “commanding where a per- son may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, using censorship to control thought.”25 If speech generates goods consumed according to individual choice, govern- ment distorts this market by “banning the political speech of millions of associations of citizens” (that is, corporations) and by paternal- istically limiting what consumers may know or consider. Again, if speech is the capital of the political marketplace, then we are polit- ically free when it circulates freely. And it circulates freely only when corporations are not restricted in what speech they may fund or promulgate.¶ Third, kennedy casts speech not as a medium for expression or dialogue, but rather as innovative and productive, just as capital is. There is “a creative dynamic inherent in the concept of free expres- sion” that intersects in a lively way with “rapid changes in technol- ogy” to generate the public good.26 This aspect of speech, kennedy argues, specifically “counsels against upholding a law that restricts political speech in certain media or by certain speakers.”27 Again, the dynamism, innovativeness, and generativity of speech, like that of all capital, is dampened by government intervention.¶ Fourth, and perhaps most important in establishing speech as the capital of the electoral marketplace, kennedy sets the power of speech and the power of government in direct and zero-sum-game opposition to one another. Repeatedly across the lengthy opinion for the majority, he identifies speech with freedom and government with control, cen- sorship, paternalism, and repression.28 When free speech and govern- ment meet, it is to contest one another: the right of speech enshrined in the First Amendment, he argues, is “premised on mistrust of gov- ernmental power” and is “an essential mechanism of democracy because it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people.”29 Here are other variations on this theme in the opinion:¶ The First Amendment was certainly not understood by the framers to condone the suppression of political speech in society’s most salient media. It was understood as a response to the repression of speech.30¶ When Government seeks to use its full power, including criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought.... The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.31 This reading of the First Amendment and of the purpose of political speech positions government and speech as warring forces parallel to those of government and capital in a neoliberal economy.

Tournament: Newark Round Robin | Round: 2 | Opponent: Newark Science BA | Judge: Hertzig, Chetan and Rung, Bailey
Interpretation: The aff must defend that no constitutionally protected speech may be restricted by public colleges or universities. To clarify, they can’t defend a restriction on only a kind, setting, or timing of speech.

Counterplans that restrict only certain forms of speech are theoretically illegitimate.

The term “any” is the res is the weak form of “any”  -  “not any” statements refer to “all”.  Cambridge Dictionary

Cambridge Dictionary, Any, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/quantifiers/any.  NS

We use any before nouns to refer to indefinite or unknown quantities or an unlimited entity: Did you bring any bread? Mr Jacobson refused to answer any questions. If I were able to travel back to any place and time in history, I would go to ancient China. Any as a determiner has two forms: a strong form and a weak form. The forms have different meanings. Weak form any: indefinite quantities We use any for indefinite quantities in questions and negative sentences. We use some in affirmative sentences: Have you got any eggs? I haven’t got any eggs. I’ve got some eggs. Not: I’ve got any eggs. We use weak form any only with uncountable nouns or with plural nouns: talking about fuel for the car Do I need to get any petrol? (+ uncountable noun) There aren’t any clean knives. They’re all in the dishwasher. (+ plural noun) Warning: We don’t use any with this meaning with singular countable nouns: Have you got any Italian cookery books? (or … an Italian cookery book?) Not: Have you got any Italian cookery book? Strong form any meaning ‘it does not matter which’ We use any to mean ‘it does not matter which or what’, to describe something which is not limited. We use this meaning of any with all types of nouns and usually in affirmative sentences. In speaking we often stress any:. (+ uncountable noun) When you make a late booking, you don’t know where you’re going to go, do you? It could be any destination. (+ singular countable noun) talking about a contract for new employees Do we have any form of agreement with new staff when they start? (+ singular countable noun) a parent talking to a child about a picture he has painted A: I don’t think I’ve ever seen you paint such a beautiful picture before. Gosh! Did you choose the colours? B: We could choose any colours we wanted. (+ plural countable noun) See also: Determiners and types of noun Some and any Any as a pronoun Any can be used as a pronoun (without a noun following) when the noun is understood. A: Have you got some £1 coins on you? B: Sorry, I don’t think I have any. (understood: I don’t think I have any £1 coins.) parents talking about their children’s school homework A: Do you find that Elizabeth gets lots of homework? Marie gets a lot. B: No not really. She gets hardly any. (understood: She gets hardly any homework.) A: What did you think of the cake? It was delicious, wasn’t it? B: I don’t know. I didn’t get any. (understood: I didn’t get any of the cake.) See also: Determiners used as pronouns Any of We use any with of before articles (a/an, the), demonstratives (this, these), pronouns (you, us) or possessives (his, their): Shall I keep any of these spices? I think they’re all out of date. Not: … any these spices? We use any of to refer to a part of a whole: Are any of you going to the meeting? I couldn’t answer any of these questions. I listen to Abba but I’ve never bought any of their music.  Any doesn’t have a negative meaning on its own.  It must be used with a negative word to mean the same as no.  Compare Not Any: there aren’t any biscuits left.  They’ve eaten them all.  No: There are no biscuits left.  They’ve eaten them all.     
Outweighs -  it takes into account AFF definitions which assume a strong form of “any” that justifies singular cases.
Determining semantics comes before other standards:

A.  It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement, and there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it.

B.  Grammar is the most objective since it doesn’t rely on arbitrary determinants of what constitutes the best type of debate – it’s the only impact you can evaluate. 

C.  The AFF isn’t topical regardless of fairness or education since it doesn’t affirm the text - we wouldn’t debate rehab again just because it was a good topic..  

Violation: 

Standards: 

1. Limits: They allow way too many affs, newpapers, protests, specific races, sexual orientations, and places on campuses. That explodes neg prep burden and predictability that explodes the NEG prep burden and predictability which kills fairness and engagement.  Procedurally, if I can’t access their education it doesn’t matter.  T version of the AFF solves their offense – they can read advantages in any topic area which ensures NEG responses.

2. Legal precision – multiple court rulings agree with our interp. Elder 91
Elder ‘91(David S. Elder, October 1991, "Any and All": To Use Or Not To Use?” "Plain Language' is a regular feature of the Michigan Bar Journal, edited by Joseph Kimble for the State Bar Plain English Committee. Assistant editor is George H. Hathaway. Through this column the Committee hopes to promote the use of plain English in the law. Want to contribute a plain English article? Contact Prof. Kimble at Thomas Cooley Law School, P.O. Box 13038, Lansing, MI 48901, http://www.michbar.org/file/generalinfo/plainenglish/pdfs/91_oct.pdf | SP)
The Michigan Supreme Court seemed to approve our dictionary definitions of "any" in Harrington v Interstate Business Men's Accident Ass'n, 210 Mich 327, 330; 178 NW 19 (1920), when it quoted Hopkins v Sanders, 172 Mich 227; 137 NW 709 (1912). The Court defined "any" like this: "In broad language, it covers 'arl'v final decree' in 'any suit at law or in chancery' in 'any circuit court.' Any' means ,every,' 'each one of all."' In a later case, the Michigan Supreme Court again held that the use of "any" in an agency contract meant "all." In Gibson v Agricultural Life Ins Co, 282 Mich 282, 284; 276 NW 450 (1937), the clause in controversy read: "14. The Company shall have, and is hereby given a first lien upon any commissions or renewals as security for any claim due or to become due to the Company from said Agent." (Emphasis added.) The Gibson court was not persuaded by the plaintiff's insistence that the word "any" meant less than "all": "Giving the wording of paragraph 14 oJ the agency contract its plain and unequivocable meaning, upon arriving at the conclusion that the sensible connotation of the word any' implies 'all' and not 'some,' the legal conclusion follows that the defendant is entitled to retain the earned renewal commissions arising from its agency contract with Gibson and cannot be held legally liable for same in this action," Gibson at 287 (quoting the trial court opinion). The Michigan Court of Appeals has similarly interpreted the word "any" as used in a Michigan statute. In McGrath v Clark, 89 Mich App 194; 280 NW2d 480 (1979), the plaintiff accepted defendant's offer of judgment. The offer said nothing about prejudgment interest. The statute the Court examined was MCL 600.6013; MSA 27A.6013: "Interest shall be allowed on any money judgment recovered in a civil action...." The Court held that "the word 'any' is to be considered all-inclusive," so the defendants were entitled to interest. McGrath at 197 Recently, the Court has again held that "alny means 'every,' 'each one of all,' and is unlimited in its scope." Parker v Nationwide Mutual Ins Co, 188 Mich App 354, 356; 470 NW2d 416 (1991) (quoting Harrington v InterState Men's Accident Ass'n, supra)

Legal precision determines topic literature and pre round prep – it’s a legal topic about first amendment jurisprudence. This is key to predictability and giving the neg a fair research burden to engage the affirmative. 

Vote on substantive engagement:  otherwise we’re speaking without debating and there’s nothing to separate us from dueling oratory.   It also creates the most valuable long-term skills since we need to learn how to defend our beliefs in any context, like politics.

Drop the debater on T:

A. Hold them accountable for their interp – a topical advocacy frames the debate - drop the arg lets them jump ship to a new layer killing NEG ground.

B. Drop the arg on T is the same thing as drop the debater since T indicts their advocacy 

Competing interps since reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.

No RVIs:

 A. They incentivize debaters to go all in in theory and bait it with abusive practices, killing substantive clash on other flows. B. They can run theory on me too if I’m unfair so 1) theory is reciprocal because we’re both able to check abuse and 2) also cures time skew because they can collapse in the 2ar to their shell.

Tournament: Golden Desert | Round: 3 | Opponent: Lynbrook CW | Judge: Malis, Greg
Drones and target killing are vital to counterterrorism
Kenneth Anderson 13, Professor of International Law at American University, June 2013, “The Case for Drones,” Commentary, Vol. 135, No. 6
Targeted killing of high-value terrorist targets, by contrast, is the end result of a long, independent intelligence process. What the drone adds to that intelligence might be considerable, through its surveillance capabilities -- but much of the drone's contribution will be tactical, providing intelligence that assists in the planning and execution of the strike itself, in order to pick the moment when there might be the fewest civilian casualties. Nonetheless, in conjunction with high-quality intelligence, drone warfare offers an unparalleled means to strike directly at terrorist organizations without needing a conventional or counterinsurgency approach to reach terrorist groups in their safe havens. It offers an offensive capability, rather than simply defensive measures, such as homeland security alone. Drone warfare offers a raiding strategy directly against the terrorists and their leadership. If one believes, as many of the critics of drone warfare do, that the proper strategies of counterterrorism are essentially defensive -- including those that eschew the paradigm of armed conflict in favor of law enforcement and criminal law -- then the strategic virtue of an offensive capability against the terrorists themselves will seem small. But that has not been American policy since 9/11, not under the Bush administration, not under the Obama administration -- and not by the Congress of the United States, which has authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to fight the war on terror aggressively. The United States has used many offensive methods in the past dozen years: Regime change of states offering safe havens, counter-insurgency war, special operations, military and intelligence assistance to regimes battling our common enemies are examples of the methods that are just of military nature. Drone warfare today is integrated with a much larger strategic counterterrorism target -- one in which, as in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, radical Islamist groups seize governance of whole populations and territories and provide not only safe haven, but also an honored central role to transnational terrorist groups. This is what current conflicts in Yemen and Mali threaten, in counterterrorism terms, and why the United States, along with France and even the UN, has moved to intervene militarily. Drone warfare is just one element of overall strategy, but it has a clear utility in disrupting terrorist leadership. It makes the planning and execution of complex plots difficult if only because it is hard to plan for years down the road if you have some reason to think you will be struck down by a drone but have no idea when. The unpredictability and terrifying anticipation of sudden attack, which terrorists have acknowledged in communications, have a significant impact on planning and organizational effectiveness.

Withdrawing drone presence decimates counter-terror operations in Africa especially – discreet intelligence surveillance is an essential tool. Attuquayefio 14
Philip Attuquayefio, Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science and a Master of Philosophy in International Affairs from the University of Ghana, Legon, currently a Research Fellow at the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy, University of Ghana, 2014 (“Drones, the US and the New Wars in Africa,” Journal of Terrorism Research, September 2014, The Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, http://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/jtr/article/view/942/757)

Terrorist organizations include AQIM, AQAP, Al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram

Just like the terrorist threats, the approaches for US interventions on matters of national security have also evolved. From conspicuous full-scale military actions in the Bush and Clinton years to the “light footprints” favored by the Obama administration. The latter has involved the use of Special Forces, and other relatively more discreet approaches. A critical element of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism approaches is the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) popularly known as Drones. UAVs are remotely controlled aircrafts designed with a capacity to carry a wide variety of accessories for both civilian and military use. These include long range and wide angled cameras, communication and target detection sensors and military hardware such as missiles. Added to this is the stealth ability of some drones. Consequently, they are typical for reconnaissance, surveillance and target engagement missions (Washburn and Kress, 2009). Although, it’s been suggested that experimentation with drones have been ongoing since the early 1990s, its first deployment in a context of war was in the former Yugoslavia in the mid–1990s where they were reportedly used as surveillance equipment (Turse and Engelhardt, 2012). Subsequent evolution of drones saw its emergence as armaments for target engagement particularly in post 9/11counterterrorism activities of the US. One of the early cases in this regard was reported in Yemen in 2002, where six alleged Al Qaeda operatives were killed by drone fire (Kretzmer, 2005). Since then, it is fast gaining notoriety as the armament of choice from the options available to the US. The use of drones has however not been without controversy both in host countries where it has, for instance, garnered political fallouts generally deemed as unfavorable to US moral leverage in global affairs, and within the domestic politics of the US, where the administration has been accused of arbitrarily authorising execution of people including some US citizens. The latter has constituted a legal conundrum that continues to attract negative publicity to the use of drones. The tactical fallouts have been suggested as far direr, namely, an increase in volunteers ready to launch a global jihad against the US and its western allies following the fabrication of drone casualties in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. (Taj, 2011) The readiness of the US to deploy drones towards prosecuting the war on terror in Africa has long gone beyond the assumptive phase. In 2001, the US acquired and renovated Camp Lemonnier from the armed forces of Djibouti and subsequently, in May 2003, designated the facility as the base for the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). Since then, Camp Lemonnier has earned the reputation as a critical base for drone operations around the Horn of Africa and Yemen. In March 2013, President Obama announced further plans to set up another base in the West African country of Niger. Djibouti and Niger have been officially confirmed, yet, reports suggest that the US has access to a lot more operational ranges for drones than publicly acknowledged (Whitlock and Miller, 2011). In terms of operability however, the first reported use of drones within the continent was a 2007 incident in which drones guided antitank missile gunships to blow down a convoy carrying one of Al Qaeda’s top operatives and suspected hideout in Somalia (Axe, 2012). Since then, the US is reported to have operated drones from a number of sites in Africa including Djibouti, and Burkina Faso. This paper utilises open source data to interrogate the state of terrorism in Africa (conceptualised as new wars) and the options applicable to the African context. It is argued that one of the ways the US can make game-changing interventions through surveillance and intelligence-gathering in several hotspots in Africa, without compromising its own national security is through the use of drones. The paper begins by briefly discussing the ‘new wars’ in Africa before making a case for the complementary utility of drones in fighting terrorism in Africa. It concludes by suggesting policy options to counter balance the utility-blighting publicity currently surrounding the use of drones in Africa. A caveat underpinning this paper is an admission by the author that the causal and sustaining factors of terrorism in Africa are multi-faceted and in most cases derive from threats to aspects of human security palpable in terrorists-generating communities. Consequently, the phenomenon can only be addressed through a multidimensional approach – one in which drones can actively feature mainly through surveillance and intelligence-gathering. TERRORISM: THE NEW WARS IN AFRICA In the aftermath of the independence wars, the second major wave of conflicts on the continent - the civil wars of the post-Cold War era between the late 1980s and early 1990s saw countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Cote D’Ivoire among others witnessing a succession of violent conflicts. The consequence of these conflicts were abductions, systematic rape, genocide and a host of actions that fall within the generic description of terrorism. These acts were mainly domestic in nature and perpetrated by ethnic and political groups. It was therefore not surprising that the US maintained a general disinterest in activities in Africa during that period. The latter part of the 1990s witnessed a marginal rise in terrorist incidents on the continent of Africa. Unlike the previous period, an overwhelming majority of these acts were attributed to the activities of Islamic extremists. The manifestations of these acts were undoubtedly ruthless yet somewhat limited to relatively few countries in East and the Horn of Africa. In the 1998 attacks on the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, for instance, two hundred people are on record to have been killed and over a thousand injured. Yet in comparison to the global numbers, it was insignificant. In fact during that period, Africa placed a mere fifth, behind Latin America, Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East, as the most targeted regions for international acts of terrorism (Botha and Solomon, 2005). In the 21st century, acts of terrorism in Africa have gone up exponentially (Hough, 2002). This is attributable to a number of events. One of these has had to do with the post–9/11 War on terror, and the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and its allies. Statistics have, for instance, shown dislocation and relocation of suicide terrorist cells and training camps as well as the death or detention of several top operatives of Al Qaeda following the commencement of the US led War on terror (Cronin, 2003). With the disruption of its activities, Al Qaeda has adopted a more diffused approach, one that has seen the centralised command and control previously held by Osama bin Laden diffuse to other parts of the world in line with the objective to strike soft targets of the US and its western allies. With Africa playing host to monumental commercial and state interests of the US and a number of Western countries, strikes against these targets have sought to demonstrate that al Qaeda and its affiliates still retain the will and the capacity to operate around the world (Crenshaw, 2011). Relatedly, the diffusion indirectly caused by the war on terror has made the identification and neutralising of terrorist cells more difficult. The post-independence narrative of a host of African countries has also been dominated by human insecurity arising out of the multivariate effects of poverty and general economic insecurity, environmental degradation, inadequate management of health related threats to survival as well as erosion in the significance of jealously guarded indigenous culture primarily through modernisation. These effects have been attributed to political instability occasioned mainly by the politics of coup d’états as well as the tradition of woeful governance and corruption that defines leadership in many of these countries. Consequently, elements of human security have traditionally not been accorded superlative positions in the thought processes of African States relative to the desire by successive regimes to hold on to power; and where they have, in such lopsided proportions that parts of the polity are palpable left out of development. Responses to these local dynamics have evolved from largely tame protests to outright militancy and terrorism. The surge towards the terrorism end of the continuum have within the last two decades obtained motivation from the relative successes of militant groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in locking down national and sometimes global attention to their causes. It is therefore not surprising that Somalia, Mali and Nigeria, three of the countries in Africa severely challenged by the activities of organised terror groups have had infamous records of human insecurity in specific parts of their territories. In Nigeria for instance, Uzodike and Maiangwa (2012) describe the governance challenges as “a cocktail of widespread failures of state policies, inefficient and wasteful parastatal, and endemic corruption, poverty, unemployment, and extensive underdevelopment in the North of Nigeria”. Within that context, it is not surprising that Boko Haram emerged and galvanised active membership among segments of the Northern population. The franchising of Al Qaeda has also contributed to the increase in terrorist activities on the continent. Out of these loose arrangements, terrorists’ organisations in Africa, continue to adopt and adapt the modus operandi of Al Qaeda. One of the foremost organisations depicting this franchise is Boko Haram. Operating mainly from the Northern parts of Nigeria since 2002, Boko Haram claims to be fighting for the institution of Islamic rule in Nigeria. Beyond their objective, their modes of operation; a combination of suicide attacks and car bombs in civilian areas, is dangerously similar to Al Qaeda’s mode of operation. Elsewhere on the continent, a number of terrorist organisations have engineered actions that fit within the anti-western agenda of Al Qaeda but also indicate, in some cases, the localised grievances of these groups. In North Africa for instance, Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been engaged in some of the high profile terrorist actions against the West and its interests as well as supporters of western ideals (Masters, 2013). Their versatility, coupled with the porous borders and vast territories in the region as well as their collaboration with other like-minded organisations in the area has resulted in an expanding trans-regional terrorist network, fast gaining reputation not just for its adopted Al Qaeda tag but also a conspicuous résumé of terrorist activities. The West African Sub-Region is also home to two relatively recent terrorist organisations. Boko Haram operates mainly in Northern Nigeria and Cameroon, while Ansar Dine operates from Northern Mali. The former was formed in Maiduguri in 2002 as the Congregation and People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad (Onuoha, 2010). It is however known as Boko Haram, a Hausa moniker accorded to the group mainly on the basis of their proscription of western education. Similarly to AQIM, at foundation, the leaders of Boko Haram exploited Nigeria’s governance challenges particularly relating to corruption as well as socio-economic vulnerabilities which are more evident in the northern region to mobilise a base of followers, discontented with the status quo. With known links to AQIM (United Nations Security Council, 2014), and operating in a region with porous borders, the fear of Boko Haram expanding their influence is justified. In May 2013, a military offensive was launched against the group in Nigeria’s three northern states. Aided by the declaration of curfews in some cities and air strikes on identified training camps, the military indicated that the insurgents had been “halted” (Abrak, 2013). In spite of this, experience with terror cells in other parts of the world suggest that once the underlying motif is active, the dislocation arising through the decimation is merely temporal as groups and cells relocate and often hit back in a variety of revised ways. Moreover, in the particular case of Nigeria, the military has gained a reputation for exaggerating successes while downplaying setbacks (Waddington, 2014). It is therefore not surprising that subsequent to the May 2013 offensive, Boko Haram has proven to be even more organised and effective, striking key targets and conducting high profile operations such as the abduction of 200 girls from a Nigerian government secondary school in April, 2014. A further threat to the region is the presence of Ansaru, a breakaway of fringe elements in Boko Haram. Ansaru has since January, 2012 sought to enforce the fight for Islamist rule. Though a smaller group, it has sought, and perhaps obtained, recognition through high profile kidnapping and execution of western targets (Onuoha, 2013). Mali has provided another platform for brewing terrorism in Africa. With the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, mercenaries armed with weapons, proliferated during the war, moved into Northern Mali where ethnic Tuaregs have been engaged in a long-running rebellion with the government in Bamako over the independence of Azawad in the North. Mobilised under the name Ansar al-Dine, this group has since 2012, engaged in various acts of terrorism, thus earning the US State Departments’ categorisation as a terrorist organisation. In the Horn of Africa, Al Shabaab continues to attract attention as arguably the continent’s most prominent terrorist organisation both in terms of its links with Al Qaeda and its ability to strike at western targets or targets considered as sympathetic to the western cause or detrimental to Islam. While it is deemed as an outgrowth of the Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI), a radical organisation that confronted the Siad Bare regime in the early 1990s, in 2003 it began its operation as the enforcing arm of the Union of Islamic Courts (ICU), when the latter took control over Mogadishu and tried to exert a level of law and order in the Somali capital that is most notable. Following the Ethiopian intervention in December 2006, ICU was all but disbanded except for the Al Shabaab that withdrew to the south Central region of the country and launched what has become a long running insurgency first, against the Ethiopians and subsequently, troops serving under the African Union Mission in Somalia. While its objective resonates as the creation of an Islamic State of Somalia, its affiliation with Al Qaeda has meant that the group has also sought to hit targets deemed as affronts to the global jihad currently been pursued by Al Qaeda and its affiliates. The trend of terrorism around the continent is instructive of the intensifying wave of Islamic fundamentalism and the possibility of generating and sustaining training camps and recruits akin to the challenges confronted in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also justifies the renewed focus of the US on Africa. NEGOTIATING DRONES FOR AFRICA The dynamics of terrorism in Africa are not lost to US policy makers. However, since the Somalia debacle in 1993, the US appears to have conceded to its relative weaknesses on the continent (Adebajo, 2003). This is related to the fact that it was not a colonial power and its actions on the continent during the Cold War were mostly limited to covert operations championed by the CIA. The history of US actions in Africa has therefore been more of covert ‘drone-like’ operations than open warfare such as witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current hyper predilection for drones in the US strategy is in line with the Obama Administration’s “light footprints” and ‘leading from behind policy’. Admittedly, the adoption of drones is confronted by some controversies. This can be compared to those surrounding waterboarding and other interrogation techniques applied in US detention facilities (Bellamy, 2006). Unfortunately, the debate on the utility of drones in the context of terrorism is significantly challenged by what can best be described as the ‘Pak Syndrome’. This is the reality that debates on the utility of drones are heavily influenced by their application to the war on terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Consequently, the application of drones are confronted by utility-blighting propaganda that merely portray drones as killer devices and negates the intelligence gathering and surveillance relevance and the impact of such intelligence to the war on terror. This includes the fact that the intelligence gathered potentially leads to the prevention of even more strikes, and by implication, more deaths by terrorists. The Pak syndrome also dilutes the complementary capacity of drones in the war on terror by highlighting legal conundrums particularly focusing on issues concerning the responsibility to fair trial for suspects and the application of principles of humanitarian law (Alston, 2010 and Sadat,2012) among others. These objections are often overrated and do not aptly reflect the reality that the war on terror is unconventional in many respects. Moreover, certain aspects of the African context peculiarly requires the utility of drones. In arguing the veracity of the latter, it is submitted that an analysis of the trend of terrorism in Africa, points to some continent-wide commonalities from the use of guerilla tactics, the exploitation of large expanses of geographical areas and the implications of Africa’s infamous porous borders on the activities of terrorist organisations. While these illuminate the nature of the terrorist threat in Africa, it is also suggestive of the strategies that are likely to make an impact in relation to managing the phenomenon of terrorism on the continent. A number of these commonalities and their implications for drone use are examined herein. A pronounced feature of the new wars relating to terrorism in Africa is the guerilla tactics (Onuoha, 2011) employed by the various terrorist organisations on the continent. The implication is that timeless principles of war, as espoused by the Geneva and Hague conventions, for instance, are not being adhered to. For Boko Haram, Ansar Dine, AQIM and Al Shabaab for instance, civilian targets are legitimate targets and so are injured US soldiers. The weapons of choice for terrorists have been decided more by availability and less by restrictions of Jus in Bello. A stark reminder of the abuse of legal principles is the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which, needless to say, was a violation of the inviolability of diplomatic premises; one of the preeminent provisions of post-Westphalia diplomatic relations. The tendency for non-state parties or their state sponsors to adhere to these rules of war undoubtedly points to the presence of an asymmetrical war. Unfortunately, the US is bound to largely adhere to the rules that terrorist organisations, herein considered as unconventional combatants, flout with impunity. In such an unfavorably unbalanced terrain, positive outcomes from the use of conventional security operatives even with regard to intelligence-gathering is dodgy. Africa’s disreputably porous borders and the prospects they offer for trans-regional terrorism is another reason why unconventional interventions by the US should be contemplated. As noted above, almost all the Islamic fundamentalist groups straddle entire regions with relative ease. In the case of Mali, it has been indicated, for instance, that porous borders to the North have facilitated the migration of fighters from Algeria-based AQIM as well as vestiges of the Libyan conflict to move in and operate with reasonable ease. The fact of mercenaries crossing the porous borders of Africa means that mobilising terror for cross-country objectives of hitting US and Western interests is made much easier (Dehez, 2010). The expanse of territory straddled, the multiplicity of countries operated in and the implications on sovereignty that the US will have to be confronted with in pursuit of terrorist and networks makes it more difficult for conventional forces to gather terrorism-related intelligence. On the contrary, the reconnaissance capacity of drones makes them ultimately efficient strategies in monitoring the flow of terrorist networks and illicit weapons as well as building of training camps in Africa. Thus essentially, managing the long porous borders could therefore benefit from the surveillance capabilities of drones. Related to the above is the lack of capacity of most African governments to gather and organise unimpeachable intelligence on the activities of terrorists and their networks. A number of factors account for this reality. The obvious being the lack of political commitment as manifested in the inability of governments to commit funds for developing intelligence databases countrywide and across regions. Additionally, terrorist organisations in Africa are operating on multiple fronts, adopting mutating strategies and enlisting combatants whose identities are at the least amorphous. This makes the collection of intelligence difficult and by implication, makes these wars generally less responsive to conventional deterrence strategies. In the absence of such intelligence, countries currently confronted heavily by the activities of terrorism such as Nigeria and Mali are having to depend on inadequate or inexistent intelligence to fight what is in reality, a lost battle ab initio (Amaraegbu, 2013). From the determination of terrorist cells to the identification of key members and their arrest or execution, the reality is that the war on terror is fought more on intelligence and less on brute force. As such, the utility of the surveillance and intelligence-gathering capacity of drones to African governments grappling with terrorism cannot be over-emphasised. The proliferation of weapons in Africa also makes it impossible to gauge the strategic or tactical ability of terrorist organisations. This could lead to significant miscalculations with unpredictable consequences. Particularly in Libya, where the revolutionary forces violently confronted the Gadhafi regime, the end of the war has hardly seen any meaningful programme of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of former combatants. A number of combatants also alluded to pro-US sentiments for as long as Gadhafi was the enemy, a simple case of the enemy of my enemy being my friend. The implications of this could be obvious - the existence of many armed people fluid enough to be manipulated, proliferated arms and a growing fundamentalist rhetoric that can be mobilised for running terrorist objectives. A critical component of the US assistance to Africa as regards the war on terror must therefore relate to intelligence gathering and dissemination. The surveillance capabilities of drones are absolutely needed in these circumstances (Drew, 2010). Related to the intelligence deficit in most African countries is an infrastructural deficit that can forestall the progress of conventional troops yet can be effectively harnessed by radical groups employing guerilla-style tactics. With vast land areas virtually undeveloped, such as the Sahel Sahara region, conventional military tactics will be confronted by accessibility challenges. Such terrain however favors the guerilla tactics of Africa’s terror networks who are prone to exploit such vulnerability of conventional troops through kidnapping and suicide bombings among others. Drones on the other hand, are comparatively less prone by design to the hazards of Africa’s infrastructural deficit. In this light, drones can better overcome Africa’s infrastructural challenges to provide surveillance and intelligence data on terrorism. Finally, one of the components of the war on terror since 2001 has been America’s desire to win hearts and minds. Within the African continent, the US reputation appears to have floundered. Indeed, in terms of security, America’s record suggests an opportunistic actor interested in the continent during the Cold War days yet quick to demarcate its interests in the aftermath of the Cold War. While this is undoubtedly symptomatic of the wiles of global politics, the re-entry of the US to Africa’s security affairs based mainly on the assessed effects of African-bred terrorism and its impact on US national security should be approached with extreme caution, less funfair and more discretion. Under the circumstances, what is required is a less visible approach to intervention, one that favors the stealth operations of drones. CONSIDERING THE ANTI-DRONE SCHOOL The argument has been made that using drones against terrorists is not the most lasting way to fight the enemy. To the holders of this opinion, the targeted-killing of terrorists does not deter their fomentation. If a top operative is killed, for instance, it is just a matter of time before he is replaced. Also, the point is made that the more terrorists are attacked with drones, the more they pursue a correction of the asymmetry by targeting innocent civilians as they are in no position to hit back at the drones or their operators (Whetham, 2013). Consequently, it is argued that, to effectively fight terrorism particularly in Africa, the human insecurity generators of terrorism must be eliminated or at least, reduced considerably through transparency and accountability as well as equitable distribution of the national cake to primarily reduce internal dissent likely to fuel insurgencies. This position is sound and undoubtedly reflective of the multivariate causes of terrorism in Africa. As indicated above, for instance, the post-independence corruption and mal-governance-filled narratives of the Africa State is proven to be one of the creators of terrorism in Africa. It therefore stands to reason that the search for strategies takes into consideration aspects that rectify the challenges indicated above. Unfortunately, part of the local dynamics influencing terrorism on the continent may point to the ineffectiveness of such human security and governance-inspired strategy. Presently, for instance, the leitmotif for Africa-based terrorists has shifted or is shifting from out-and-out domestic concerns to a hard lined anti-west agenda. In such a situation, one can only be dodgy about whether the terrorists remain interested in pressurising their home governments into pursuing good governance. If governance in Nigeria improves, for instance, will Boko Haram disband? Will the group abort its objective of de-secularisation of the state? In responding in the negative, this paper suggests the presence on the continent, some terrorist organisations whose evolution and motive have no relation to Africa’s governance challenges, or who have moved beyond those challenges to represent a global jihad against the West and values largely considered as of western orientation. Thus, in reality, such terrorists are a bunch of ‘all or nothing’ intransigent killers not willing to meet anybody halfway and as such can hardly be satisfied through negotiations or good governance. This unfortunately reduces the human security and governance-inspired strategies to effective add-ons to multidimensional strategies much the same way as drones. As Olojo (2013) points out, the sources and causes of terrorism in Africa are multiple in nature and as such the best way to counter terrorism on the continent is to pursue a multi-dimensional approach. Using drones as part of the cocktail of strategies for confronting terrorism in Africa must factor in the Pak syndrome. Civilian deaths and abuse of territorial sovereignty resulting from drone usage are legitimate concerns. Notwithstanding, they are bearable opportunity costs in the war on terrorism. Although the death of non-combatants cannot be justified in absolute terms, comparatively, incidents of terrorism are resulting in the death of more civilians than American drones have accidentally killed. Moreover, the point has been made that the civilian-casualties argument against drone usage has largely arisen due to the well-publicised quality of ‘precision’ drones are supposed to have. Thus, even one civilian casualty is seen as a preventable case. Such a standard cannot be achieved by any ground combat operation. Beyond the attack functions, the intelligence-gathering utility of drones is a practical tool to fight terrorism in Africa. For instance, after Boko Haram abducted about 200 girls from a high school in Chibok, China offered help by providing satellite imagery to help Nigeria track the location of the abductees. America supported with same, as well as surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance assets. The excellence of these capacities is undoubtedly essential to combatting terrorist attacks such as the Chibok kidnapping incident.

Decapitation ruins the AQAP functionality O'Toole 15
 (Molly O’Toole is the politics reporter for Defense One. O’Toole previously worked as a news editor at The Huffington Post. She has covered national and international politics for Reuters, The Nation, the Associated Press and Newsweek International. "Is ‘Whack-A-Mole’ Working Against al Qaeda?" National Journal, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/world/middleeast/pentagon-says-airstrikes-in-libya-may-have-killed-qaeda-leader.html?_r=1, 6-17-15)
The administration argues the strikes prove the United States can continue to conduct counterterrorism operations even when there are no Americans on the ground, as in Yemen, where the United States withdrew the last of its personnel in March. "We still have a global reach," Warren told reporters Tuesday. "We still retain the ability to find and kill terrorists anywhere they're hiding in the world." Administration officials also say the assassinations have hurt al-Qaida's ability to operate by taking experienced fighters off the battlefield and disrupting its command structure. "We have been patient, we have been focused, and this week, we have seen success across a broad spectrum of our anti-terror operations," Warren told reporters Tuesday before the NSC announcement. "We have reports unconfirmed, reports by al-Qaida, that their leader's dead in Yemen. We have a targeted air strike against Mokhtar Belmokhtar in Libya. We have advances across the Syrian-Turkish border in Syria. And we have continued evidence of a continued gain of momentum of our friendly forces in Iraq." But Warren seemed to struggle when asked about the impact of such assassinations. "Any time an organization loses its leader, that organization is disrupted. In some cases, the disruptions are longer than in other cases, but there's always a disruption," he said. "It causes this enemy organization to have to reorganize, it introduces a leader which could potentially create confusion among the ranks, and overall it degrades that organization's ability to conduct their operations. During reorganizations, there's vulnerability." Of AQAP's recently promoted leader, Warren said, "He will now have to live in even more fear, because we will find him and we will kill him." Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, praised the announcements Tuesday, noting that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is increasingly relying on a smaller group of lieutenants as ISIS challenges his group for territory and recruits. "In the case of top leadership like al-Wuhayshi, that interruption in organizational planning is all the more profound," Schiff said. But he noted the steady flow of fighters into ISIS. "Counterterrorism operations of the type reported to have taken place here must always be considered as only one element in a multipronged approach that includes building capacities of local and regional authorities, countering the flow of resources to terrorists, and working with partners in the Islamic world to defeat the ideology that attracts new recruits to replenish the ranks of those removed from the battlefield."

If left unabated, AQ will detonate a nuclear bomb – leads to extinction
Asghar, 14 – contributor (Rizwan, “Nuclear nightmares”, Sunday Times (Islamabad), April 6, 2014, lexis)
Karachi, April 6 -- When former US President George W Bush was asked, "What is the single most serious threat to American national security?", his answer was the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Al Qaeda linked terrorists. After coming into power, President Obama also declared nuclear terrorism the most urgent national security threat to his nation. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense to have served under both President Obama and his predecessor, was asked in an interview, "What keeps you awake at night?" In his words, "It is the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear." Despite a lot of skepticism regarding the capability and intent of terrorist organizations, the issue of nuclear terrorism has gradually emerged as a 'defining threat of the 21st century'. After 9/11 attacks, security experts have opined that a future strike on the US soil by Al Qaeda is likely to involve a nuclear weapon, which will inflict far greater damage than 9/11 incident. This apocalyptic scenario has been the plot of many famous novels and thriller movies in the US. Al Qaeda is well aware that the use of conventional means such as aircraft hijacking or ordinary explosives cannot achieve their desired results and only the use of nuclear weapons will create a political crisis of potentially unmanageable proportions. Over the past decades, Al Qaeda's top leadership has demonstrated a long-term and persistent commitment to steal, buy or manufacture a nuclear weapon. In 1994, for the first time Al Qaeda attempted to acquire uranium in Sudan to construct a crude nuclear weapon. Jamal al-Fadl, one of Al Qaeda's founding members, testified in a New York Court in 2001 that former Sudanese President Saleh Mobruk had helped Abu Khabab, Al Qaeda's chief bomb maker, in acquiring uranium from South Africa. He even gave information about payment of $1.5 million by Al Qaeda in return for getting a container full of nuclear material. In 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa that acquiring and using nuclear weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. After US-led military operation in Afghanistan dislodged Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, the group continued its efforts to acquire a nuclear device through its sleeper cells in a number of other countries. Ayman Zawahiri said in an interview that, "If you have $30 million, go to the black market in the central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of dozens of smart briefcase bombs are available. They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states, and they negotiated and we purchased some suitcase bombs." A few months after this interview, Al Qaeda released a video in which it made public its goal to kill four million Americans. In a 2007 video, Osama bin Laden repeated his intention to use nuclear weapons against the US and other European countries to pave way for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. Due to these repeated assertions, there are widespread apprehensions that Al Qaeda might have succeeded in buying a nuclear weapon from disgruntled elements of the Russian nuclear establishment during the decade of 1990s, when control over the security of all Russian weapons and nuclear materials was not very tight. Another view propounded by some experts is that Al Qaeda might have manufactured a nuclear device after stealing nuclear materials from different countries. Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, a senior Al Qaeda operative, has even said that his group will try to use Pakistan's stockpile to strike the US if it had the chance to steal nuclear weapons from Pakistan. But the Obama administration has expressed full confidence in Pakistan's nuclear security apparatus. The international community acknowledges that Pakistan's nuclear security establishment has stored its nuclear weapons in a way that stealing a nuclear weapon is extremely difficult for Al Qaeda without 'insider' help which in itself is a distant possibility. Many intelligence reports have indicated from time to time that wealthy and politically influential personalities of Saudi Arabia have been secretly funding Al Qaeda for this purpose but Washington has kept its silence because of highly sensitive nature of its relations with Riyadh. Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, was reportedly involved in providing secret funding to Al Qaeda before 9/11. Turki has been accused of not only maintaining close ties with bin Laden after the latter fled Saudi Arabia, the former also played an instrumental role in persuading King Fahd to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban after 1996. According to Al Qaeda's claims, the use of nuclear weapons is essential to achieve its stated goal of 'turning America into a shadow of itself'. All nuclear powers must rise above their selfish national interests and take a concerted action to thwart the threat of nuclear terrorism. The global nuclear security regime in its present state is not well equipped to counter this kind of global threat. For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) failed to take action against Al Qaeda's nuclear activities during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the IAEA showed little motivation to inspect undeclared nuclear activities. IAEA inspectors have also miserably failed to detect secret and illegal nuclear activities in many other countries. While the threat of Al Qaeda using nuclear weapons in major American cities is taken seriously at the governmental level, this issue of human survival on this planet has not acquired considerable attention in other countries like Pakistan and India. One thing is for sure that if Al Qaeda successfully detonates a nuclear weapon in any major city in the US, the contemporary international order would cease to exist, as we have known it so far.

Also turns case – terrorist attacks incite massive racism domestically regardless of who attacks. Akrahm and Johnson 02
 (Susan M Associate Clinical Prof @ Boston U School of Law and Kevin R Associate Dean for Academic Affairs@ UC Davis, Prof of Law and Chicana/o Studies; RACE, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND IMMIGRATION LAW AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: THE TARGETING OF ARABS AND MUSLIMS; Nov 2; www.privacysos.org/sites/all/files/akram.pdf; kdf)
Times of crisis are often accompanied by hostility toward minorities in the United States. For Arabs and Muslims, this may be even more problematic, as perpetrators of hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims frequently fail to differentiate among persons based on religion or ethnic origin, from Pakistanis, Indians, Iranians, and Japanese to Muslims, Sikhs and Christian Arabs.89 The widespread perception in the United States is that Arabs and Muslims are identical and eager to wage a holy war against the United States.90 In fact, according to a 1993 report, only 12 of the Muslims in the United States at that time were Arab,91 and Arab Muslims are even a minority in the Arab-American community.92 Although there are Muslim “extremists,” the majority of Muslims are “decent, law-abiding, productive citizens.”93 Because of the lack of differentiation between different types of Arabs and Muslims, terrorist acts by small groups of Arabs and Muslims often have been followed by generalized hostility toward entire communities of Arabs and Muslims in the United States. For example, after Lebanese Shi’a gunmen in 1985 highjacked TWA Flight 847 to Beirut, beat an American on the plane to death, and held the remaining passengers hostage for over two weeks,94 violent attacks against persons of Arab and Muslim origin occurred across the United States.95 Islamic centers and Arab-American organizations were vandalized and threatened. A Houston mosque was firebombed. A bomb exploded in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office in Boston, severely injuring two policemen.96 Later that same year, after terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise liner and murdered a passenger, a wave of anti-Arab violence swept the country, including the bombing of an AmericanArab Anti-Discrimination Committee office that killed its regional executive director.97 In 1986, in apparent response to the Reagan Administration’s “war on terrorism” directed at Libya,98 another episode of anti-Arab harassment and violence broke out. The same night of a U.S. bombing raid on Libya, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee national office in Washington received threats. Shortly thereafter, the Detroit American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office, the Dearborn Arab community center, and the Detroit Arab-American newspaper received bomb threats.99 Threats, beatings and other violent attacks on Arabs were reported across the United States.100 At this time, someone broke into a Palestinian family’s home, set off a smoke bomb inside the house, and painted slogans such as “Go Back to Libya” on the walls.101 The Gulf War intensified anti-Arab hostility in the United States. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reported four anti-Arab hate crimes for 1990 before the invasion of Kuwait in August.102 Between the invasion and February 1991, the Committee reported 175 incidents.103 When U.S. intervention commenced in January 1991, Arab and Muslim businesses and community organizations were bombed, vandalized, and subjected to harassment.104

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: San Marino VL | Judge: Inglet, Sierra
Our system of policing is no accident – it is a direct result of economic policies keep to put poor and disenfranchised people on the margins with no political power. . Potter 15 

Gary Potter 1/15/15 “Police Violence, Capital and Neoliberalism” http://uprootingcriminology.org/essays/police-violence-capital-neoliberalism/

Starting with the Reagan administration the federal government began to cease investment in urban renewal programs and urban development. Funds which had been made available to local city governments dried up and disappeared. The withdrawal of federal support had two main impacts. First, a wide range of positive social and development programs were terminated. Second, cities faced a problem of rapidly increasing debt. With the federal government’s retreat from governance to sovereignty urban governments increasingly looked to banks and financiers to cover their costs and obligations. The banks were only too happy to fill the void. They predicated their underwriting of municipal governance with three demands. First, social welfare programs had to be ravaged. Second, municipal services and space had to be privatized. Third, order maintenance through aggressive policing had to serve the interests of land developers, realtors, banks, corporations and private business. In other words, municipal government had to divest itself from its own populace and as a result the police no longer served the community they served finance capital alone.¶ So, municipal governments no longer governed. They became profit-producing, entrepreneurial, sovereign fiefdoms no longer serving their residents but totally focused on policies that made urban areas financially, socially and politically attractive to corporations, developers and banks. A combination of private and corporate financial investment and urban government policies created the conditions for a perfect storm of gentrification that deliberately displaced impoverished neighborhoods, massively widened wealth differentials, exacerbated class conflicts and required a militarized, violent army of occupation. Gentrification turned police departments into privately-owned, violent, security forces who no longer answered to the people they allegedly served.¶ New Crime and Actuarial Policing¶ The simple fact is that almost everyone’s contact with the criminal justice system starts with the police. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans will have interactions with the police as their only criminal justice system contact. These interactions rarely result in arrest, let alone prosecution conviction or incarceration. In fact, of all those people who have been subjected to “stop and frisk” police tactics, 90 are never found to be engaged in criminal activity. That fact alone demonstrates that the police are not fighting crime but are engaged in a pattern of discipline and regulation directed at those targeted by neoliberal policies. The police are not protecting communities and keeping them secure, the police are playing a key role in destabilizing and reshaping those communities for the benefit of financial entrepreneurs.¶ Beginning in the 1990s many police departments abandoned “crime-fighting” in favor of an “order maintenance” policing strategy. Rather than targeting serious crimes like assault, robbery, rape, burglary, theft and homicide police departments turned their attention to minor, low-level instance of “disorder.” So incivility and behavior which is somehow defined as annoying like homelessness, panhandling, public alcohol consumption and minor vandalism became the new “index crimes” targeted by police departments. The result was obvious. The police engaged in punitive, oppressive and often violent tactics directed primarily at poor, inner-city communities. The net impact was that policing was no longer directed at serious crime, it was the new social engineering policy of the state to attack poverty.¶ The neoliberal demand for order maintenance makes a mockery of arguments that policing strategies are designed to protect us from harm from violent and property crimes. In 2013 police made 11,302,102 arrests. Of those 480,360 (4) were for violent crimes and 1,559,284 (13.8) were for property crimes. In view of the simple fact that arrest is the starting point for most police violence against civilians the question becomes what exactly is the police doing that require so many other arrests? The answer is that they were engaged in policing disorder, rudeness and bothersome behavior not crime.¶ The most telling category of arrests is the amorphous category of “all other offenses, defining by the FBI as “all violations of state or local laws not specifically identified as Part I or Part II offenses, except traffic violations.” In other words all criminal acts not defined by the FBI as being “serious” crimes. In 2013 police made 3,282,651 (29) arrests for “all other” infractions, a number dwarfing arrests for both violent and property offenses. But, it’s worse than that. In addition to the “all other offenses” category police made 1,441,209 arrests (12.8 of all arrests) for vandalism, curfew violation and loitering, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, drunkenness and liquor law violations (excluding drunk driving), extremely minor offenses as well. So 42 of police arrests were for public order indiscretions. If we add to those numbers the victimless crimes of prostitution and drug abuse (1,549,663 arrests and 13.7 of all arrests) we end up with a total 56 of all arrests that posed no discernible threat to the public.¶ Punitive policing has nothing to do with crime. It is, in fact, a symbolic representation of state power, a form of public humiliation and public punishment. Order maintenance strategies were direct almost exclusively against the poor and people of color in the United States. Policing became the primary tool of neoliberalism to control, humiliate and regulate the poor.¶ New crimes and new policing strategies like those associated with Wilson and Kelling’s infamous “Broken Windows Theory” had very little to do with serious crime. Instead, a plethora of new laws and policing priorities were focused on one thing and one thing only, the protection of capital flows to protect and enhance private investment and development in urban settings. For example, one of the first campaigns launched by NYPD under its “broken windows” paradigm was to crack down on and arrest street vendors. It was, of course, just this type of policing strategy that led to the tragic police-killing of Eric Garner for selling cigarettes on the streets. The demand for new laws and aggressive policing of street life came directly from commercial interests who argued that street vending, street artists, and the like created congestion on sidewalks and competed with the products being peddled in their stores. Aggressive policing toward sidewalk vendors, singers, dancers and artists had nothing to do with serious crime. It had everything to with private profit.¶ Similarly, it was corporate real estate developers who pushed for aggressive policing and changes in police deployment strategies as a means to clear out neighborhoods for gentrification. Once again new laws and aggressive policing strategies were aimed at the homeless, the poor and the mentally ill. Corporate elites wielded their considerable political clout to reallocate police resources from “crime” to removing obstacles to their takeover of land and buildings and their subsequent profits from skyrocketing rents and sales of refurbished urban housing. Simply put, the police were used to displace entire populations and sanitize the streets not for the benefit of residents, but for the profits of corporations.¶ NYPD’s Compstat program is the prime example of how police resources are reallocated for private profit. New York’s police commissioner Bill Bratton was a primary architect of this new form of police accountability to corporate interests. Bratton reorganized the NYPD around “private-sector business practices and principles for management.” Compstat, in addition to heightening police accountability to financial capital also decreased police accountability to poor communities. No longer were the concerns of residents the primary motivation for police activity. Now the police were accountable only to actuarial statistical patterns and numbers which served to define “disorder” in a manner conducive to private business and development. Compstat in no way provided any meaningful community input to policing. It was and is a total rejection of community input and the full embrace of private business and financial section input.¶ The result of all of this was the criminalization of “disorder.” Suddenly police became more concerned about panhandling, public singing and dancing, loitering, public drinking, bicycle riders, boom boxes, prostitutes, graffiti and street vending than they were about serious criminal harms. Criminalizing previously noncriminal acts resulted in a strategy of order-maintenance policing that was both punitive and judgmental in vilifying those who might be marginally annoying but in no way dangerous. This was both a gift to corporate interests and a war on the poor. In concert with the severe cuts to social service programs and the new definition of “crime” as disorder, policing became a major policy initiative in dealing with structural poverty. Neoliberal policies including massive corporate tax cuts and even corporate tax forgiveness along with the gutting of the progressive income tax created levels of inequality in the United States unheard of since slavery and the rise of the robber barons. The redistribution of income alone was astonishing. In 1980 the top 10 of income earners controlled 35 of all income. Today they control more than 50. The Gini Ratio which measures income inequality soared to .46 making the United States the most unequal industrialized country in the world.¶ At the same the U.S. prison population soared from around 500,000 in 1980 to over 2.5 million today with another 5 million under the control of one or another correctional programs. Today the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and one out of every 30 adults are under control of the correctional system. And all this occurred in the midst of a dramatic drop in criminal victimization. The violent crime rate in 1981 was 52.3 per 1,000 people. In 2013 it was 26.1 per 1,000 people. The rise in incarceration had nothing to with crime. It had everything to do with an orderly corporatized society.¶ Neoliberalism has adopted a policy of incarceration as a response to control of poor communities and a growing surplus population of the unemployed and underemployed. As neoliberal policies have abandoned the state’s function of governance and eviscerated welfare policies it has looked to the criminal justice system as its primary response to poverty. That response has included both punitive and aggressive policing and the vindictive use of incarceration. The disorderly among us are subjected to arrest, police violence, incarceration and displacement from their communities. Order maintenance policing (Broken Windows) targets the homeless, the mentally ill and the poor for arrest and prosecution. Police resources are disproportionately reassigned to poor communities. A massive 33 nationwide cut in spending on health care for the mentally ill, including funds for medication, has resulted in police intervention as a primary modality to deal with psychiatric problems. Once the concept of crime was replaced by quality-of-life violations of local ordinances it was easy for police to find “cause” to stop-and-frisk almost anyone. Despite the fact that stop-and-frisk policies rarely resulted in arrests or the discovery of actual “crime” nonwhites were subjected to the tactic six times more frequently than Caucasians even with crime rates held constant. In New York City 90 of the precincts with high frequencies of police stops were majority-minority precincts. Analyzes of stops found that the strongest predictive variable was the poverty rates of the neighborhoods in which the stops occurred.

The affirmative’s legalistic approach to police violence brings us further away from recognizing the economic forces at work that makes police violence inevitable. Lane 7/21. 

ALYCEE LANE JULY 21, 2016 “Violence, Death and Our Neoliberal Police”  http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/21/violence-death-and-our-neoliberal-police/

If what we are witnessing in these violent encounters with police is neoliberalism in action, then we have to come up with an entirely different set of solutions to change policing. This is not to dismiss body cameras and training, which will no doubt save some lives. But they are technical fixes that do not address at all the neoliberal character of our police departments, the transformation of peace officers into neoliberal police, the policies that align policing with corporate power, and the violence that neoliberalism produces.¶ In fact, these fixes amount to our use of the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. After all, through neoliberal policies governments regularly take “outside of the realm of the political” the myriad problems that communities face and then render these problems “technical and actionable,” as Lester Spence has observed. So when we offer solutions like body cameras, we make fixing the police a technical matter rather than a political matter, and in so doing we legitimize and further entrench neoliberal policies and practices that enact invisible, spectacular, and ultimately normalized violence on those who don’t fit the mold. The consequence is that we’ll continue to receive tweets and Facebook feeds of police killings.¶ But we’ll also see more retaliatory killings of police officers – like the killings that occurred recently in Dallas and Baton Rouge – as more people realize that neoliberal policing, and the violence it enacts, is exactly the kind of policing our governments intend. Such counter-violence, however, is extraordinarily ironic, for individuals who engage in retaliatory killings – individuals who are, and will likely continue to be, primarily men – ultimately express just how deeply they have internalized the ideals that constitute the Virtuous Neoliberal Citizen: self-reliance or rugged individualism, personal responsibility, distrust of government, efficiency, cruelty. With an Izhmash-Saiga 5.45 mm rifle or some other AK-style weapon in tow, they alone will fix the problem of police violence, and in so doing, they will precisely, and finally, fit the neoliberal mode.¶ Repairing the police and our system of policing, then, clearly demands that we end not only neoliberal policing, but also the transformation of men and women into neoliberal police. To do this, we must relentlessly break down these moments of violence between officers and the community in order to unearth the neoliberal politics they express and enact, and that our government officials (local, state, national) continue to impose upon us at our expense (and for the benefit of the wealthy), but most especially at the expense of our abandoned, disposed children, women and men.¶ It is through this kind of work, in fact, that we can begin to upend an order that neoliberal proponents present as the only alternative and that appears all-powerful and all-encompassing. By doing this work, we’ll discover just how much neoliberalism and the violence it produces is, as Oksala makes clear, a “specific, rationally reflected and coordinated way of governing” – including the hiring, oversight, and training of police – that we absolutely have the power to change.

Blaming violence on ‘bad individual’s through civil suits replicates neoliberalism – it deflects blame on to individuals whose actions are predetermined by neoliberalism. Smith 15

Robert C. Smith The author of several books and over 100 academic articles, Robert is a Teaching-Scholar at the Cooperative Institute of Transnational Studies. He is also the founder of Heathwood Institute and PressHeathwood Institute and Press¶ AN INSTITUTION OF OPPRESSION OR FOR PUBLIC WELL-BEING AND CIVIL RIGHTS? REFLECTIONS ON THE INSTITUTION OF POLICE AND A RADICAL ALTERNATIVE May 4, 2015¶  http://www.heathwoodpress.com/an-institution-of-oppression-or-for-public-well-being-and-civil-rights-reflections-on-the-institution-of-police-and-a-radical-alternative-r-c-smith/
My aim here, however, has less to do with critique than with a consideration of alternatives, particularly when it comes to police. Movements in response to recent events in the US have rightly put demands for police reform at the top of the agenda. But there is something of a myth around such belief in reform. To paraphrase Ta-Nehisi Coates, when tackling the problem of the institution of police and the issue of “police authority” (not to mention “power”), the real problem is one of restoring democratic authority.12 To put it another way: “a reform that begins with the officer on the beat is not reform at all. It’s avoidance. It’s a continuance of the American preference for considering the actions of bad individuals, as opposed to the function and intention of systems.”13¶ One cannot meaningfully dismantle the racist and unjust institution of the police without, firstly, tackling the belief that all our social problems can be solved with force.14 Secondly, the question of modern political-economy and its principle mode of relations must also be brought into direct focus, especially considering the manner in which current social-economic conditions tend to foster deep alienation which, in turn, establishes a social world open to the reproduction of practical and institutional power, domination, and coercion.¶ To this point, the American preference – as with much of the west in general – for considering the actions of ‘bad individuals’, as opposed to the function of ‘(bad) social systems’, represents a position of convenience. It deflects from the necessary course of difficult questions that need to be asked – a course that fundamentally challenges the status quo (Adorno). Regarding police brutality, is there an element of individual agency that we must recognize? Of course. If the modern institution of police represents a form of structural violence, as in the case of the almost daily murders of young black men and women, we must also bring into question the individual officer. Somewhere, at some point, the officer has a choice to stand-down, to drop the baton and shield, rip off the badge and refuse to partake in the violent repression of a citizen’s movement. On the side of structure, however, this choice is also defined within the context of economic coercion; ideological pressures to preserve status and economic benefits for one’s family; and twisted narratives of tribalism and of the positive values of a less-than-emancipatory system of law and order (what Sartre might have called “facticity”).¶ In further considering this point, allow me to ask the following question. Can it be said that every police officer is racist or believes in the oppression of others? Is it possible that some believe in the role of policing as a community service, rather than as an oppressive institution? The question that each officer should ask themselves, as they stand together in their militarized lines, facing fellow citizens with their modern weaponry, is ‘what actually am I standing for?’ Does one stand for oppression? Does one stand for indifferent corporations? Or does one stand for community and the rights of each citizen? In case of the latter, the very institution, the validity or legitimacy of the very concept of modern policing, collapses under the weight of its own illegitimacy.¶ If, as Luis Fernandez once said, asking the question ‘what are the alternatives to policing?’ is really to ask ‘what are the alternatives to capitalism?’, then the argument for or against the police boils down to either civil liberty or its opposite. And this is precisely the point or line of thought I would like to strike when reflecting on an alternative to police. In another way: it is along this line of thought that I think we might best formulate a structural critique of modern policing and an alternative, one that is for community, for the promotion of the “mediating subject”15 and mutual recognition16, and the protection of minority groups, civil rights and actual democracy.¶ If modern policing is based on the regulation and control of a community, the alternative, which could no longer be called “policing”, would be largely non-hierarchical, in line, perhaps, with a progressive notion of restorative justice inclined toward defending civil rights and principles of actual democracy as opposed to undermining them.¶ While this alternative would represent unarmed mediation, dialogue, and reconciliation in practice,17 it would also coincide with and mutually reinforce significant transformations across all norms of society: from the economic and political to health, education, food and so on. To be clear, what I am indicating is an alternative to police in the context of broader, holistic structural and systemic change across all social spheres or domains.¶ Rather than superficial reforms that maintain the status quo (Adorno), which the 1 would surely lobby for, the transformation of law, of justice, of policing in line with a progressive notion of restorative justice would need to coincide with a greater transformative vision and social philosophy. This transformative vision and social philosophy would not only support decriminalization. Or disarmament. Or the community development of a supportive social apparatus (as opposed to police) comprised of support-workers, case-workers, teachers, mental-health professionals and therapists, drug counselors, guidance counselors – all working on the basis of a person-centred and humanistic approach. It would also represent the reorganisation of political-economy and the establishing of social-economic conditions that would foster and support direct and participatory democratic models, which are particularly vital to any notion of restorative justice, and therefore also a complete transformation of society – of a post-police, post-capitalist society.

This turns the aff – police violence is a direct result of neoliberalism. A failure to recognize that makes violence inevitable. Lane 7/21

ALYCEE LANE JULY 21, 2016 “Violence, Death and Our Neoliberal Police”  http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/21/violence-death-and-our-neoliberal-police/

If we examine through the prism of neoliberalism the killing of Philando Castile – that is, if we think of the killing as a “moment when violence and neoliberalism coalesced” – then we are immediately confronted with the fact that, to a great extent, the current problem of policing is a problem of neoliberal policing. It is a problem of the production of police as officers whose enforcement of the law is guided by neoliberal policies and procedures, the violence of which no amount of body cameras or use of force training or diversity training can adequately address. Indeed, the fact of neoliberal policing requires from all of us a radically different response to policing and police killings, a response by which we directly confront policing, and our governments’ constitution of law enforcement, as neoliberal practice.¶ So let’s talk about this moment when neoliberalism and violence converged:¶ Over the course of fourteen years, Minnesota police initiated at least 52 encounters (a staggering number) with Philando Castile, citing him for minor offenses like driving without wearing a seat belt, speeding, and driving without a muffler. These encounters resulted in Philando being assessed a total of $6,588 in fines and fees.¶ Given these circumstances, let’s assume (indeed, it is probably safe to assume) that St. Anthony Police Department – the police department that employs Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who killed Philando – operates under a scheme similar to the one that was in place in Ferguson, Missouri when Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown.¶ Under that scheme (as the U.S. Department of Justice found), City of Ferguson officials “routinely” urged its Chief of Police “to generate more revenue” for the City “through enforcement” and to meet specific revenue goals. In response, the Chief pressured his officers and created a culture in which officers competed with one another in generating revenue; created opportunities to issue citations in order to meet revenue goals; engaged primarily African American citizens as objects from which they could profit as well as subjected them to the department’s and City’s market discipline; and, measured their own value and success as police officers in market terms (the department looked favorably upon and rewarded officers who met their revenue demands).¶ Through this scheme, the City in essence transformed the police into neoliberal police officers, into men and women who would enforce the law in ways that folded penal discipline into the “market-driven disciplinary logic” of neoliberalism, and whose policing became the expression of what Simon Springer calls neoliberalism’s “fundamental virtues”: “individualism, competitiveness and economic self-sufficiency.”¶ As they sought out opportunities to generate revenue, officers also engaged in the kind of ‘Othering’ upon which neoliberalism depends. As Springer writes, neoliberalism not only “treats as enemies” those “who don’t fit the mold of a proper neoliberal subject” (e.g., possessive individualism, economic self-sufficiency); it also “actively facilitates the abandonment of ‘Others’ who fall outside of ‘neoliberal normativity’, a conceptual category that cuts across multiple categories of discrimination including class, race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, age and ability.”¶ Ferguson’s neoliberal police officers (and city officials) regarded African Americans and poor people as those who don’t fit the mold. The latter were not the victims of neoliberal policies that had been embraced on a local, national and global scale. Instead, they were failures, people who were unwilling to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and remake themselves in the ways that the market demanded. Consequently, it was right to treat both as objects by which to profit and “as enemies” who needed to be disciplined and controlled.¶ That the City’s scheme and the neoliberal logic behind it would create the circumstances that led to Michael Brown’s death is clear. Indeed, through that scheme Ferguson officials and the police department produced a “‘state of exception,’ wherein…exceptional violence” – i.e.., violence that shocks, that “elicits a deep emotional response” – was “transformed into exemplary violence,” into violence that “forms the rule,” and particularly for those excluded and abandoned. Without social media, Brown’s death would have merely been a part of the everyday violence that police directed at Ferguson’s African American community and poor people generally, violence made increasingly likely by the market driven imperative of the Ferguson police force. And of course Brown’s death took place against the backdrop of the invisible violence of the City’s neoliberal policies (creation of unequal and increasingly privatized schools, attraction of business that paid little taxes and employed workers at low wages, privatization of public services, etc.).¶ If Officer Yanez worked under a governmental scheme similar to the one in Ferguson, then in that moment when he pulled the trigger (four or five times) he embodied, expressed and enacted the neoliberal principles and logic by which his department and his city operate.¶ But let’s suppose that the St. Anthony Police Department is not a business enterprise disguised as a police department, made so at the behest of city officials. Does that change the conclusion?¶ Hardly.¶ We live in the context of a global neoliberal order. And to a frightening degree, “we have become entrepreneurs of our lives,” as Johanna Oksala writes, “competing in the free market called society.” Indeed, we “compete in an ever-expanding range of fields, and invest in ourselves by enhancing our abilities and appearance, by improving our strategies of life coaching and time management. Our life has become an enterprise that we must lead to success.”¶ In other words, we are all neoliberals now, and as Springer argues, all of us are “implicated in the perpetuation of neoliberalised violence.”¶ A few months ago, I complained to my partner that the preschool our three-year old attends had not yet taught her the alphabet and numbers – at least not in any way that in my mind reflected academic rigor. “How is she going to succeed?” I asked. “When she gets to kindergarten, all the other kids will be way ahead.” I was ready to pull her out and send her to a school with a more disciplined, focused program, one that would lead to her academic success and, eventually, her career success. Lurking in the back of my mind was the fate of black girls, who have very little the market recognizes as valuable.¶ Let me repeat: my daughter is three. She attends a school in which learning happens outdoors – in a forest – where the kids discover things like rabbits and tadpoles and swarms of ladybugs and dead birds and, from those things, learn about habitats and camouflage and metamorphosis and death.¶ Against a neoliberal, market-driven idea of education – one that permeates the public sphere and that has redefined the purpose of school and education – I measured this wide-open, wonderful way of learning and found it wanting. Without even thinking about it, I was ready to subject my three-year old to the disciplinary logic of a neoliberal education and thus to perform an act, the violence of which (to creativity, to learning) I could not see.¶ Even if Officer Yanez had not performed his duty in accordance with the kind of policies that guided Ferguson’s police department, he nevertheless killed Philando within the context of a broader neoliberal framework that marked men like Philando as always already outside of neoliberal normativity (black male + broke ass car = enemy) and denied them any claim to the neoliberal virtues of economic self-sufficiency and possessive individualism. As to the latter, black people throughout United States history have been cast as anything but a collection of individuals. Instead, we are a monolith that can be used and disposed of at will (hence, Dallas police killer Micah Xavier Johnson is not Micah Xavier Johnson as such; instead, he is Black Lives Matter).¶ Moreover, that broader neoliberal framework, which defines (in the words of Lester Spence) “freedom in market terms rather than political terms,” is a racial capitalist framework that defines African Americans as unfree Others in order to naturalize class hierarchies. Thus, when Officer Yanez encountered Philando, he encountered an unfree Other who – in spite of that mark – had the audacity to claim the status of a free person by openly carrying a gun. Officer Yanez encountered the enemy.¶ My point in all of this is that Officer Yanez – like all of us, like me – was (is) immersed in neoliberalism and inevitably internalized as well as reproduced it in his employment life (and probably in his personal life as well). He was armed with it, so to speak, when he encountered and then killed Philando Castile, and I suspect this was true as well for Officer Darren Wilson of Ferguson, Missouri.

Our critique independently outweighs the case -  neoliberalism causes extinction and massive social inequalities – the affs single issue legalistic solution is the exact kind of politics neolib wants us to engage in so the root cause to go unquestioned. Farbod 15
 ( Faramarz Farbod , PhD Candidate @ Rutgers, Prof @ Moravian College, Monthly Review, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/farbod020615.html, 6-2)

Global capitalism is the 800-pound gorilla. The twin ecological and economic crises, militarism, the rise of the surveillance state, and a dysfunctional political system can all be traced to its normal operations. We need a transformative politics from below that can challenge the fundamentals of capitalism instead of today's politics that is content to treat its symptoms. The problems we face are linked to each other and to the way a capitalist society operates. We must make an effort to understand its real character. The fundamental question of our time is whether we can go beyond a system that is ravaging the Earth and secure a future with dignity for life and respect for the planet. What has capitalism done to us lately? The best science tells us that this is a do-or-die moment. We are now in the midst of the 6th mass extinction in the planetary history with 150 to 200 species going extinct every day, a pace 1,000 times greater than the 'natural' extinction rate.1 The Earth has been warming rapidly since the 1970s with the 10 warmest years on record all occurring since 1998.2 The planet has already warmed by 0.85 degree Celsius since the industrial revolution 150 years ago. An increase of 2° Celsius is the limit of what the planet can take before major catastrophic consequences. Limiting global warming to 2°C requires reducing global emissions by 6 per year. However, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased by about 1.5 times between 1990 and 2008.3 Capitalism has also led to explosive social inequalities. The global economic landscape is littered with rising concentration of wealth, debt, distress, and immiseration caused by the austerity-pushing elites. Take the US. The richest 20 persons have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million.4 Since 1973, the hourly wages of workers have lagged behind worker productivity rates by more than 800.5 It now takes the average family 47 years to make what a hedge fund manager makes in one hour.6 Just about a quarter of children under the age of 5 live in poverty.7 A majority of public school students are low-income.8 85 of workers feel stress on the job.9 Soon the only thing left of the American Dream will be a culture of hustling to survive. Take the global society. The world's billionaires control $7 trillion, a sum 77 times the debt owed by Greece to the European banks.10 The richest 80 possess more than the combined wealth of the bottom 50 of the global population (3.5 billion people).11 By 2016 the richest 1 will own a greater share of the global wealth than the rest of us combined.12 The top 200 global corporations wield twice the economic power of the bottom 80 of the global population.13 Instead of a global society capitalism is creating a global apartheid. What's the nature of the beast? Firstly, the "egotistical calculation" of commerce wins the day every time. Capital seeks maximum profitability as a matter of first priority. Evermore "accumulation of capital" is the system's bill of health; it is slowdowns or reversals that usher in crises and set off panic. Cancer-like hunger for endless growth is in the system's DNA and is what has set it on a tragic collision course with Nature, a finite category. Secondly, capitalism treats human labor as a cost. It therefore opposes labor capturing a fair share of the total economic value that it creates. Since labor stands for the majority and capital for a tiny minority, it follows that classism and class warfare are built into its DNA, which explains why the "middle class" is shrinking and its gains are never secure. Thirdly, private interests determine massive investments and make key decisions at the point of production guided by maximization of profits. That's why in the US the truck freight replaced the railroad freight, chemicals were used extensively in agriculture, public transport was gutted in favor of private cars, and big cars replaced small ones. What should political action aim for today? The political class has no good ideas about how to address the crises. One may even wonder whether it has a serious understanding of the system, or at least of ways to ameliorate its consequences. The range of solutions offered tends to be of a technical, legislative, or regulatory nature, promising at best temporary management of the deepening crises. The trajectory of the system, at any rate, precludes a return to its post-WWII regulatory phase. It's left to us as a society to think about what the real character of the system is, where we are going, and how we are going to deal with the trajectory of the system -- and act accordingly. The critical task ahead is to build a transformative politics capable of steering the system away from its destructive path. Given the system's DNA, such a politics from below must include efforts to challenge the system's fundamentals, namely, its private mode of decision-making about investments and about what and how to produce. Furthermore, it behooves us to heed the late environmentalist Barry Commoner's insistence on the efficacy of a strategy of prevention over a failed one of control or capture of pollutants. At a lecture in 1991, Commoner remarked: "Environmental pollution is an incurable disease; it can only be prevented"; and he proceeded to refer to "a law," namely: "if you don't put a pollutant in the environment it won't be there." What is nearly certain now is that without democratic control of wealth and social governance of the means of production, we will all be condemned to the labor of Sisyphus. Only we won't have to suffer for all eternity, as the degradation of life-enhancing natural and social systems will soon reach a point of no return. 

The alternative is an embrace of class-consciousness as a method of critiquing neoliberalism’s grip on policing. LaVenia 15

Peter A. LaVenia PhD in Political Science from the University at Albany, SUNY. He is the Secretary of the NY State Green Party and manages Matt Funiciello’s campaign for Congress. JANUARY 16, 2015 “Police Behavior and Neoliberalism” http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/16/police-behavior-and-neoliberalism/

The cause of impotence on the part of elected officials even in the face of public intransigence by their own police forces lies rather within the socio-political landscape of declining US hegemony in the world-system and its byproduct, neoliberalism. The latter is too often a catch all explanation for Marxists and leftists trying to explain the current era, but here it makes sense. Policing in post-1980 America, roughly the beginnings of neoliberalism, are predicated on the “broken windows” theory first put into practice by NYC Police Commissioner Bill Bratton: crack down on working class behaviors now designated as unwanted or illegal, use the fines and fees from enforcing the criminalization of working class life to prop up municipal budgets gutted by tax cuts, offshoring, and underconsumption caused by wage stagnation. Interestingly the NYC police have essentially admitted as such during their slowdown and refusal to issue quality-of-life tickets over the past few weeks.¶ In conjunction with this politicians like de Blasio, assuming he actually would want to reform police behavior, find a distinct lack of allies in their own class (and parties) on this issue. Broken windows policing is popular with the financial elites and the ruling class because the money collected and produced by it means more progressive taxation that would otherwise fill the budget gaps of municipalities and states is avoided. It also has the consequence of splitting working people who might otherwise band together to demand – in a class conscious way – better living conditions, wages, and political power. Whites learn to be fearful of minority communities alternatively seen as both enemy and victim of circumstances, all the while needing the police and state to protect them. Of course maintaining this is crucial to legitimizing capitalism and preventing concerted resistance – that’s what the buildup of irrational attitudes of submission to authority do (to quote Chomsky) on the one hand, and on the other the racism inherent in the splitting of the US working class into white and minority groups.¶ There is, then, an implicit understanding by these mayors that their only allies in restraining the police would be working class Americans, and that to begin to do so would mean to put forward a broadly pro-worker agenda of higher wages, progressive taxation, restoring once-gutted social programs, and expanding the political power of the average worker. Quality-of-life problems will only be eliminated when their cause – ultimately capitalism – is, but by beginning to lift millions out of poverty and rebuilding communities the rationale for broken windows policing would begin to disappear. In another era, one with a faction of big business and finance capital willing to compromise on issues of wages and taxation, Mayor de Blasio and his peers would have found allies in the establishment. Now, the stark choice for the mayors and local pols on police behavior is to either acquiesce in one way or another or to throw in your lot with what would rapidly take on the characteristics of a working class political movement.¶ Nothing is likely to happen without protests and organization by labor and working Americans who demand not just an end to broken windows policing but the conditions that supposedly necessitated it in the first place. Crumbling infrastructure, decaying housing, bad schools, crappy jobs and low wages, lack of real health care, gutted social programs: these so-called broken windows that have been used to justify police militarization are the symptom of a rotten system. It is very hopeful indeed that protests against police brutality have sprung up across the United States, and could evolve into a movement to reject the neoliberal consensus. Until then we are likely to see nothing but equivocation by local officials and big city mayors.
Framework – Generic

The role of the judge is to be a critical analyst testing whether the underlying assumptions of the AFF are valid. This is a question of the whether the AFF scholarship is good – not the passage of the plan. 

First, neoliberalism sustains itself by operating by propagating a narrow lens of what it means to be ‘political.’ We situate the judge as a critical educator who steps back to evaluate the frames through which we view policy first. Blalock, JD, 2015
(Corinne, “NEOLIBERALISM AND THE CRISIS OF LEGAL THEORY”, Duke University, LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS Vol. 77:71) MG from file
RECOVERING LEGAL THEORY’S RELEVANCE? The lens of neoliberalism not only allows one to see how these narratives fit together to reveal a larger rationality but also to understand why the solutions they propose fail to challenge or even escape that rationality. I address the three most prominent prescriptions being offered by critical legal scholars today: (1) a pragmatic turn to politics, (2) a return to more explicit normative and moral claims, and (3) acceptance in recognition that the decline is merely an ebb in the regular cycles of theory. A. Prescription: More Politics The most common prescription for recovering legal theory’s vibrancy is a greater participation in politics—scholars should eschew descriptive projects, especially those that might be used to bolster the conservative argument on an issue or in a case, as well as those critiques that appear purely academic, in favor of projects intended to influence the courts in progressive ways.134 One can certainly understand why this is a tempting prescription in light of the success of explicitly conservative legal theory and methods135 and concern that left-leaning legal academics have not taken up this charge.136 However, this demand for political engagement has unintended consequences: It legitimizes the current frameworks. As the Roberts Court further embraces neoliberal principles, persuading the Court means functioning within neoliberal logic and is therefore counterproductive for the revitalization of critical legal theory. Moreover, this political prescription tends to produce a reified notion of what counts as politics, limiting the political as well as intellectual potential of theoretical projects. For example, in the wake of the of the Court’s incremental move toward recognition of same-sex marriage in United States v. Windsor, 137 many progressive legal scholars have written on the subject hoping to nudge the Court toward full recognition. But in light of Nancy Fraser’s work, one should ask just what kind of recognition that would be—whether it would displace materialist claims or reify forms of identity.138 Full recognition of same-sex marriage is a destination toward which the Court is already heading and an area where the public discourse has largely already arrived. Emphasizing this area also participates in the ideology of erasure, leading many to believe that the current Court is making progressive interventions because it is progressive on identity and cultural issues, even though Windsor was handed down in a term in which the Court retrenched on significant materialist issues and embodied a number of blatantly neoliberal positions.139 Even if not writing for the Court, a legal scholar’s attempt to be useful to those in the profession who share her political goals risks constraining the legal profession and its own professional and disciplinary norms.140 In this way, the focus on concrete political effects helps foster legal thought’s “considerable capacity for resisting self-reflection and analysis,”141 which has only become more pronounced in the face of the neoliberalization of the academy as instrumental knowledge is increasingly privileged. When attempting to counter hegemony, what one needs to do is disrupt the legible—to expand the contours of what is considered political—not to accept the narrowly circumscribed zone of politics neoliberalism demarcates. Therefore, it is crucial not to judge critical legal scholarship according to whether its political impact is immediate or even known, and thus a turn to politics is not the remedy for legal theory’s marginalization. B. Prescription: More Normativity Some scholars recognize the danger of embracing a reified notion of politics that unwittingly reaffirms the status quo, and instead champion assertions of substantive morality to counteract the cold logics of pragmatism and efficiency.142 This proposed solution advocates a return to more substantive ideals of justice and equality. Although it may be true that change will ultimately require wresting these liberal and democratic ideals from neoliberalism and refilling their hollowed-out forms, this approach entails a number of pitfalls. The first is simply the inevitable question regarding moral claims: Whose morality is to be asserted? This question has created crisis on the left before, even producing some of the schisms among the crits recounted above. Neoliberalism does not have to contend with this issue—it foregrounds its formal nature and holds itself out as not needing to create a universal morality or set of values. More importantly, it claims to provide a structure in which one can keep one’s own substantive morals. Therefore, neoliberalism’s logic cannot be countered by moral claims without first disrupting its illusion of amorality. The ineffectiveness of the progressive critique of law and economics, based in claims of distributive justice and moral imperative, provides a clear example of how the neoliberal discourse can capture normative claims. The work of Martha McCluskey, one of the few legal scholars writing about neoliberalism in the domestic context over the last ten years, highlights the extent to which the “distributive justice” critique, which argues against the privileging of efficiency over equality and redistribution, fails to challenge the underlying logic.143 McCluskey illustrates how critics of law and economics who critique the approach’s inattention to redistribution have already ceded the central point, by arguing within the conventional views that “efficiency is about expanding the societal pie and redistribution is about dividing it.”144 “Neoliberalism’s disadvantage is not, as most critics worry, its inattention to redistribution, but to the contrary, its very obsession with redistribution as a distinctly seductive yet treacherous policy separate from efficiency.”145 In order to challenge this rationality, she explains, one cannot “misconstrue neoliberalism as a project to promote individual freedom and value-neutral economics at the expense of social responsibility and community morality.”146 One must instead recognize that neoliberalism has redefined social responsibility and community morality. Therefore, one must refuse the false dichotomy between the economic and cultural spheres (a division that allows the neoliberal discourse to displace cultural concerns to a moment after the economic concerns have been dealt with). Merely asserting the falsity of this separation is not sufficient. Neoliberalism has real effects in the world that strengthen its ideological claims.147 Therefore, it is not a struggle that can take place solely on the terrain of discourse or ideology. Like neoliberalism generally, law and economics does not hold itself out as infallible or as an embodiment of social ideals, but instead as the best society can do. It functions precisely on the logic that there is no alternative. Like Hayek’s theory, “law and economics is full of stories about how liberal rights and regulation designed to advance equality victimize the all-powerful market, undermining its promised rewards.”148 In light of this, it is a mistake to see neoliberalism as disavowing moral principles in favor of economic ones; it instead folds them into one another: “The Law and Economics movement is rooted in the moral ideal of the market as the social realization of individual liberty and popular democracy.”149 Neoliberalism’s approach presents itself not only as efficient, but also as just. Legal scholars need to recognize neoliberalism’s focus on the market is not only a form of morality, but also a powerful one. They cannot assume that in a battle of moralities the substantive communitarian ideal will win.150 Furthermore, the neoliberal framework, through its reconfiguration of the subject as an entrepreneur, justifies material inequalities—in contrast to liberalism’s mere blindness to them. Consequently, merely asserting the existence of material inequalities does not immediately undermine neoliberalism’s claims. Far from the engaged citizen who actively produces the polis in liberal theory, the neoliberal subject is a rational, calculating, and independent entity “whose moral autonomy is measured by her capacity for ‘self-care’—the ability to provide for her own needs and service her own ambitions.”151 The subject’s morality is not in relation to principles or ideals, but is “a matter of rational deliberation about costs, benefits, and consequences.”152 If efficiency is the morality of our time, the poor are cast not only as “undeserving” but also as morally bankrupt. Therefore, efficiency replaces not only political morality, but also all other forms of value. Therefore, critics are right that other forms of value have been crowded out; but the logic is deeper than they seem to realize. It goes beyond the scope of what is being done in the legal academy. It is a logic that organizes our time and therefore must be countered differently. More normativity is not the answer to legal theory’s marginalization because neoliberalism’s logic can accommodate even radically contradictory moralities under its claims of moral pluralism. Ethical claims of justice and community may need to be made, but one must first recognize that countering hegemony is harder than merely articulating an alternative; hegemony must be disrupted first. Disrupting neoliberalism’s logic thus entails not only recognizing that neoliberalism has a morality, but also taking that morality seriously. C. Prescription: Acceptance The final response of legal theorists to their field’s marginalization is to dismiss it as merely the regular ebb and flow of theory’s prominence.153 Putting it in terms of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts, the contemporary moment is just the “normal science” of the paradigm brought about by the crits’ revolutionary moment in the 1970s and 1980s.154 The vitality, this narrative contends, will return when a competing paradigm emerges. There are several problems with this perspective on the decline. First, it entails an error in logic insofar as it takes an external perspective. Legal theory does not inevitably rise and fall but only according to the work being produced; or, to put it another way, this descriptive account of theory’s ebb can be a selffulfilling prophecy insofar as it decreases scholars’ motivation to pursue and receptivity toward theoretical projects. Second, legal scholars cannot be content with normal science when it has the kinds of consequences for democracy and economic inequality that neoliberal hegemony does. The Court is currently entrenching these principles at an unprecedented rate in areas of free speech, equal protection, and antitrust to name a few.155 At first, such acceptance appears to be what Janet Halley is advocating in “taking a break from feminism,”156 but upon closer inspection it is not. Halley is cautioning against the left’s nostalgia—concluding that operating under the banner of feminism and a preoccupation with “reviving” feminism looks backward instead of forward.157 Critical legal scholarship instead needs to be “self-critical” and to recognize that “how we make and apply legal theory arises out of the circumstances in which we recognize problems and articulate solutions.”158 Theory must arise from engagement with the current circumstances. Acceptance cannot be the solution; legal theory must produce the momentum to move forward. VII CONCLUSION: WHERE WE GO FROM HERE The way forward cannot entail a return to reified notions of theory any more than by a return to reified notions of politics. Critical legal scholars should not attempt to revitalize previous critical movements but, instead, reinvigorate the practice of critique within the legal academy. A. Why Critique Naming neoliberalism is necessary in order to counteract it. Without explicit identification, there can be no truly oppositional position. It also makes legible connections that would otherwise go unseen, as was the case with scholars writing about the decline. But there must also be a step beyond naming: critique. Critique means taking neoliberal rationality seriously. The approach must not be dismissive, merely pointing out neoliberalism’s inconsistencies, but instead must recognize that neoliberal rationality is inherently appealing. One cannot merely indict efficiency as contrary to more substantive values, but one also must recognize that efficiency is inextricably tied to beliefs about liberty, dignity, and individual choice, as well as corresponding beliefs about the capacities and limits of the state to effectuate change. No one is arguing that neoliberalism is the best of all possible worlds; in fact, its power comes precisely from abandoning such a claim. In recognizing its hegemonic status, legal scholars can understand the critical task as being more than just demystification. Neoliberal does not paper over inequalities after all; it justifies them. Ultimately, critique should function as a means of opening the conversation in ways that go beyond the picture of law painted by the Roberts Court—to refuse to allow the legal academy to be merely mimetic of a Court that is clearly embracing a neoliberal vision. Critique provides a means of thinking about law as not limited by what the markets can tolerate; it is the means through which one can discover a form of resistance that goes beyond nostalgia for the liberal welfare state. And finally, critique is simply a means of asserting that things can be different than they are in a world that constantly insists that there is no alternative. 

Second, the knowledge claims of the AC are the jumping off point for the debate – our framework provides a more reasonable neg burden. When a student turns in an F paper, no teacher has an obligation to write an entirely new paper to show it was bad – pointing out major academic deficiencies would justify failing the paper – the ballot asks who did the better debating, so if their analysis is wrong, they haven’t. 

Third, serial policy failure – policing is about culture. A refusal to stop and recognize the cultural underpinnings of the AFF dooms repeating the same failed policies that created the problem. . Smith 15
Robert C. Smith The author of several books and over 100 academic articles, Robert is a Teaching-Scholar at the Cooperative Institute of Transnational Studies. He is also the founder of Heathwood Institute and PressHeathwood Institute and Press¶ AN INSTITUTION OF OPPRESSION OR FOR PUBLIC WELL-BEING AND CIVIL RIGHTS? REFLECTIONS ON THE INSTITUTION OF POLICE AND A RADICAL ALTERNATIVE May 4, 2015¶  http://www.heathwoodpress.com/an-institution-of-oppression-or-for-public-well-being-and-civil-rights-reflections-on-the-institution-of-police-and-a-radical-alternative-r-c-smith/

As others have already argued, it is important that we acknowledge the systemic relation between police as an oppressive force and their utilization and instrumentalism as an extension of the order of economic coercion and domination. “In spite of the prevalence of its brutality …/ in the end the institution of the police is but an extension of the more deeply rooted institution of property – which, in turn, is the manifestation of wealth and economic power (which, in a capitalist society, translates to political power as well). In light of this, in confronting racism it is insufficient (though nevertheless still crucial) to focus our efforts on the brutality of the police. The police is but the tip of the racist iceberg.”6¶ It is a mistake, in seeking police reform, to limit one’s campaign solely to the institution of police. Groups engaged in anti-oppression and racial struggle, like those engaged in anti-capitalist struggle, share in one way or another a common universal struggle against a system which runs against the well-being of all, against the prospect of actual democracy, equality and egalitarianism. This is not to take anything away from the particular suffering, conflict and fight experienced by black communities across the US. If Chris Hedges is right, moreover, in his observation that the “discontent in Ferguson, Athens, Cairo, Madrid and Ayotzinapa” and now Baltimore “is one discontent”, this is because the fundamental source of injustice that unites them all is an unjust social-political, economic system. Emerging revolts around the world by minority groups may ‘come in many colors, speak many languages and have many belief systems’, but the common antagonist is an economic system and political order which produces and reproduces the precise social coordinates of injustice, inequality, the legitimation of state violence, and fraudulent models of democracy.¶ Slavoj Žižek once observed, “the link between democracy and capitalism has been broken.”7 Perhaps this is true, if we consider the dominant narrative of democracy in terms of its capitalist conception. But I think it is more consistent with fact or reality to suggest that, instead of the link being broken between the two, democracy simply never was. The link was always, in reality, non-existent. That is to say underlying the recent evolution of the institutions and structures of western society is not a sudden broken link, as if there has unfolded some ultimate social betrayal of actual democratic content on a structural and systemic level. In spite of the ballot-box elections and right to vote, democratic capitalism has never been actually democratic. To put it differently: modern democracy, as a concept and as a thing, has always had less to do with the actual content of “democracy” as an egalitarian system of political-economic values than with the neglect of this content for its (mere) form. The concept of democracy today is really the leftover after the actual content (Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice, Rights, etc.) has been boiled away.8 This sentiment is expressed most clearly on the streets, where the chant ‘there can be no democracy in capitalism’ is frequently voiced. Even if only intuitively expressed at times, there is a profound truth underlining this statement, one which discloses the all too known yet incredibly cloudy reality of the fraudulent status of western democracy.¶ The sooner the fraudulent status of modern western democracy is comprehensively conceptualised as such, which includes challenging certain liberal resistances, might we begin to reframe the debate concerning the structural conflicts now prevalent under the rule of neoliberal policy. This point has particular relevance when it comes to understanding the recent uprisings in Baltimore as well as the conflicts in Ferguson and elsewhere. What we witnessed in the brutal killing of Freddie Gray and the mobilization of state violence in response to uprisings in Baltimore, “is symptomatic of the neoliberal, racist, punishing state emerging all over the world,” wherein one of the only modes “of control left by corporate-controlled societies is violence, but a violence that is waged against the most disposable such as immigrant children, protesting youth, the unemployed, the new precariat and black youth.”9

Tournament: Damus | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harker QC | Judge: Angus, Thomas
Governments responsible for police officers should implement the Coalition Against Police Abuse proposal for civilian review which includes-
-establish “Loyal Opposition Policy Review Boards” for civilian oversight of police conduct, policy, and hiring/firing decisions
-The boards should be: elected, paid, and independent of police agencies
-The boards should have special investigators with unrestricted access to crime scenes and the power to subpoena police department personnel and records
-The board should have authority over all claims of police misconduct including: assault, discrimination, infiltration of community groups, sexual harassment, false arrest, and misuse of force. The board should be able to mandate training or discipline for officers up to and including firing, protections for police whistleblowers, and mandate of municipal damages
-Special city prosecutors should be appointed independent of the city attorney’s office and the city council who handle all criminal cases against police officers and have full subpoena powers
-staff should be hired on the basis of affirmative action policies 

CRBs are a legitimate alternative to immunity reform- their decisions affect the ‘clearly established’ doctrine which solves the case without judicial change
Meltzer, JD, 14
(Ryan E., Texas LR 92: 1277 Qualified Immunity and Constitutional-Norm Generation in the Post-Saucier Era: “Clearly Establishing” the Law Through Civilian Oversight of Police)
In the course of investigating discrete incidents of alleged police misconduct, civilian external investigatory bodies engage in fact-finding and identification and application of governing legal standards in much the same way as a court assesses a motion to suppress evidence or a § 1983 claim alleging a deprivation of constitutional rights.31 More importantly, these bodies constantly encounter novel factual scenarios, particularly ones implicating the Fourth Amendment,32 such that their findings epitomize the sort of fact-specific guidance endorsed by the Court.33 Further, to the extent that they are empowered to make policy recommendations to the police departments they oversee, civilian external investigatory bodies also resemble compliance agencies like the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), whose advisory reports have helped to provide the sort of “notice” required to overcome an official’s qualified immunity.34 Consequently, the Court’s qualified immunity jurisprudence appears to permit the findings of such bodies to contribute to the clearly-established-law analysis. At present, however, the work of civilian external investigatory bodies—work that produces a wealth of valuable information and often confronts constitutional questions that might otherwise escape formal adjudication— is largely divorced from that of the courts.35 This state of affairs represents a costly missed opportunity, especially in the wake of Pearson. (1281-2)

The CP Solves the Case 

1. Only EXTERNAL, CIVILIAN oversight can alter police behavior- the AFF’s internal legal reform drives police misconduct underground- it’s a trap
   Akbar, 15 – Assistant Professor of Law at Michael E. Moritz College of Law, the Ohio State University (Amna, “National Security’s Broken Windows”, UCLA Law Review, Vol. 62, pg. 834, May 2015, Lexis)
   This Article has attempted to identify the problems with community engagement and counterradicalization in the national security context, drawing from the critiques of community policing and broken windows in the ordinary criminal context. The canvas for this critical engagement was limited insofar as  *906  Muslim communities' experiences in these programs have been largely sheltered from public view. Harvesting those experiences is no doubt essential to understanding the possibilities and limitations of these programs. This Article provided a sketch of the problems lurking near the surface - that is left to future work.
   Is community engagement salvageable? Moving community engagement toward its most democratic aspirations - toward a more genuine exercise in community consultation, contestation, and collaboration - would involve ridding the program of its pernicious baggage. For example, law enforcement could end community engagement's integration with community-wide intelligence gathering, or could decouple community engagement from CVE and counterradicalization.
   Certainly there are strong normative reasons, including those that motivate this Article, to expect and demand that law enforcement account for the realities of marginalized communities. But we cannot expect that dialogue will necessarily lead to accountability, meaningful contestation, or realignment of police approaches in marginalized communities. After all, law enforcement is itself a significant vehicle for marginalization and racialization in the United States. It is reasonable to question whether community policing - or policing at all - can be expected to be the vehicle for the change we are seeking. The problem and the solution may be entirely mismatched.
   The allure of community policing rests in part on a broader construct of dialogue as inherently valuable. While dialogue can certainly be valuable, its value will depend on the context and the point of view from which it is being evaluated. Dialogue often serves a different function for the more powerful in the conversation than the less powerful. The idea that dialogue is the cure-all for poor relationships between police and marginalized communities emerges from a failure to recognize the structures and histories of police impunity in these communities, as well as the material realities that keep inequality in place. When the dialogue in question is with the police, initiated by the police, and on the police's own terms, not only is the function of the dialogue necessarily limited, the entire initiative should raise red flags. How will the dialogue change the material reality of policing in the community? Does the dialogue further exacerbate inequality or simply validate preexisting policing practices through the performance of democratic legitimacy? Or is it really allowing for messy democratic contestation, and the possibility for change in the material conditions of the relationship between the police and the marginalized?
   For community policing to be an effective tool in changing the relationship between the marginalized and law enforcement, marginalized communities cannot simply be offered a seat at the table to participate in preconceived policing  *907  programs. They must have the political power to hold police accountable. For community policing mechanisms to offer potential for real change to marginalized communities, communities must build capacity and political power to demand accountability. So while we might advocate for law enforcement to engage marginalized communities, we cannot rely on law enforcement initiatives to recalibrate relationships long rife with deep inequality. The pressure for meaningful change must come from outside, from the communities themselves organizing for change. n325
   2. The AFF attempts to improve regulation of INDIVIDUAL OFFICERS. The CP changes police culture as a whole. This reduces police opposition and rights violations
   Seybold, 15 – JD Candidate (Steven D, “Somebody's Watching Me: Civilian Oversight of Data-Collection Technologies,” March 2015, Texas Law Review, Vol. 93, pg. 1029)
   First, even a highly effective LOPRB providing quality policy recommendations to a police department would likely encounter some department resistance to the civilian oversight. This resistance may be created because of police department views of a civilian entity "meddling" or just the potential perception of an adversarial relationship between the *1058 LOPRB and police department. n207 However, the structure of LOPRBs help overcome most of this resistance traditionally leveled against civilian oversight from police departments. The emphasis on policy review, rather than complaint review, means that LOPRBs will not directly regulate individual police officers but rather the department as a whole. This change in focus will likely reduce the intensity of any police department resistance because the potential adversarial relationship will be between the LOPRB and the police department instead of individual officers. n208 Furthermore, any resistance can be ameliorated by public pressure on police departments to enact the LOPRB's policy recommendations. The LOPRB's outreach will inform the local community of the use of data-collection technologies, potentially generating popular support behind LOPRB recommendations. LOPRBs can thus indirectly enforce their recommendations through utilizing that popular support and pressure on police departments. That indirect pressure on police departments will help reduce potential police department resistance because policy changes brought about through public pressure will be a reaction by the police department to the public at large, rather than directly reacting to the adversarial LOPRB. Thus, while police department resistance likely cannot be completely overcome, LOPRBs can ameliorate this traditional civilian oversight problem.

3. The CRB doesn’t have to work- it creates a deterrent effect
Seybold, 15 – JD Candidate (Steven D, “Somebody's Watching Me: Civilian Oversight of Data-Collection Technologies,” March 2015, Texas Law Review, Vol. 93, pg. 1029)
3. Individual Deterrence and Systemic Correction. - Finally, civilian oversight has some meaningful deterrence on individual actors while also providing a functioning mechanism to address local systemic issues. n163 Individual police officers are more likely to undertake regulation of their own behavior when the officer knows that they are being watched by an oversight body. n164 External civilian oversight can ensure greater accountability not only among rank-and-file officers, but also among command officers, and can also address systemic issues facing dys-functional departments. n165 Approximately two-thirds of civilian oversight entities undertake policy review in addition to complaint review, n166 allowing civilian oversight bodies to review general policies and advocate for systemic reform. n167 Samuel Walker, a scholar whose work focuses on police accountability, emphasized that successful civilian oversight bodies "take a proactive view of their role and actively seek out the underlying causes of police misconduct or problems in the complaint process." n168 If civilian oversight mechanisms continually provide policy recommendations to police departments, those recommendations as a whole can have a significant effect on police misconduct, while at the same time making the police department more "accustomed to input from outsiders." n169 Civilian oversight thus can have a transformative impact on entire police departments rather than only correcting the actions of a singular officer.

4. Civilian review is mutually exclusive and more efficient than court action
Weinbeck, 11 – JD Candidate William Mitchell College of Law (Michael P, “Watching the Watchmen: Lessons for Federal Law Enforcement from America's Cities,” William Mitchell Law Review, Vol. 36, pg. 1306)
A police department's internal affairs unit, operating on its own, lacks the credibility to conduct an independent investigation that is satisfactory to the community. n50 Minneapolis city council members, in an attempt to assuage community members and preserve their own political futures, established the city's review authority. n51 In theory, at least, a system of civilian oversight inserts into the police investigation process a watchman without allegiance to the police who will ensure that the investigation is conducted without bias. n52 This, in turn, generally supports a perception by the community that its police department is operating with a proper respect for individual rights. n53 As a result, a greater level of trust develops between the police and the *1315 community that ultimately greases the cogs of crime detection and prevention. n54 There are other benefits that municipalities enjoy when establishing a system of citizen oversight. Chief among them is the political coverage that the city's elected officials receive when establishing the agency. n55 For example, the Minneapolis Civilian Police Review Authority came into being in 1990 after police officers identified the wrong house in a drug raid. n56 During the course of the botched raid, the police killed an elderly couple who lived in the house. n57 In another episode not long after, the Minneapolis Police Department broke up a peaceful party of college-aged African Americans at a Minneapolis hotel. n58 In response to both incidents, outraged community members engaged in vehement and highly publicized demonstrations. n59 Besides providing a measure of political coverage, citizen oversight may also operate as a mechanism for saving cities money. n60 Wronged citizens, instead of bringing their grievances to court, enter the civilian oversight system where they may achieve redress that ends up costing the city nothing more than the administrative costs of the investigation. n61

The net benefit is Tech Shift
A. Absent established, oppositional civilian review, police harassment will shift to technology based surveillance which avoids rights protections
Seybold, 15 – JD Candidate (Steven D, “Somebody's Watching Me: Civilian Oversight of Data-Collection Technologies,” March 2015, Texas Law Review, Vol. 93, pg. 1029)
Technology has provided police departments with powerful tools to collect extensive data on private citizens. Those tools have captured images of every license plate passing through an intersection; n1 used facial-recognition technology to determine whether Super Bowl attendees had criminal records; n2 and implemented multi-technology systems that "aggregate and analyze information from approximately 3,000 surveil-lance cameras around the city ... ." n3 New technologies allow police departments to collect a range of data on the public space, including private citizens not under investigation, raising concerns regarding how that data may be used in the future. n4 And as storage and database capabilities have become cheaper and more efficient, the potential for expansive databases has become not only a science-fiction trope n5 but a reality. n6 *1030 But despite potential, these new tools fit poorly within the current regulatory framework. Police departments have embraced the information age with little guidance or oversight, raising significant privacy concerns regarding the effect of mass-data collection on the privacy rights the general public has enjoyed for centuries. n7 At the same time, current regulatory mechanisms have not adequately addressed how police departments should use cutting-edge surveillance technologies. n8 Such regulatory mechanisms often are inhibited by conflicting motivations n9 or poorly adapted to technological change. n10 Scholars have proposed a variety of solutions to address the privacy and criminal law concerns raised by these "data-collection technologies," but these approaches often provide inadequate flexibility to local jurisdictions to address their unique problems n11 or focus too narrowly on correcting a particular, novel iteration of the problem. n12 *1031 To overcome this regulatory deficit, civilian oversight can provide effective regulatory oversight of police departments' use of new and emerging technologies. Specifically, I argue that a specialized form of civilian oversight, the "Loyal Opposition" Policy Review Board (LOPRB), would function as a regulatory mechanism that not only provides proactive regulatory guidance on technology usage by police departments but would also allow for that guidance to be specifically tailored to the local community. n13 LOPRBs, composed of members who are informed on and invested in technology and civil rights, would undertake policy review of police department procedures for the use of new technologies and recommend "best practices" approaches to ensuring that individual privacy rights and police department investigative needs are effectively balanced. n14 Such a civilian oversight mechanism would ensure that the privacy concerns of the average citizen remain protected as new technologies are incorporated into the daily operations of police departments.
B. Civil rights focus fails- it takes a black and white approach to police conduct that ensures resistance
Schlanger, 15 – Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law, University of Michigan (Margo, “Intelligence Legalism and the National Security Agency's Civil Liberties Gap”, Harvard National Security Journal, Vol. 6, pg. 112, 2015, Lexis)
I have suggested that rights discourse tends to sweep under the rug the messiness of civil liberties protections--the policy issues that lie at the core of civil liberties interests. That messiness will be apparent in what follows; there are no magic bullets here. But a measure can be useful even if messy or compromised. It is possible that that none of the offices described below will accomplish very much. It seems to me, however, that soft administrative measures are useful tools in the civil liberties toolkit, well worth trying by a principal--whether that principal is the President or the Congress--who wants to give more priority to civil liberties but lacks the institutional capacity to do so directly and repeatedly over time. Each of these three offices might represent civil liberties interests more systematically than current arrangements, and might advocate for more liberty protective government protocols and programs. It is worth emphasizing, too, that measures such as these might have not just cumulative but also mutually reinforcing effects, creating a civil liberties cadre with security clearances, who might assist each other in a variety of ways. n360 In addition to promoting civil liberties/privacy interstitially, offices like these assist other more authoritative rulemakers to understand the civil liberties implications of their choices. For example, they can help Congress in its otherwise very difficult oversight task, flagging issues that need more congressional attention. n361 And in several different ways, they may increase public access to otherwise secret matters, which in turn increases pressure on those authoritative rulemakers: They generate reports--both public and private--which can be used by Congress and the public. n362 And they build relationships with non-governmental organizations that promote increased official disclosure. My argument is not that offices like these are a cure-all  *193  for achieving optimal policy, but that they may be a useful part of a complicated ecology.

Tournament: Damus | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harker QC | Judge: Angus, Thomas

1. Civil suits don’t help the perception of the law. Civil suits don’t encourage reform- prefer our evidence it’s a direct response to their AC.  Cheh evidence
   Harmon, Law @ Virginia, 09
   (Rachel A., PROMOTING CIVIL RIGHTS THROUGH PROACTIVE POLICING REFORM, 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, from the Stanford Law Review at 62 STAN. L. REV. 1 (2009). For information visit http://lawreview.stanford.edu. )
   Federal law has played an important role in regulating police misconduct. In particular, federal criminal prosecutions, civil suits for damages under § 1983, and the exclusionary rule are all legal tools that attempt to reduce police misconduct by punishing specific incidents of it and by deterring it in the future. Unfortunately, each is inadequate to promote wholesale institutional change. Federal criminal civil rights prosecutions face significant legal and practical obstacles, including that federal law imposes an onerous intent requirement on civil rights crimes; that victims of police misconduct often make problematic witnesses; and that juries frequently believe and sympathize with defendant officers.16 As a result, prosecutions against police officers are too rare to deter misconduct. Even if criminal prosecutions were more common, however, it is not clear that charges against individual officers would encourage departmental change. Almost inevitably, when some officers in a department are prosecuted, others are not. Criminal prosecution may therefore enable cities to characterize egregious misconduct as resulting from individual pathology rather than systemic problems and to deny the need for departmental improvement.17 Successful § 1983 suits for damages encourage some departmental reform, but they too are limited. Suits against individual officers are difficult to win, both because they suffer some of the same trial challenges as criminal cases against officers, and because officers often have qualified immunity for their actions, even when the conduct is unconstitutional.18 Suing supervisors or chiefs often requires establishing deliberate indifference or reckless action rather than negligence, and suing a city requires a plaintiff to show that misconduct was not only unconstitutional, but reflected municipal “policy” or “custom.”19 Some civil actions succeed despite these obstacles, but many incidents of serious misconduct result in an unsuccessful § 1983 suit or an inexpensive settlement, and therefore provide little incentive for reform.20 Moreover, some scholars have argued that even when plaintiffs win civil suits, damages actions against government actors are an ineffectual—even perverse—means of encouraging local officials to reduce misconduct.21 Daryl Levinson, for example, contends that government officers, police chiefs, and mayors respond to political incentives, and may never be forced to internalize the economic costs of damages paid by municipalities.22 Although Levinson may overstate the case against civil suits,23 he persuasively argues that even when they are successful, civil suits are at best an inefficient and limited means of encouraging institutional reform.24
   2. Fosters more resentment towards the law and resentment. Rosen 05
   Michael M. Rosen, January 2005, " A Qualified Defense: In Support of the Doctrine of Qualified Immunity in Excessive Force Cases, With Some Suggestions for its Improvement" Golden Gate University Law Review, http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1899andamp;context=ggulrev MG

It is hard to deny that the more time police officers spend at trial defending their conduct, the less time they spend patrolling the streets, the more money their departments expend in their defense, and the more frequently the officers will second-guess certain behaviors in the heat of the moment. These drawbacks may well be justified for the sake of society's prevention of tortious and unreasonable conduct on the part of law enforcement agents. Nevertheless, police agencies, Supreme Court justices, and some scholars highlight the important role that qualified immunity can play in reducing unnecessary costs and in improving deterrence of crime. In its amicus brief in support of the Saucier petitioner, NAPO addressed several concerns related to costs and deterrence.47 It began by asserting that officers currently face too many lawsuits related to their conduct, litigation that generally is resolved in their favor and therefore wastes taxpayer time and money! It pointed to an "ever increasing number of lawsuits against law enforcement officers" and the threat that increase poses to the general public interest.49 The increased threat of lawsuits, according to this argument, deters effective police performance, thereby diminishing public safety: NAPO referred to Justice Scalia's assertion in Anderson v. Creighton5l that permitting frivolous lawsuits against law enforcement to go to trial "entails substantial social costs, including the risk that fear of personal monetary liability and harassing litigation will unduly inhibit officials in the discharge of their duties."·2 Several scholars echo NAPO's concerns. Richard Fallon and Daniel Meltzer describe the fears of the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald,53 explaining that such litigation works its evils by deterring officers through the threat of personal liability. Barbara Armacost notes that such liability begets poor law enforcement, which in turn harms the very people the officers are sworn to protect. 54 The chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy's Legal Instruction Unit echoes these sentiments. 55 Thus, at least in theory, the proliferation of lawsuits appears to involve serious risks to agents as well as the public. Of course, this entire edifice hangs on the assumption that law enforcement agents regularly face personal liability for their conduct when acting under color of law. Fallon and Meltzer challenge this premise. 57 They contend that in most situations, the police department and/or the officers' union make use of a legal defense fund while the officer need not expend a penny of his or her own.58 Thus, Fallon and Meltzer contend that the entire policy argument rests on a false assumption. Nonetheless, despite the unlikelihood of an officer facing personal liability, frivolous litigation imposes serious secondary costs on his or her conduct. First, contributions or premiums paid to a legal defense insurance plan will likely increase with the amount of litigation the officer faces. Second, the officer's career may endure a stain or stigma despite a victory on the merits of an excessive force case. Third, the department, as the officer's employer, may impose discipline, whether formal or informal, on any officer's involvement in litigation, whether successful or unsuccessful. Suspensions or unpaid leave may accompany lawsuits faced even by officers who are ultimately victorious in court. Thus, litigation indeed affects officers' conduct, in the heat of the moment, whether reasonably or not.59 This effect dovetails with a growing tendency toward "depolicing" that has become prevalent in several of America's urban cores.60 According to many officers, recent years have seen an increase in lawsuits and informal complaints brought against law enforcement, a correlate tendency in departments to steer officers away from necessarily risky conduct in do-or-die situations, and a concomitant decline in officer morale. 61 In 1981 in the State of California,"2 residents placed 8,686 complaints against peace officers, of which 1,552 or 18 were ultimately sustained.63 In 2000, Californians recorded 23,395 complaints, of which 2,395 or 10 were sustained. 64 This ballooning of claims - in particular unsuccessful ones65 - is as troubling as it is dramatic. The Oakland, California, Citizens Police Review Board ("CPRB") embodies this deterrent effect.66 This board provides an independent forum in which aggrieved citizens can register their complaints about police conduct. 67 At the same time, Detective Jesse H. Grant, who has had personal experience appearing before the CPRB, notes that complaints, more than 80 of which were not sustained in 2002, impose a serious deterrent effect on police conduct. 68 Officers now more than ever think twice and act conservatively - although not necessarily safely - when engaged in violent altercations with or apprehensions of dangerous suspects. 69 Ironically, the presence of entities like the CPRB undermines the justification for excessive force lawsuits to begin with: by providing an avenue for voicing grievances over police conduct, such boards obviate some of the need for civil actions. Moreover, they reflect the deterrent effect that wide-open public access to disciplinary bodies can breed. Thus, there exist significant reasons for the courts to grant some kind of immunity to law enforcement officials in order to ensure the contin-ued quality of their work. By increasing the threat of litigation, frivolous lawsuits can serve to deter officers' reasonable conduct, thus imperiling public safety and upending the delicate balance society seeks between forcefully fighting crime and respectfully treating all citizens.

3. Controversial decision coming that will harm the Court’s image either way it’s decided. Compton Herald ‘10/31
Compton Herald serves as an important objective voice providing general coverage of important issues that impact the public to up-close-and-personal investigative stories of public officials. “Supreme Court to hear transgender bathroom case.” The Compton Herald. October 31, 2016. http://comptonherald.com/supreme-court-hear-transgender-bathroom-case/ JJN
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear a case involving transgender restroom use, the Compton Herald has learned. The decision was announced Oct. 31 and is the first case of this kind to reach the high court. Once heard, the high court’s decision on this widely debated and controversial nationwide issue may well set a major historical precedent. The case involves a Virginia high school student who was born female but views herself as a male. Originally, a lower level court ruled the student would be allowed to use the boys’ restroom, but the Supreme Court placed a temporary stay while an appeal was reviewed, which was filed by the Gloucester County School Board. The student brought the case after the school upheld ordinary restroom use restrictions on the student when community members came forward with concern over the privacy of other students. “Students with gender identity dysphoria, to no fault of their own, should be treated with love and respect. However, such treatment must also be respectful of children of the opposite sex who don’t want their dignity and privacy violated daily in a locker room,” said Brad Dacus, president and founder of Pacific Justice Institute. The case is also important because the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education have issued a letter asserting that Title IX, which requires equal treatment between the sexes in the provision of educational services, applies to transgendered pupils. When Title IX was passed in 1972 Congress understood sex to be based purely on biological status. “What is important is whether the executive branch can unilaterally change the terms of a statute,” Dacus noted. “So in addition to the issue of privacy and transgenderism, the case has profound implications for the rule of law.” The Supreme Court is set to hear the case as early as next year. “It is PJI’s hope the Supreme Court will rule to protect the privacy and decency of all children in their decision,” Dacus added.
Turns

1.  Qualified immunity establishes a good relationship between law and citizens. Kirby 2k
   John D. Kirby, May, 2000, "Qualified Immunity for Civil Rights Violations: Refining the Standard " Cornell Law Review, http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3450andamp;context=clr MG
   Some sacrifice of individual rights for the sake of effective government is the inevitable price of living in a society organized and run by fallible human beings. 70 The early common law recognized that the threat of personal liability might prevent officials from executing their duties with the necessary decisiveness. 71 The framers embodied this recognition in the Constitution. 72 Indecisiveness caused by fear of personal liability can lead to grave public harm. For example, a mayor may decide not to demolish a row of houses to provide a fire-break if he thinks he will subsequently be held liable for destroying the homes.7 3 This trade-off rationale implies that the protection that the qualified immunity doctrine supplies should be closely tailored to the needs of different levels of public officials. It should give no more protection than is necessary for the official to effectively fulfill his duties because each additional measure of protection divests victims of a greater range of remedies for violations of their constitutional rights. Providing more protection than is necessary to prevent officials from being unduly inhibited in the performance of their duties results in an unjustifiable sacrifice of individual constitutional rights.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 1 | Opponent: East WH | Judge: Overing, Michael
The new generation LGBTQ movement is working with community-based solutions, moving away from the flare of courts. Lazare ‘10/13
Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet, A former staff writer for Common Dreams. “Meet 5 Movement Leaders Across the U.S. Fighting for LGTBQ Issues on the Ground.” Alternet. October 13, 2016. http://www.alternet.org/lgbtq/meet-5-movement-leaders-across-us-fighting-lgtbq-issues-ground JJN
"We've gotten dragged into a national conversation where same-sex marriage is held up as the pinnacle of the LGBTQ struggle, but there are so many other things our communities struggle around, issues that have to do with life and death,” Paulina Helm-Hernandez, the co-director of the queer liberation group Southerners on New Ground (SONG), told AlterNet. “We’re dealing with issues like criminalization, health care access and core safety. We’re thinking about ways our people know a lot about violence and how to survive." Helm-Hernandez is one of countless movement leaders in rural communities and urban centers across the country bringing a queer lens to racial, social and economic justice activism. LGBTQ organizers are at the helm of the Movement for Black Lives, calling for an end to extrajudicial police killings, and on the frontlines of native resistance at Standing Rock, where indigenous earth defenders have erected a "two-spirit camp," for gay and lesbian indigenous people. They are demanding an stop to deportations and mass incarceration and devising concrete, community-safety alternatives to calling the police. While fending off the racist incitement of the 2016 election cycle, LGBTQ organizers are also going on the offensive, preparing to mobilize for demilitarization at home and abroad no matter who wins in November. AlterNet spoke with five U.S.-based organizers whose political and cultural work shows that LGBTQ movements go far beyond marriage equality, and are shaping the social movements that define our times. 1. Kym Anthoni, New Orleans “Second lining is very big in New Orleans culture,” said Anthoni, an organizer with the youth-led LGBTQ organization BreakOUT. “After someone passes away, people will do a dance celebrating resilience. Every year around the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we do a second line for the people who died to celebrate resilience, strength and moving forward.” “When a transgender woman has been killed, or you’ve gone through a bunch of bullshit, we embody the culture of second line, recognizing that we have a lot of pain and embracing resilience, saying let’s let go of the harsh shit that you’ve been through and celebrate the fact that you made it,” Anthoni continued. “Last year for the Trans March of resilience, we had a whole second line. We were uplifting the voices that are normally not uplifted in our culture.” New Orleans has been hit hard in recent years by a wave of killings targeting transgender women of color. Among them was BreakOUT community member Penny Proud, a 21-year-old black transgender woman murdered in 2015. This summer, the organization released a statement reading, “It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that another young, black trans/gender non-conforming person, Devin Diamond, has been murdered in New Orleans, just a few weeks after 24-year-old Erica ‘E’ Davis was shot in the Treme neighborhood on her way to work.” Key to BreakOUT’s organizing is the principle that “we deserve to walk down the street and not be attacked, we deserve to not be criminalized,” said Anthoni. This demand is aimed at curbing vigilante violence as well as law enforcement brutality. The organization’s first campaign was called We Deserve Better and took on rampant abuse by the New Orleans Police Department. According to a report released in 2014 by BreakOUT, police abuse is widespread. The survey found that “75 percent of people of color respondents feel they have been targeted by police for their sexual orientation or gender identity or gender expression compared with 24 percent of white respondents.” In addition, the report states that “43 percent of people of color respondents have been asked for a sexual favor by police compared with 11 percent of white respondents.” Anthoni emphasized that it is important for the broader public to understand that police brutality is also an LGBTQ issue. “Police always target trans women of color just for being trans,” Anthoni said. “They over-eroticize transgender bodies. The queer and transgender youth of color are most targeted by law enforcement. It’s a huge issue because it takes your power away, it makes you feel vulnerable. Our vulnerability can sometimes cost us our lives.” In addition to organizing, political education and youth work in local high schools, Anthoni said, “The main core of what we do is heart healing justice work. We focus on finding ways to heal as a community.”

The aff sucks other minority rights movements into the courts. Kairys ‘10
David Kairys is Professor of Law at Temple University School of Law. “The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique.” ReadHowYouWant.com. November 5, 2010. https://books.google.com/books?id=RNiy5dY7B0YCanddq=22Brown+is+an+invitation+to+use+the+courts+to+carry+on+social+struggle.+Yet+as+attractive+as+that+invitation+has+been,+and+continues+to+be,+it+is+one+contingently+and+variously+taken+up+by+disadvantaged+persons22andsource=gbs_navlinks_s JJN
Brown Is an Invitation to use the courts to carry on social struggle. Yet as attractive as that invitation has been, and continues to be, it is one contingently and variously taken up by disadvantaged persons and groups. The so called lure of litigation, while powerful, Is by no means irresIstible.7 In spite of the contlnu- ing importance of Brown and the similarly rare though dramatic instances when the judiciary sides with the disadvantaged in their quest for social justice, disad-vantaged citizens have a complicated relationship to the promise of rights and the judiciary's role in the symbolic structure of liberal legality. They live in an approach-avoidance relation to courts. They feel the symbolic pull of law even as they simultaneously see through and around its mystifications.B As Kristin Bumiller notes, such people are "attracted to the 'ra-diance of the Law" 'though they acknowledge the law's limitations and its unresponsiveness as well as its occasional irrelevance to their social situation.9 When the courts do side with the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable, they keep alive hope that law will matter to those with few other places to turn for help. Yet it would not be accurate to suggest that it is false consciousness that draws the disadvantaged to court. 

Courts destroy the possibility of reform. NeJaime ‘12
Douglas NeJaime - Associate Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles (Loyola Marymount University). “Winning Through Losing.” The Dukeminier Awards Best Sexual Orientation Law Review Articles. 2012. JJN

1. Judges don’t want to depart from mainstream
   2. Separation of powers constraint
   3. Backlash
   4. Flypaper
   A. CONSTRAINED COURTS AND THE EMPTY PROMISE OF LITIGATION Scholars who argue that litigation is an ineffective vehicle for social reform point to several constraints that courts (and strategies reliant on courts) face. n20 As an initial matter, even when framing claims within the accepted language of legal rights, social movement advocates push the limits of courts' willingness to depart from existing practices by asking them to recognize a new right or to extend an existing right to a new group. While advocates themselves might see the step for the court as minor and work to frame the request in that way, judges may remain hesitant to move be-yond existing law and interpret precedent in an expansive--and often liberal--direction. n21 Judges face political pressure to stay within the mainstream; as part of a dominant legal culture with an interest in maintaining the status quo, judges understand the political and professional risks of departing from accepted norms. n22 More concretely, the ability of judges to break new ground is constrained by precedent and (for all but Supreme Court Justices) the prospect of rever-sal. n23 In addition to institutional factors internal to the judiciary, Rosenberg identifies constraints on courts that derive from external pressures. n24 Despite popular understandings of courts as politically insulated, judges themselves appre-ciate the more complicated relationship they have with other governmental branches. Courts may be reluctant to contra-vene perceived community and legislative preferences and, accordingly, may look for adequate support from other gov-ernmental branches before ordering reform. n25 Even where courts manage to overcome key constraints and order significant social reform, they often lack ade-quate independent power to *950 ensure that such reform materializes. Courts may need help from other actors, par-ticularly ground-level administrators, to implement and enforce their decisions. n26 Through tactics ranging from stalling and withholding necessary funds to overt opposition and defiance, those resistant to the decision can make realization of the court's ordered reform exceedingly difficult. n27 Scholars who adhere to this pessimistic view of courts point to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education n28 decision as a paradigmatic example of litigation's failed promise. n29 Even though this decision followed in a line of desegregation and racial-equality decisions, it met with intense resistance from both elites and ordinary citizens. Absent action by other governmental branches, implementation and enforcement surfaced as significant problems that severely limited the effectiveness of the Court's decision. n30 Despite the Court's impassioned rhetoric and commitment to deseg-regation, school integration remained elusive in the decade following Brown. n31 As legal historian Michael Klarman puts it, "Brown had almost no immediate direct impact on desegregation." n32 Accordingly, Rosenberg concludes that "Brown and its progeny stand for the proposition that courts are impotent to produce significant social reform." n33 In addition to the claim that courts are generally incapable of directly producing significant reform, scholars in the "constrained courts" camp make the more contested and controversial claim that litigation rarely yields positive extra-judicial effects. In other words, litigation not only fails to directly produce reform, but also fails to produce indirect ef-fects that might contribute to reform. Under this approach, the ancillary benefits supposedly generated by litigation are illusory. More specifically, these scholars argue that litigation often fails to mobilize movement constituents, positively *951 influence public opinion, convince elites, or accelerate the pace of legislative change. n34 Returning to Brown, Rosenberg and Klarman find scant evidence to suggest that the judicial pronouncement in-spired activists or mobilized constituents. n35 Indeed, Rosenberg observes a "muted" reaction to Brown within the black community. n36 Moreover, he contends that desegregation decisions neither changed public opinion nor influenced press coverage. n37 Of equal significance, Rosenberg and Klarman find that Brown itself did not directly influence Congress or the executive branch. n38 Rather, they link meaningful federal intervention in civil-rights issues to direct-action tactics and cultural changes. n39 Rosenberg concludes that the "claim that a major contribution of the courts in civil rights was to give the issue salience, press political elites to act, prick the consciences of whites, legitimate the grievances of blacks, and fire blacks up to act is not substantiated." n40 Worse yet, the pessimistic account of court-centered change claims that litigation may actually produce negative indirect effects for a social movement by deradicalizing movement politics and inspiring political backlash. n41 First, focusing on courts (and litigation) diverts scarce resources away from more effective strategies and demobilizes a po-tentially vibrant movement. n42 In this view, time, energy, and money that could be spent on *952 mobilization, polit-ical organizing, and direct action are instead spent on attempting to convince an institution that ultimately has relatively little ability to bring about change. n43 For instance, in the civil-rights movement, Rosenberg argues that the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. used their funds and credibility to work through the courts rather than "take to the streets." n44 They did so, according to this account, while direct-action tactics, like boycotts and sit-ins, did the actual work of mobilizing constituents, positively influencing public opinion, and forcing political con-cessions. n45 Next, a court decision ordering significant social reform might depart from public opinion and accordingly inspire backlash that further complicates implementation of reform and makes additional advances unlikely. n46 In this view, court decisions ordering reform disrupt the natural evolution of social change, thereby provoking backlash that puts new and substantial obstacles in a social movement's path. n47 Both Rosenberg and Klarman note that the Brown deci-sion produced powerful backlash that manifested itself in oppositional activism and extreme violence. n48 Intense oppo-sition from political elites and the general public prevented effective implementation and enforcement of desegregation. n49 Even courts became part of the backlash; biased federal and state judges in the South used a variety of tools at their disposal to delay and reject Brown's command. n50 For Rosenberg and Klarman, litigation does indeed produce extra-judicial effects, but these effects are harmful to the litigating movement. n51 In their view, litigation is not merely unpro-ductive; it can be counterproductive.

The LGTBQ movement is crucial to end human suffering – o/w all their impx because we control the internal link. Tatchell ’89
Peter Tatchell - is a British human rights campaignerbest known for his work with LGBT social movements, was selected as Labour Party Parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey. “Gay Liberation is Central to Human Emancipation.” Peter Tatchell.net. However, note at the bottom: “An edited version of this article was published in "Labour Briefing", 1989. See also "Beyond lesbian and gay rights", Interlink. May /June 1989.” http://www.petertatchell.net/masculinity/gay_liberation.htm JJN *bracketed for offensive language
Lesbian and gay LGTBQ liberation is of critical importance to the broader project of human emancipation. It is not merely a minority issue, nor purely a question of civil rights and sexual freedom. The ultimate aim is a cultural revolution to end heterosexual supremacism and the concomitant cult of heterosexual masculinity which underpins all relations of oppression and exploitation. This was the revolutionary agenda of the lesbian and gay liberation movement which emerged 20 years ago following the Stonewall Riots in New York in June 1969. In contrast to earlier liberal-oriented movements for homosexual equality, the lesbian and gay liberation movement did not seek to ape heterosexual values or secure the acceptance of homosexuals within the existing sexual conventions. Indeed, it repudiated the prevailing sexual morality and institutions - rejecting not only heterosexism but also heterosexual masculinity with its oppressive predisposition to rivalry, toughness and aggression (most potently symbolised by the rapist and the queer-basher). In contrast the "radical drag" and''gender-bender" politics of the Gay Liberation Front glorified male gentleness. It was a conscious, if sometimes exaggerated, attempt to renounce the oppressiveness of masculinity and subvert the way masculinity functions to buttress the subordination of women and gay men. Lesbian and gay liberation is therefore truly revolutionary because it specifically rejects the male heterosexual cult of masculine competitiveness, domination and violence. Instead, it affirms the worthwhileness of male sensitivity and affection between men and, in the case of lesbians, the intrinsic value of an eroticism and love independent of heterosexual men. By challenging heterosexual masculinity, the politics of lesbian and gay liberation has profound radical implications for oppressed peoples everywhere: it actively subverts the male heterosexual machismo' values which lie at the heart of all systems of domination, exploitation and oppression. Lesbian and gay liberation is therefore not an issue which is peripheral. It is, indeed absolutely central to revolutionary change and human liberation in general. Without the successful construction of a cult of heterosexual masculinity and a mass of aggressive male egos, neither sexual, class, racial, species, nor imperialist oppression are possible. All these different forms of oppression depend on two factors for their continued maintenance. First, on specific economic and political structures. And second, on a significant proportion of the population, mainly heterosexual men, being socialised into the acceptance of harsh masculine values which involve the legitimisation of aggression and the suppression of gentleness and emotion. The embracing of these culturally-conditioned macho values, whether consciously or unconsciously, is what makes so many millions of people able to participate in repressive regimes. (This interaction between social structures, ideology and individual psychology was a thesis which the communist psychologist, Wilhelm Reich, was attempting to articulate nearly 60 years ago in his book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism). In the case of German fascism, what Nazism did was merely awake and excite the latent brutality which is intrinsic to heterosexual masculinity in class societies. It then systematically manipulated and organised this unleashed masculine violence into a fascist regime of terror and torture which culminated in the holocaust. Since it is the internalisation of the masculine cult of toughness and domination which makes people psychologically suited and willing to be part of oppressive relations of exploitation and subjection, repressive states invariably glorify masculine "warrior" ideals and legally and ideologically suppress those men - mainly homosexuals - who fail to conform to them. Given that this internalisation of masculine aggression within the male population is a prerequisite for injustice and tyranny, love and tenderness between men ceases to be a purely private matter or simply a question of personal lifestyle. Instead, it objectively becomes an act of subversion which undermines the very foundations of oppression. Hence the Nazis' vilification of gay men as "sexual subversives" and "sexual saboteurs" who, in the words of Heinrich Himmler, had to be "exterminated- root and branch." In conclusion: the goal of eradicating injustice and exploitation requires us to change both the social structure and the individual personality to create people who, liberated from masculinity, no longer psychologically crave the power to dominate and exploit others and who are therefore unwilling to be the agents of oppressive regimes (whether as soldiers, police, gaolers and censors or as routine civil servants and state administrators who act as the passive agents of repression by keeping the day-to-day machinery of unjust government ticking over). By challenging the cult of heterosexual masculinity, lesbian and gay liberation politics is about much more than the limited agenda of human rights. It offers a unique and revolutionary contribution to the emancipation of the whole of humanity from all forms of oppression and subjugation.

Tournament: Alta | Round: 3 | Opponent: San Marino VL | Judge: Inglet, Sierra
A. Interpretation- the word limit means to “restrict” not to ban or eliminate 

1. Limit has a variety of definitions, but they all mean “bound” not eliminate
   COURT OF APPEALS OF MARYLAND 02
   (SY-LENE OF WASHINGTON, INC. v. STARWOOD URBAN RETAIL II, LLC No. 132, September Term, 2002 COURT OF APPEALS OF MARYLAND 376 Md. 157; 829 A.2d 540; 2003 Md. LEXIS 455 July 29, 2003, Filed)
   Definitions of the word "limit" include the following: (1) to assign within limits, to appoint, fix definitely, to specify; (2) to confine within limits, to set bounds to, to prohibit a person from something; (3) to border upon a country; (4) to beg within specified limits. Each of these definitions incorporates the concept of a boundary or restraint. To limit something is to define its extent, and in so doing, to quantify it. The suggestion that the concept of elimination is contained within the term limit conflicts with the idea that a limit defines an area or range.
   2. Legal consensus- limit does not mean eliminate
   COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND 14
   (SIERRA CLUB, ET AL. v. DOMINION COVE POINT LNG, L.P. No. 2429, September Term, 2012 COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND 216 Md. App. 322; 86 A.3d 82; 2014 Md. App. LEXIS 18; 44 ELR 20037 February 28, 2014, Filed)
   Before the Court of Appeals, the plaintiff argued that the lease was ambiguous and that parol evidence should be admitted to determine the parties' intent at the time the lease was signed. Id. at 165. The defendant countered, arguing that the plain language of the lease did not provide any upper or lower limit to the number of spaces that must be provided, and therefore, it could eliminate all the spaces. It also argued that because the language was clear, no parol evidence should be admitted. Id. at 166. The Court noted that HN11Go to this Headnote in the case.under the objective test of contract interpretation, if the written contract is clear the court will give effect to its plain meaning. It explained, however, that a contract is ambiguous if it could be "subject to more than one interpretation when read by a reasonably prudent person." Id. at 167. The Court then looked to the language of the contract, to answer the question  *18 of whether the term "limit" meant that the defendant could eliminate. Id. at 168. First, it reviewed the dictionary definition of the word "limit," and then addressed the parties' arguments regarding the various meanings of the term. After examining caselaw from other states, the Court concluded that the "limit" did not mean "eliminate" and ruled that the defendant could not deny plaintiff any parking spaces entirely. Id. at 169. The Court remanded the case back to the circuit court in order for it to consider parol evidence and determine the intended amount of spaces at the time of contracting. Id.
   3. This case law represents broad precedent
   COURT OF APPEALS OF ARIZONA 08
   (COURT OF APPEALS OF ARIZONA, DIVISION ONE, DEPARTMENT E 2008 Ariz. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1013 May 1, 2008, Amended by Order Filed )
   P34 We find support for our conclusion in Sy-Lene and Schuster. In Sy-Lene, the lease provided that the tenant would pay for each employee parking space as needed for its employees and provided that the "landlord reserves the right to limit the number of employee parking spaces to be provided Tenant". 829 A.2d at 543. After a dispute arose between the parties, the landlord told the retail tenant that it would provide no reduced-fee employee parking spaces. Id. The trial court dismissed the action and the special court of appeals affirmed, holding that the right to limit the number of spaces implicitly included the right to limit the number to zero. Id. at 543-45. The Maryland Court of Appeals granted a writ of certiorari and reversed. Id. at 544. The court of appeals held that the definition of the word "limit" did not incorporate the concept of elimination.  *23 Id. at 547. It then remanded the case to the trial court to determine the parties' intentions at the time of executing the lease as to what limit of spaces would be acceptable. Id. at 547-48.
   B. Violation- the affirmative does not mandate a quantitative or qualitative restriction on qualified immunity, they eliminate it entirely
   C. Reasons to prefer 
2. Ground- the topic is designed to force the affirmative to defend the process of legal reform. Predictable negative ground includes counterplans to regulate police conduct outside of immunity reform, court precedent disads, and critiques of the legal system like CLS. Allowing the aff to abolish immunity access a different literature base over whether or not policing is a legitimate government function which makes the topic bidirectional and turbocharges aff solvency
   2. The affirmative interpretation is unreasonable- no definition of limit includes eliminate, its only justified by semantic gymnastics.  The topic could have been written to prohibit immunity but was not. This places the affirmative outside your jurisdiction- they haven’t presented a topical advocacy, you can vote negative on presumption
   3. Legal precision – we cite an evolving case law from multiple courts proving a consensus that limit does not include eliminate. This makes our interpretation the most predictable- it’s a legal topic, we should focus on legal definitions over random dictionary cards or field contextual evidence with no intent to define
   D. Topicality is a voting issue- it sets the balance of ground for debate and tells the negative what they do and do not have to prepare for. It should be evaluated via competing interpretations- its not what they do it’s what they justify.

Tournament: Damus | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harker QC | Judge: Angus, Thomas
TPP is predicted to pass, but there’s no time to waste. Mitchell ‘11/2
Peter Mitchell - AAP US Correspondent, Australian Associated Press. “US: White House bullish on TPP passing.” News.com.au. November 2, 2016. http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/us-white-house-bullish-on-tpp-passing/news-story/66aaccb30c94f3301f95fa652040190f JJN
US President Barack Obama's top Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiator has bullishly predicted the trade deal will be approved by Congress after next week's presidential election if congressional leaders bring it up for a vote. Michael Froman also warned if Congress does not ratify the 12-nation free trade proposal Australia, China and other nations will swoop in and steal markets from the US in the Asia-Pacific. "It's up to the congressional leadership to decide to bring it forward," Mr Froman told CNBC on Tuesday. "If they bring it forward I think we can get the votes there." Presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both oppose the TPP and members of Congress, many who are also up for re-election next Tuesday, have been reluctant to show public support for the contentious trade pact. Mr Obama and Mr Froman are hoping the the anti-trade sentiment will recede after the election and members of Congress will be willing to ratify it before Mr Obama moves out of the White House in January. "I think the key thing is the rest of the world isn't standing by whether it is China negotiating its own trade agreements or the EU, Canada or Australia or others, they are going to move ahead and get access to these markets at our expense," Mr Froman said. "Our market share is actually in decline in some of these important, fast growing and large markets so it is awfully important we show leadership." The TPP signatories are: Australia, the US, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru.

TPP is top of Obama’s priorities, PC is key. Creighton ‘10/27
Adam Creighton – economics correspondent Washington. “Hope for TPP as Obama administration works the phones.” The Australian Business Review. October 27, 2016. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/hope-for-tpp-as-obama-administration-works-the-phones/news-story/8ce5e112900eb06ca2bb0711d3aa16ce JJN
The world’s biggest free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Australian officials have written off as a casualty of a fierce anti-trade backlash in the US, has an almost even chance of success in Congress, according to people familiar with the matter in Washington DC. The Obama administration has been hitting the phones and sending cabinet ministers to remote US towns in an unprecedented bid to persuade Congress to pass the controversial Asia-Pacific trade deal among 12 countries. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have repudiated the deal. The former top economics adviser to Vice-President Joe Biden, Jared Bernstein, said the chance the TPP would be passed after November 8 but before the new president took office was almost 50 per cent, offering hope for the deal signed by the Turnbull government and 11 other nations in February, which frees up trade and investment across 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. “I think the probability is a lot higher than conventional wisdom on the street; I’d give it a 45 per cent chance,” said Mr Bernstein. He said President Obama would certainly send the deal to Congress whoever won the election. “What’s interesting is just how (hard) the administration is working it … full-court press behind the scenes,” he said. “More than on healthcare, more than on stimulus, more than on financial reform: it’s remarkable,” added Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch. She said cabinet ministers had been traipsing the country trying to convince wavering Congressmen. “They are working the phones to a degree that actually is really interesting; cabinet secretary folks are once or twice a week since April calling House members who they might have any kind of chance with,” she added. “The odds of stopping it are slightly better, but it’s close.” Ambassador Joe Hockey and visiting Turnbull government ministers have been strenuously promoting the TPP in Washington, but confidence that the deal — which is also being sold as a way to entrench US and Australian commercial norms in a region increasingly dominated by China — will pass has dwindled significantly. Consonant with the mix of confected and genuine dissatisfaction with the TPP that permeates Republican and Democrat ranks in Congress, Republican congressman Kevin Brady earlier told The Australian the deal wouldn’t pass without additional protections for intellectual property, which Australia has publicly ruled out. Ms Wallach and Mr Bernstein, now at the Centre for Budget Priorities, by contrast argued the TPP deal had been captured by US corporate interests, and should be renegotiated to pare back the extra patent and intellectual property protections demanded by the US on behalf of its pharmaceutical industry. They also want to see clauses outlawing currency manipulation and removing investor-state dispute clauses that potentially limit governments’ freedom to make policies that damage foreign commercial interests. The TPP would be the first trade agreement to be rejected by Congress. If it doesn’t pass in the “lame duck” session — before the new house, senate and president are in place — it will be very unlikely the US would begin new trade negotiations given the febrile environment. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made rewriting or rescinding US trade agreements the centrepiece of his economic strategy. “One of the reasons it’s 45 per cent (chance of success) and not 25 per cent is because … the undecideds are getting much more pressure from the administration than from (labour groups),” said Mr Bernstein. “Democrat and Republican elites have literally for decades ignored the costs of trade.”

(IF ACTOR IS COURTS) Court decisions are politicized – spur debate in Congress and reflects on Obama. Zeleny ‘10
Jeffrey Dean Zeleny is the senior Washington correspondent for CNN. “Political Fallout From the Supreme Court Ruling.” The Caucus, The Politics and Government Blog of the NY Times. January 21, 2010. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/political-fallout-from-the-supreme-court-ruling/ JJN
Today’s ruling upends the nation’s campaign finance laws, allowing corporations and labor unions to spend freely on behalf of political candidates. With less than 11 months before the fall elections, the floodgates for political contributions will open wide, adding another element of intrigue to the fight for control of Congress. At first blush, Republican candidates would seem to benefit from this change in how political campaigns are conducted in America. The political environment – an angry, frustrated electorate seeking change in Washington – was already favoring Republicans. Now corporations, labor unions and a host of other organizations can weigh in like never before. But the populist showdown that was already brewing – President Obama on Thursday sought to limit the size of the nation’s banks – will surely only intensify by the Supreme Court’s ruling. The development means that both sides will have even louder megaphones to make their voices and viewpoints heard. Mr. Obama issued a statement – a rare instance of a president immediately weighing in on a ruling from the high court – and said his administration would work with Congressional leaders “to develop a forceful response to this decision.” “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics,” Mr. Obama said. “It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.” Republicans, of course, hailed the ruling as a victory for the First Amendment. “I am pleased that the Supreme Court has acted to protect the Constitution’s First Amendment rights of free speech and association,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “These are the bedrock principles that underpin our system of governance and strengthen our democracy.” Democrats, not surprisingly, said the ruling would be bad for democracy. “Giving corporate interests an outsized role in our process will only mean citizens get heard less,” said Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “We must look at legislative ways to make sure the ledger is not tipped so far for corporate interests that citizens voices are drowned out.”

The plan sparks congressional debate. Orenstein ‘16
WALKER ORENSTEIN. “Reform advocates upset over pushback over changing malice law.” The News Tribune. July 29, 2016. http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/politics-government/article92684372.html JJN
When an effort by state lawmakers to make prosecuting police for improper use of deadly force easier stalled last year, legislators compromised. They agreed to let a task force study the issue and recommend policy to next year’s Legislature on how to reduce violent interactions involving law enforcement. But some on the state-appointed committee, which had its second meeting Tuesday, say lawmakers overseeing the panel are filibustering even a dialogue about changing controversial state law regulating police use of deadly force. Amending state statute on the subject was a key component of reform-advocates’ demands that spurred the task force. It’s also the subject of a proposed initiative to the Legislature that would amend the law if enacted. Washington’s law is regarded as unique in the country. Convicting an officer for using deadly force requires proof the officer acted with “malice.” It’s a standard many, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have said is more or less impossible to meet, effectively giving police immunity when they use deadly force. Some committee members say changing the law would reduce police use of deadly force, a stated end-goal of the task force. Others on the panel have pushed back, saying changing the statute won’t help that cause. The split could derail what Karen Johnson, chairwoman of the Black Alliance of Thurston County, described as a “golden opportunity” to be a “national model” for discourse between law enforcement and police reform advocates. ‘SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY’ De’Sean Quinn, a member of the state’s African American Commission on the task force, said he wants the group to be “action oriented.” Real action for him might include recommending the state collect data on police use of force to easier analyze how to reduce it, he said. But the key aim, he said, is to reach consensus on how to change Washington’s malice law, particularly in light of the recent police killings of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana. “I feel a sense of responsibility for my kids that we really try and address this issue,” Quinn, who has two sons, said in an interview. Gerald Hankerson, a member of the committee and president of the NAACP of Alaska, Oregon and Washington, said lawmakers and some law enforcement officials on the panel have been hesitant to broach the topic in seriousness. Others on the task force agree. Tuesday’s meeting centered mostly on law enforcement training. Toshiko Hasegawa, appointed to the task force as a member of the state’s Asian American Commission, called out lawmakers during committee session, saying they were avoiding a deeper discussion on changing the law by “hiding behind procedure.” She added in a later phone interview that committee co-chairman Sen. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe, was deliberately avoiding the topic. “Why is the police task force on deadly force not discussing deadly force?” Hasegawa asked. The task force is required to meet only four times. Johnson, Quinn, Hasegawa and others signed a letter sent to Pearson and co-chairman Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, before Tuesday’s meeting, asking for clearer guidelines on discussing the malice statute and more input on meeting agendas. Quinn said he felt work on the statute was being ducked, and said the Legislature is not responding fast enough to outcries for police reform in the country. “It’s not OK to not deal with the difficult issues,” he said. Although the Legislature is not obligated to act on task force recommendations, “consensus with law enforcement” on legal changes “would be significant for the Legislature going forward,” said Sen. David Frockt, D-Seattle. Rather than building consensus, the meetings so far have “almost been like it’s a dog and pony show,” Hankerson said. ‘NOT THE FIRST THING ON MY MIND’ Rep. Dave Hayes, R-Camano Island, is a sergeant with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office and one of four legislators on the panel. He said the task force should look at all sorts of avenues to reduce violent interactions involving police, and said changing Washington’s malice standard is “definitely not the first thing on my mind.” Added Hayes: “I don’t believe that changing the statute is going to fix anything.” He said he expects the result of the task force to be “a couple bills regarding data collection and how we use that data to make our local law enforcement officers better.” He cautioned the Legislature would have to weigh the cost of those bills to not place a burden on local law enforcement departments. Pearson, who left before the conclusion of Tuesday’s meeting, did not return calls or messages from The News Tribune asking for comment. On Tuesday, he said reviewing past applications of the malice statute is “beyond” what the committee was designed to do. Goodman said at the meeting the task force needs to learn more about perspectives of law enforcement officers, their training, and about data collection, and not just work on the malice statute. “We can’t be sort of rushing to focus on one aspect — one very important aspect and that is perception of flaws in the law — but we need to sit back and continue to listen,” he said during the committee meeting. Sue Rahr, the executive director of the Criminal Justice Training Commission, said at the meeting that prosecuting officers for improper use of deadly force “isn’t enough” to reduce violent encounters with law enforcement. Police officers in Washington train at Rahr’s organization with the exception of the Washington State Patrol. Rahr is on the task force. “If the task force does change the law, that’s only going to solve one piece of the problem,” she said. “The problem is much bigger and much more complex than that.” GOING FORWARD Johnson and others have tried to soothe brewing discontent in the group. She reminded task force members there would be more meetings, and that they can schedule more than four if needed. Goodman promised a more collaborative approach to setting new meeting agendas. A minority report can be filed if task force members don’t agree with the final group report to the Legislature. Frockt said Monday that he was looking at the malice law “very seriously,” and feels “ a deep sense of obligation and gravity surrounding this given what’s happening around the country.” “There are people who are going to be clearly disappointed if we don’t make some changes in some Washington law,” he added. “I hope that this is not the situation where the task force goes through, does a lot of work and nothing really happens with it.” Quinn said he’s still optimistic that thorough work on the malice statute will come. But, he said, “there needs to be a demonstration that we need to address these issues.”

Solves multiple extinction scenarios. Morimoto ‘15
Andy Morimoto is a research associate at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “The Strategic Costs of TPP Failure.” The Diplomat. August 22, 2015. http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/the-strategic-costs-of-tpp-failure/ JJN
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is in trouble. Trade ministers failed last month to conclude the massive 12-nation trade deal by their hoped-for summer deadline, putting negotiations in danger of collapse. This is a problem. Trade advocates argue that letting the TPP die would be a significant lost opportunity for the global economy. But there’s a potentially bigger problem here – one that may have serious consequences for both U.S. national security and regional stability in the Asia-Pacific. Just consider the strategic backdrop against which last month’s negotiations occurred. Maritime disputes flaring across the South China Sea. Tensions rising between Beijing and Tokyo. Perennial friction between China and Taiwan and a growing nuclear stockpile in North Korea. If the TPP falls through, it could greatly hurt the America’s ability to stabilize the fraught geopolitics of Asia. Some have argued that a TPP failure would be a net positive for regional stability. The deal, they claim, would isolate and provoke China, and should therefore be abandoned. But this view is blinkered. Given the high trade volumes and trade arrangements across the Asia-pacific, China stands very little chance of being isolated. Moreover, Chinese officials have other ventures on their minds. According to He Weiwen, a former Chinese Commerce Ministry official, “the Chinese are more or less neutral because we have our own agenda, pushing forward ASEAN plus six and the Silk Road.” In fact, there are a number of reasons to believe that the opposite is true: that a TPP failure will cause a number of strategic problems for the U.S. in the Asia-Pacific. First, failure would mean stunting the growth of America’s Pacific partners. This is problematic for two reasons. Most importantly, fewer states would be devoting fewer resources to meet shared challenges like counterterrorism and climate change. In addition, as countries get richer and more interdependent, they become more invested in the well-being of their neighbors. And while free trade, interdependence, and prosperity do not guarantee stability and peace (see: World War I), they do create conditions that make conflict less appealing. Second, failure would create more potential for instability and crises. Consider a hypothetical scenario in which China and one of its neighbors along the South China Sea (say, Vietnam) get into a serious spat over territorial claims. With the TPP, this spat would be less likely to escalate into a full-blown crisis, as China understands that the U.S. is more inclined to intervene in situations that threaten its growing trade interests. Without the TPP, there is less clarity about U.S. resolve, so the potential for miscalculation and escalation increases. Third, failure would send a strong signal that the U.S. no longer has the political will to lead in the region. This would come at a time when allies are already uncertain of U.S. commitments. Earlier this week, for example, Japan’s trade minister expressed disappointment in last month’s trade meetings, saying “every TPP country wondered why the U.S. was quick to give up the conclusion without its usual relentless persistence.” If the U.S. allows negotiations to collapse, it would demonstrate the Obama administration’s declaration – that the U.S. is “all in, when it comes to the Asia-Pacific” – to be hollow. This has important geopolitical implications. If Asia’s great powers perceive the U.S. to be unserious about its role in the region, this will increase the incentive for the powerful regional states (i.e. China and Japan) to jockey with one another for regional hegemony. Finally, failure would be a missed opportunity for the U.S. economy – and America’s ability to project strength abroad rests on its economic foundation at home. According to an analysis from the Peterson Institute, U.S. income gains under the TPP would be significant, potentially adding $59 billion per year by 2020. Failing to conclude the TPP would forego these potential gains, and would make it more difficult for the U.S. to stem the defense cuts put in place by the sequester and invest in our military presence in the Asia-Pacific. The Nobel Prize winning economist Thomas Schelling noted that “trade is what most of international relations are about. For that reason trade policy is national security policy.” Today, U.S. trade policy – and indeed, its national security policy – are in danger of falling apart. Getting something as big and complicated as the TPP across the line won’t be easy. But given the smoldering flashpoints across Asia, the U.S. can hardly afford to squander any tools in its foreign policy toolkit. The stakes are too high.

Regional hegemony is key to stop nuke war.  Rudd 11

Rudd 11 – Kevin Rudd, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, “The Case for American Engagement in Asia: The Australian Perspective”, 9-15, http://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/Pages/2011/kr_sp_110915.aspx?ministerid=2

THE GEO-STRATEGIC RAMIFICATIONS  But as nations change, so too do relations between nations.  The emergence of new powers inevitably brings new strategic complexity, as the power relativities of the 20th century give way to the new ones.  Asia will be vulnerable to a host of strategic uncertainties, arising from the need for new powers to integrate into the global economic and political order, and for the established powers to accommodate them.  The potential for misunderstanding — and the consequences of miscalculation — is also vast.  Tensions like those we see in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Korean Peninsula and the Persian Gulf may become even more difficult to manage.  Make no mistake: these aren’t just regional problems.  Questions about the future of the South China Sea touch on every regional country’s future, given their global strategic and economic significance.  This theme isn't new, but what I can tell you about this strategic shift is that we — Australia and the United States — will face it as allies.  Sure, there is the possibility of instability in our region.  But we've faced the possibility of conflict — and actual conflict — together in the past.  Many different tests, circumstances and challenges have put the acid to our alliance since the ANZUS treaty was signed, 60 years ago.  We've been reminded again that the only time the ANZUS treaty has been formally invoked was ten years ago this week — in response to the attacks on September 11.  But military and intelligence cooperation with the US continues across a wide range of theatres within the framework of the Alliance.  Here in San Francisco — where the ANZUS treaty was signed, all those years ago — I'm reminded that Australian and American servicemen and women have fought, flown, sailed and — I'm reliably informed — surfed together since the Pacific War.  Today, that Alliance continues to grow in meaning and intensity.  We are fighting together in Afghanistan; working together against global threats like piracy; and responding together to natural disasters across the region.  For us, for our relationship, the end of the Cold War hasn’t meant a downgrading of the importance of our Alliance — if anything, it’s become more intense and more important.  So as we face the challenges of the 21st Century — the challenges of the shift of power to Asia — we will do so together.  We’re working together to ensure our forces are aligned in the right way to provide for the national security of our two countries, and to help us shape the emerging regional environment.  Our forces have to be able to respond to the range of contingencies that can arise in our region, including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.  Increasingly, we aren’t just working with each other, but with other regional players.  I'm not just talking about the Pacific, or the Asia-Pacific.  The critical region for our future now extends to include the Indian Ocean as well.  The growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean starts with India's rise.  India is the largest democracy in the world.  Forecast to be the third largest economy in the world in coming decades, it is in the interest of both the United States and Australia for India to play the role of a major international power.  For now, India’s focus remains South Asia.  But its strategic weight is increasing with its increasing economic size and strength.  India is increasingly looking east with interest, both for strategic and economic reasons, and because of long-standing cultural connections.  But the importance of the Indian Ocean also lies in its unique role in maritime security and sea lines of communication for a much larger group of economies, both in Europe and Asia.  Lying between the Middle East energy sources and the dynamic global engine room of Asia, its importance grows with each passing year.  The pressures on the Gulf and West Indian Ocean choke points will intensify, as India grows and East Asian centres of growth remain reliant on Gulf energy and African resources.  In the 21st Century, questions of resource, energy and food security are becoming more vital than ever.  As Robert Kaplan says, the Indian Ocean is once again at the heart of the world, as it was in ancient and medieval times.  THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES  The United States has been a guarantor of security and economic prosperity in the Asia-Pacific for decades.   But the 21st Century will demand more.  As the world changes, it's even more critical that the US builds its engagement with our region.  As the United States transitions back from tough and unforgiving wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it might seem tempting to resist the case for further international engagement.  President Obama has already rightly intensified US involvement with East Asia.  It remains the case, in one way or another, that the United States is vital in solving common problems collectively.  No other power is able or willing to support essential global public goods — like the free movement of trade, capital and people around the world.  Sea-lane security, regional security in critical regions like the Gulf, open markets, the reserve currency, deep and liquid capital markets — who else provides these global public goods?  America has faced these questions before.  On the eve of entry into World War II, Henry Luce's seminal editorial in Life magazine on the American Century was much more than a statement about relative power, as America assumed its position in the new order.  It was a call for American leadership in international affairs.  It is in America’s interest and the world’s interest to provide that leadership — because in its absence, the risks grow that we will see destabilisation that threatens us all.  The interdependence of our economies has been shown clearly by the financial crisis, and a collapse in the conditions for open trade would be an economic disaster for all trading nations.  I share President Obama's view that America can neither retreat from "responsibility as an anchor of global security" nor "confront... every evil that can be found abroad".  But President Obama talked of the need for a "more centered course" — and that lies in a deep US engagement in Asia.  I believe the vast majority of the countries of Asia welcome that continued and expanded American strategic role in our hemisphere.  As Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono said in November 2008, as the financial crisis was wreaking havoc upon us, “none of these global challenges can be addressed by the world community without having America onboard. And conversely, none of these issues can be resolved by the United States alone.”  And as Lee Kuan Yew said a year later, “the consensus in ASEAN is that the US remains irreplaceable in East Asia.”  In the 21st Century, the US needs substantial, sophisticated, nimble engagement in the region.

Tournament: Yale | Round: 1 | Opponent: Success Academy SC | Judge: Zhou, Paul
Clinton wins now but it’s close – NOW is the chance for Trump to pull ahead Russonello 9/16
Russonello, Giovanni. "Poll Shows Tight Race for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton." The New York Times. September 16, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-poll.html. JD
*Methodology Underlined in the card
Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has the support of 46 percent of likely voters nationwide, to 44 percent for Mr. Trump, the Republican, including those who said they were leaning toward a candidate. Looking more broadly at all registered voters, Mrs. Clinton holds a wider edge, 46 to 41 percent. In a four-way race, Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are tied at 42 percent each. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, has the support of 8 percent of likely voters, and the Green Party nominee, Jill Stein, takes 4 percent. The third-party candidates draw their strongest support from younger voters. Twenty-six percent of voters ages 18 to 29 say they plan to vote for Mr. Johnson, and another 10 percent back Ms. Stein. A little more than one in five political independents say they will vote for one of the third-party candidates. Discontent with the major party candidates is widespread. Among those who say they intend to vote for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton, slightly more than half express strong support. The rest say that they harbor reservations about their candidate, or that they are simply voting to thwart the other nominee. Over all, just 43 percent of likely voters describe themselves as very enthusiastic about casting a ballot in November. Fifty-one percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters say they are very enthusiastic about voting; 43 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters say they are very enthusiastic. The race has clearly grown tighter in recent weeks. National polling averages show that Mrs. Clinton’s margin over Mr. Trump has narrowed from eight points in early August to two points today. Mrs. Clinton found herself under attack last week for suggesting that half of Mr. Trump’s supporters held views that made them “deplorables,” and for her campaign’s attempts to conceal her pneumonia diagnosis. The Times/CBS News poll was conducted from Sept. 9 to 13, so many of those interviewed were aware of the controversies. Mr. Trump hired new campaign leadership in mid-August and has been more disciplined in his public statements. His poll numbers have been steadily rising. Mrs. Clinton continues to outpace Mr. Trump among women, nonwhites and younger voters, while Mr. Trump leads among whites, 57 to 33 percent. Among white women, the candidates are virtually tied: 46 percent for Mrs. Clinton and 45 percent for Mr. Trump. Mrs. Clinton’s support is notably strong among college graduates, particularly whites. She leads by 11 points among white likely voters with a college degree; if polling holds, she would be the first Democrat in 60 years to win among this group. This is the first Times/CBS News poll of the election cycle to include a measure of likely voters. The nationwide telephone survey reached 1,433 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. To achieve a sample that reflected the probable electorate, these voters were weighted by their responses to questions about voting history, attention to the campaign and likelihood of voting. With Mrs. Clinton sidelined by illness this week, Mr. Trump has vigorously pressed his case. He promoted a new plan to support working parents on Tuesday, and released a partial account of his medical status on Wednesday during a taping of “The Dr. Oz Show.”

Public popularity supports nuclear energy despite the Fukushima disaster – best polls prove
Riffkin 15Gallup, Inc., 3-30-15, "U.S. Support for Nuclear Energy at 51," Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/182180/support-nuclear-energy.aspx

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A slim majority of Americans (51) now favor the use of nuclear energy for electricity in the U.S., while 43 oppose it. This level of support is similar to what Gallup found when it last measured these attitudes two years ago, but it is down from the peak of 62 five years ago. Current support is on the low end of what Gallup has found in the past 20 years, with the 46 reading in 2001 the only time that it sank lower. The high point in support for the use of nuclear power, in 2010, was recorded shortly after President Barack Obama announced that the federal government would provide loan guarantees for the construction of two nuclear reactors, the first to be built in the U.S. in three decades. Support has generally dropped since then. However, between 2011 and 2012, support was stable, with 57 favoring nuclear energy. This is notable given that Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster took place shortly after polling in 2011.

That flips the election for the GOP – our link prices in other factors and we don’t need to win that Hillary gets the blame Needham 16
 (Vicki, The Hill, 1/21, “Moody’s model gives Dem candidate advantage in 2016,” http://thehill.com/policy/finance/266668-moodys-model-gives-dem-candidate-advantage-in-2016) Recut by WP

The Democratic presidential nominee will win the race for the presidency, but the election is shaping up as historically tight, according to a political model. Less than 11 months from Election Day, Moody’s Analytics is predicting that whomever lands the Democratic nomination will capture the White House with 326 electoral votes to the Republican nominee’s 212. Those results are heavily dependent on how swing states vote. The latest model from Moody’s reflects razor-thin margins in the five most important swing states — Florida, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia. In each of those states, the Democratic advantage is less than 1 percentage point, well within the margin of error. The election model weighs political and economic strength in each state and determines the share of the vote that the incumbent party will win. The most important economic variable in the model is the growth in incomes in the two years leading up to the election. That factor captures the strength of the job market in each state, including job growth, hours worked, wage growth and the quality of the jobs being created. The model also factors in home and gasoline prices. So far, the strength of the economy has kept the model on track for the Democratic nominee. But the trajectory of the president’s approval rating also makes a difference in who could win the White House. If President Obama’s approval rating shifts only a little more than 4 percentage points, a bit more than the margin of error for many presidential opinion polls, the move could further cut into Democratic hopes to retain the White House. Growing concern about terrorism and other issues could dent Obama’s approval rating further. Usually, if the sitting president’s approval rating is improving in the year leading up the election, the incumbent party receives a boost. But in most elections, the president’s rating has declined in the lead-up to the election, favoring the challenger party. 

Trump strongly supports nuke power 

Follett 16 Andrew Follett, 2-20-2016, "Here’s Where The 2016 Candidates Stand On Nuclear Power," Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/20/heres-where-the-2016-candidates-stand-on-nuclear-power/

The real estate mogul has made strong public statements supporting nuclear power, but tends to favor further development of natural gas. In the aftermath of the 2011 Japan Fukushima nuclear disaster, Trump told Fox News “nuclear is a way we get what we have to get, which is energy.” “I’m in favor of nuclear energy, very strongly in favor of nuclear energy,” Trump said. “If a plane goes down people keep flying. If you get into an auto crash people keep driving.” The permitting process for nuclear power needs to be reformed, Trump explained. He qualified this statement saying “we have to be careful” because nuclear power “does have issues.” Trump specified that he favored the development of natural gas over nuclear energy in the same interview: “we’re the Saudi Arabia times 100 of natural gas, but we don’t use it.” 

And, nuclear energy would become the key spinning factor for Republicans because of Clinton’s lack of support and Obama’s current policy – Republicans will pit nuclear power policy against Clinton regardless of her actual policy Siciliano 1/10

Siciliano 16John Siciliano, 1-10-2016, "The 2016 politics of nuclear energy," Washington Examiner, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-2016-politics-of-nuclear-energy/article/2579855

The presidential election may offer hope for a resurgence of interest in nuclear energy. And if a Republican wins the White House, it's more likely that the centerpiece of that effort, a controversial nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, will move forward. Republicans stand for what they call the "law of the land," referring to the fact that Congress chose Yucca Mountain to be the nation's nuclear waste dump, and that has not changed despite President Obama's and congressional Democrats' success in upending the project and focusing instead on wind and solar power. But even with a president who favors nuclear energy, it will still prove difficult to build the site to take radioactive waste from nearly 100 power plants. Nuclear power is one of the cleanest forms of electricity, yet the question of what to do with waste continues to fester. Many people see Yucca Mountain as the answer, but opponents say it's unsafe. But both sides agree that building more nuclear plants hinges on waste disposal. It pits the administration against lawmakers and exposes a rift between the pro-nuke and anti-nuke wings of the environmental movement. A big barrier to the nuclear option is price. Ben Zycher, senior energy fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said new nuclear reactors cost far too much, especially since natural gas is so cheap. That could sideline nuclear energy and Yucca Mountain this election year. Yucca Mountain's main adversary, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, is retiring from Congress at the end of the year, but Zycher said other Nevada officials will step into the breach. "It may be a case without Reid in the Senate the path would be eased, but that's not particularly obvious," he said. David McIntyre, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged with licensing the dump, agrees, saying it "would be immensely difficult" to start back up after so many years of administration stalling. And Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is "not going to endorse it," Zycher said. Litigation and 2016 Rod McCullum, the Nuclear Energy Institute's director of used fuel issues, calls managing nuclear waste the "most technically simple, but politically complicated things we do." It might arise in the presidential election because President Obama has stalled longstanding nuclear waste policy, defying Congress, many states and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which designates Yucca Mountain as America's long-term nuclear waste repository. Obama's efforts to hamstring Yucca during his first term helped keep Reid loyal. But both are leaving Washington, and federal courts have ruled that the administration could not kill the Yucca project without congressional consent and while continuing to collect money from utilities and states to build it. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2013 dealt a blow to the administration by ordering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its work on licensing the facility, which it recently did despite Reid having choked off the commission's funding. McCullum said the commission has been "eeking" along.

Trump win means he will nuke ISIS – results in massive civilian casualties and Middle East destabilization. Hobbus 15
R. Hobbus 15, J.D., investigative journalist specializing in international politics, “Trump: I Will Absolutely Use A Nuclear Weapon Against ISIS,” 8/10, Real News Right Now, http://realnewsrightnow.com/2015/08/trump-i-will-absolutely-use-a-nuclear-weapon-against-isis/
NEW YORK, Ny. – In response to a question regarding his policy on ISIS, Republican presidential candidate and billionaire Donald Trump told Meet the Press on Sunday that as Commander-in-Chief, he would authorize the use of nuclear weapons to combat Islamic extremism. “Let’s face it, these people are barbarians,” Trump said. “And thanks to Obama’s failed policy in Iraq and Syria, they’re beheading Christians all over the world.” Mr. Trump said he’s already conferred with a number of high-level active military officials and has put together a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Islamic State within his first one hundred days in office. “It starts with the deployment of four or five of our Ohio-class nuclear submarines to the Persian Gulf,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them and we’re going to hit them hard. I’m talking about a surgical strike on these ISIS stronghold cities using Trident missiles.” The Trident is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. With a payload of up to fourteen reentry vehicles, each carrying a 362-pound thermonuclear warhead with a yield of 100 kilotons, a single Trident has roughly seventy times the destructive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Trump’s plan to use thermonuclear weapons against ISIS-held areas such as the Syrian city of Al-Raqqah would result in an astronomically high number of civilian casualties, according to CNN military analyst Peter Mansoor. “Al-Raqqah alone has a population of over two hundred-thousand people, the vast majority of whom are not affiliated in any way with the Islamic State,” Mansoor said. “A strike of this magnitude would not only result in the loss of millions of innocent lives and infrastructure, but it would set diplomacy and stability in the region back at least a hundred years.”
And, turns case – Trump disrespects indigenous people’s right to his lands and justifies xenophobic bigotry. Ross 15
Gyasi Ross editor at LargeBlackfeet Nation/Suquamish Territories “What a Trump Presidency Would Mean For Native People (Yeah, It's As Crazy As You'd Expect)” Indian Country 10/19/15

That’s right: there is one singularly bad candidate for Native people who shows an ugly hate toward Native people and just shows a nastiness towards brown people in general. That’s right: Donald Trump. He’s kind of a scumbag. I laughed about it early on, “He doesn’t even believe what he’s saying.” And I still don’t think that he believes 90 of what he says—but it doesn’t matter. If you rile up enough racist/xenophobic/misogynistic energy—as he has done—things get dangerous. It changes the tone; America already struggles getting past it’s racist past. It certainly doesn’t need new bigots stirring the pot.¶ And even if Trump doesn’t believe the racist garbage that he spews, it still has a hateful effect and stirs up the genuinely racist folks within America. And it’s not just the toothless, uneducated masses that have latched onto Trump’s prejudiced dog-whistles (they have); the neo-conservative bigots who utilize passive aggressive race-neutral language to antagonize people of color also have heeded his call. ¶ Of course his hate speech toward brown skinned migrants is epic; he seems to despise our brothers and sisters to the south (who have more right to be on this continent than he does). Yet, he says that the Mexicans who come here “… have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”¶ Well damn. It’s no surprise that his hate speech inspired hate crimes by some Neanderthals in Boston against a homeless Latino man. When the men were arrested they said, “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”¶ Idiots call this type of racism “Nativist,” but that’s an evil lie. Donald Trump is not Native to this land and it’s not Native people carrying out this hate. It’s other immigrants. White immigrants who don’t like brown immigrants. ¶ He’s kinda equal opportunity in his hate of people of color. When speaking about the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement dedicated to securing basic human rights for black folks in this nation, Trump said, “I think they’re trouble. I think they’re looking for trouble…And I think it’s a disgrace that they’re getting away with it.”¶ But even with his obvious distaste of Mexican folks and Black folks, he has the longest history of antagonizing Native people.¶ Obviously, there’s the history of Trump crying to Congress that American Indian casinos should be shut down because Indian casinos are going to create “…the biggest organized crime problem in the history of this country. Al Capone is going to look like a baby.” Then, there was Trump playing racial police about mixed members of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe saying "They don't look like Indians to me.” Additionally, recently Trump was kind enough to speak for Native people about the Washington Redskins franchise, saying , "I know Indians that are extremely proud of that name." (in fairness, Jeb Bush did this same thing—these over-privileged and rich white men love to speak for Native people). ¶ Trump also recently went on record to say that if he were elected President, “I will immediately approve the Keystone XL pipeline...” that tramples on the sacred sites and water supplies of many, many Native people. ¶ Bad news. ¶ There are plenty more examples. And while we don’t have absolute certainty as to who will be best for Native people in this upcoming election cycle, we do know who will be the worst for Native people, Mexicans and black folks. ¶ Thank you Donald Trump for making that clear.

Tournament: Loyola | Round: 2 | Opponent: Peninsula JL | Judge: Adam Bistagne
CP Text: The Nuclear Regulation Authority of Japan will enhance inspection competence and amend nuclear safety law to make safety checks effective and flexible. Yamaguchi 16.
Mari Yamaguchi, The International Atomic Energy Agency says Japan has improved its nuclear safety regulation since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but it still needs to strengthen inspections and staff competency, 1/22/16, http://www.usnews.com/news/science/articles/2016-01-22/iaea-japan-nuclear-regulation-should-improve-skills-law VC
The IAEA inspection team urged the Nuclear Regulation Authority to enhance inspection competence and the government to amend its nuclear safety law to make on-site safety checks more effective and flexible. Mission leader Philippe Jamet, a French regulatory commissioner, said Japan's inflexible inspection rules do not allow inspectors to move freely at nuclear facilities or respond quickly when there is a problem. "What we found is that the system that is regulating, that is defining the framework of inspection is very complex and very rigid," Jamet said at a news conference. Japan has a comprehensive framework but "it doesn't give enough freedom for the inspectors to react immediately and to provide results," he said. "At any time and for any plant, inspectors should be allowed to go where they want." A final report by the team is expected in about three months. Japan's top nuclear commissioner, Shunichi Tanaka, acknowledged the shortcomings and said, "We have to focus on tackling the challenges of inspection system and human resources." Masakazu Shima, a Japanese regulator who assisted the inspection team, said the inspection issue was also raised by an earlier IAEA mission in 2007 but Japan never took action.

The counterplan solves the accidents advantage – the reason the meltdown occurred was because of a lack of inspection flexibility. The counterplan strengthens regulations which avoids meltdowns. AP 16
Associated Press Staff, IAEA review spurs Japan nuclear regulators to bolster safety regimen, look to U.S. for training, 4/22/16, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/04/26/national/iaea-review-spurs-nuclear-regulators-beef-japans-safety-regimen/#.V7_LTpgrI2w VC
The Nuclear Regulation Authority says it will revise laws, nearly double inspection staff and send some inspectors to the United States for training to address insufficiencies cited by International Atomic Energy Agency experts. The NRA announced the plans Monday in response to an IAEA evaluation of Japan’s nuclear safety regulations since the 2011 Fukushima crisis. The report was submitted to the government last week. Japan largely ignored an IAEA review in 2008 that concluded that its inspection system was inadequate. Three years later, three reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 power station suffered meltdowns after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami knocked out their cooling systems. A series of investigations have blamed safety complacency, inadequate crisis management skills, a failure to keep up with international safety standards, and collusion between regulators and the nuclear industry as the main contributing causes of the disaster.

Tournament: Yale | Round: 1 | Opponent: Success Academy SC | Judge: Zhou, Paul
CP Text: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should designate sub-seabed disposal as the sole candidate for its permanent nuclear waste repository. Wilson 14
Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. and executive editor of Environmental Building News, founded the Resilient Design Institute Alex, "Safe Storage of Nuclear Waste", Green Building Advisor, www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/energy-solutions/safe-storage-nuclear-waste SP

The big question now is how long it will be until the plant can be decommissioned and what to do with the large quantities of radioactive waste that are being stored onsite. Terrorism risks with nuclear power My concern with nuclear power has always been more about terrorism than accidents during operation or storage. I continue to worry that terrorists could gain entry to nuclear plant operations and sabotage plants from the inside — disabling cooling systems and causing a meltdown. There is also a remote risk of unanticipated natural disasters causing meltdowns or radiation release, as we saw so vividly with the Fukushima Power Plant catastrophe in Japan in March, 2011. For more than 30 years, the nuclear industry in the U.S. and nuclear regulators have been going down the wrong path with waste storage — seeking a repository where waste could be buried deep in a mountain. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was the place of choice until… it wasn’t. Any time we choose to put highly dangerous waste in someone’s backyard, it’s bound to cause a lot of controversy, even in a sparsely populated, pro-resource-extraction place like Nevada. NIMBY opposition can be boosted by people in powerful places, and in the case of Yucca Mountain, Nevada senator Harry Reid has played such a role. (He has been the Senate Majority Leader since 2006 and served prior to that as the Minority Leader and Democratic Whip.) Aside from NIMBYism, the problem with burying nuclear waste in a mountain (like Yucca Mountain) or salt caverns (like New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns — an earlier option that was pursued for a while in the 1970s) is that the maximum safety is provided at Day One, and the margin of safety drops continually from there. The safety of such storage sites could be compromised over time due to seismic activity (Nevada ranks fourth among the most seismically active states), volcanism (the Yucca Mountain ridge is comprised mostly of volcanic tuff, emitted from past volcanic activity), erosion, migrating aquifers, and other natural geologic actions. A better storage option I believe a much better solution for long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste is to bury it deep under the seabed in a region free of seismic activity where sediment is being deposited and the seafloor getting thicker. In such a site, the level of protection would increase, rather than decrease, over time. In some areas of seabed, more than a centimeter of sediment is being deposited annually. Compacted over time, such sediment deposition could be several feet in a hundred years, and in the geologic time span over which radioactive waste is hazardous, hundreds to thousands of feet of protective sedimentary rock would be formed. The oil and gas industry — for better or worse — knows a lot about drilling deep holes beneath a mile or two of ocean. I suspect that the deep-sea drilling industry would love such a growth opportunity to move into seabed waste storage, and I believe the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or other agencies could do a good job regulating such work. The waste could be placed in wells extending thousands of feet below the seabed in sedimentary rock in geologically stable regions. Let's say a 3,000-foot well is drilled beneath the seabed two miles beneath the surface of the ocean. Waste could be inserted into that well to a depth of 1,000 feet, and the rest of the well capped with 2,000 feet of concrete or some other material. Hundreds of these deep-storage wells could be filled and capped, and such a sub-seabed storage field could be designated as forever off-limits. Industry or the Department of Energy would have to figure out how to package such waste for safe handling at sea, since the material is so dangerous, but I believe that is a surmountable challenge. For example, perhaps the radioactive waste could be vitrified (incorporated into molten glass-like material) to reduce leaching potential into seawater should an accident occur at sea, and that waste could be tagged with radio-frequency emitters so that any lost containers could be recovered with robotic submarines in the event of such accidents. While I’m not an expert in any of this, I’ve looked at how much money taxpayers and industry have already poured into Yucca Mountain — about $15 billion by the time the Obama Administration terminated federal funding for it in 2010, according to Bloomberg News — and the estimates for how much more it would take to get a working waste storage facility of that sort operational had risen to about $96 billion by 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Energy at the time. I believe that sub-seabed storage would be far less expensive. 

Solves the aff ssd is able to isolate any radioactive nuclear waste from humans. Bala 2014
Amal Bala, Sub-Seabed Burial of Nuclear Waste: If the Disposal Method Could Succeed Technically, Could It Also Succeed Legally?, 41 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 455 (2014),SP
In general, two related methods of underwater disposal of SNF exist: dumping containers of radioactive waste into the ocean, and sub-seabed disposal. 92 The purpose of underwater disposal of SNF is the same as any other type of SNF disposal, which is to isolate radioactive waste from human contact and the environment long enough for any release of radiation to become harmless.93 The potential advantages of certain types of underwater SNF disposal for the United States could include effective containment of the waste and avoiding the controversy of a land-based national repository, such as the failed project at Yucca Mountain. 94 Underwater disposal of SNF, specifically subseabed disposal, could occur far from the coast of any state or nation and could thereby avoid the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) syndrome, but

Tournament: Loyola | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Danielle Dosch | Judge: Kris Kaya, Olivia Panchal, Arjun Tambe
Their indo-pak reps are seeped with western racism- linguistic differentiation sanitizes violence against orientalized others.  Gusterson 99
 
Hugh Gusterson 99, @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cultural Anthropology 14.1, "Nuclear Weapons and the Other in the Western Imagination," p. jstor
 
According to the literature on risk in anthropology. shared fears often reveal as much about the identities and solidarities of the fearful as about the actual dangers that are feared (Douglas and Wildavslty I982; Lindenbautn I914).¶ The immoderate reactions in the West to the nuclear tests conducted by India¶ and Pakistan. and to Iraq's nuclear weapons program earlier, are example of an¶ entrenched discourse on nuclear proliferation that has played an important role¶ in structuring the Third World. and our relation to it. in the Western imagination.¶ This discourse. dividing the world into nations that can he trusted with nuclear¶ weapons and those that cannot. dates back. at least. to the NonProliferation¶ Treaty of I970.¶ The Non- Proliferation Treaty embodied a bargain between the live countries that had nuclear weapons in I970 and those countries that did not. According to the bargain. the five official nuclear states (the United States. the Soviet¶ Union. the United Kingdom. France. attdCltitta)’ promised to assist other signatories to the treaty in acquiring nuclear energy technology as long as they did not¶ use that technology to produce nuclear weapons. submitting to international inspections when necessary to prove their compliance. Further. in Article 6 of the¶ treaty. the five nuclear powers agreed to "pursue negotiations in good faith on¶ effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date¶ and to nuclear disarmament” (Blacker and Duffy I976: 39$). One hundred¶ eighty-seven countries have signed the treaty. but Israel. India. and Pakistan¶ have refused. saying it enshrines a system of global "nuclear apartheid.“ Although the Non-Proliferation Treaty divided the countries of the world into nuclear and nonnuclear by means of a purely temporal rhetoric‘-—designating only¶ those who had tested nuclear weapons by I970 as nuclear powers the treaty¶ has become the legal anchor for a global nuclear regime that is increasingly legitimized in Western public discourse in racialized terms. In view of recent developments in global politics—the collapse of the Soviet threat and the recent¶ war against Iraq. a nuclear-threshold nation in the Third World—the important ¶ of this discourse in organizing Western geopolitical understandings is only¶ growing. lt has become an increasingly important way of legitimizing US. Military programs in the post-Cold War world since the early 1990s. when U.S.¶ military leaders introduced the term rogue states into the American lexicon of¶ fear. identifying a new source of danger just as the Soviet threat was declining¶ (Klare I995).¶ Thus in Western discourse nuclear weapons we represented so that "theirs"¶ are a problem whereas “ours” are not. During the Cold War the Western dis-¶ course on the dangers of ‘nuclear proliferation" defined the terrn in such a way¶ as to sever the two senses of the word proliferation. This usage split off the "vertical" proliferation of the superpower arsenals (the development of new and int-¶ proved weapons designs and the numerical expansion of the stockpiles) from the¶ "horizontal" proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries. presenting¶ only the latter as the ‘proliferation problems‘ Following the end of the Cold¶ War. the American and russian arsenals are being cut to a few thousand weapons off each side.’ However. the United States and Russia have turned back appeals front various nonaligned nations. especially India. for the nuclear powers¶ to open discussions on a global convention abolishing nuclear weapons. Article¶ 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty notwithstanding. the Clinton administration¶ has declared that nuclear weapons will play a role in the defense of the United¶ States for the indefinite future. Meanwhile. in a controversial move. the Clinton¶ admistration has broken with the policy of previous administrations in basically formalizing a policy of using nuclear weapons against nonnuclear stares to¶ deter chemical and biological weapons (Panofsky 1998: Sloyan I998).¶ The dominant discourse that stabilises this system of nuclear apartheid in¶ Westerns ideology is a specialized variant within a broader system of colonial¶ and postcolonial discourse that takes as its essentialist premise a profound Otherness separating Third World front ‘Western countries.‘ This inscription of¶ Third World (especially Asiart and Middle Eastern) nations as ineradically different front our own has in a different contest been labeled "Orientalism" by¶ Edward Said (I978). said argues that orientalist discourse constructs the world¶ in terms of a series of binary oppositions that produce the Orient as the mirror¶ image of the West: where “we” are rational and disciplined. "they" are impulsive and emotional; where "we“ are modern and flexible. "they" are slaves to ancient passions and routines: where "we" are honest and compassionate. "they"¶ are treacherous and uncultivated. While the blatantly racist orientalism of the¶ high colonial period has softened. more subtle orientalist ideologies endure in¶ contemporary politics. They can be found. as Akhil Gupta ( I998) has argued. in¶ discourses of economic development that represent Third World nations as child¶ nations lagging behind Western nations in a uniform cycle of development or. as¶ Lula and Collins (I993) suggest. in the imagery of popular magazines. such as¶ National Geographic. I want to suggest here that another variant of contemporary orientalist ideology is also to be found in US. national security discourse.
Terrorism is a constructed threat to justify racism and endless war.  Webb 15

Webb and Romanuik ’15 — Stewart Tristan Webb is a professor for Department of International Politics at the University of Trento and Scott Romanuik a professor Global Security Studies at the Aberystwyth University (Scott Nicholas Romaniuk, Stewart Tristan Webb, Global Security Studies, Spring 2015, Trento “Extraordinary Measures: Drone Warfare, Securitization, and the “War on Terror” find at: http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Extraordinary20Measures20-20AG.pdf) 

The Bush administration’s so-called “Global War on Terror” (WoT) was an immediate response to al-Qaeda’s deadly assault against the United States (US) in 2001. The terrorist networks attacks were the impetus for the development of the US-led military campaign that sought to eliminate al-Qaeda and its affiliate terrorist organizations and cells in all global corridors. International in scope and with the support of the United Kingdom (UK), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and nearly half of the world’s national governments, the WoT became a security superstructure and the driving principle behind US foreign policy that continues to impact the international system to this day. Buzan (2006, 1102) noted in “Will the ‘Global War on Terrorism’ be the New Cold War?” that with the framing of the WoT as a “long war” or another long durée, we are in the middle of a securitizing move that is of considerable magnitude that, “could structure global security for some decades, in the process helping to legitimize US primacy.” The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon over a decade ago were set as the WoT’s point of departure, yet one of the most prevalent features was its indeterminate end point – the difficulty in establishing the indefinable act of US victory in addition to absence of any clearly explained objectives of the “war” (Zalman and Clarke 2009). With its indeterminable parameters of time, focus on an “enemy” more akin to a concept not confined to national borders, and distinct legal and ideological infrastructure, security practitioners and theorists have regarded the former-WoT as one of the strangest and most unique “wars” in history (Zalman and Clarke 2009). For the most part, it is comparable only to the Cold War as a macrosecuritization that drew upon and tied together multiple interrelated issues to form a cluster of security concerns. One of the critiques of the WoT was that it was not a war on a specified terrorist organization, such as that of al-Qaeda. Instead, the WoT seemingly allowed the Bush administration to declare war on any organizations that it deemed fit that utilized “terror tactics.” Insurgent organizations affiliated with al-Qaeda assume a globalized identity, but are still regionally oriented. The American government has a carte blanche to involve American security forces around the globe in counterterrorism (CT) and counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. The open-ended objective of eliminating globalized terrorism permits the WoT to go on indefinitely. The idea of the WoT and its explicit “long war” framing as a securitizing move was studied by the Copenhagen School’s Buzan (2006) directly and Buzan and Wæver (2009) indirectly during its height in 2006, when the war in Afghanistan was experiencing considerable set-backs and shortly after the Obama administration came to power and brought with it not only a continuation of Bush’s drone campaign but also a remarkable surge in drone operations with more drone strikes having taken place in 2009 than in the previous eight years of the WoT (New America Foundation 2013). The WoT proved to be a successful macrosecuritization measure by the US (Buzan 2006, 1103; Kelstrup 2004). This was made possible partially as a result of alQaeda and its violent ideology having been widely accepted as a threat to Western civilization from within and outside of the Islamic world. With over 60 states that actively supported the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), over 30 states having sent forces in Iraq alongside American troops, and nearly 40 states having committed varying degrees of their forces to the campaign in Afghanistan, the WoT was a macrosecuritization success and structuring global security framework that securitized the issue of terrorism that threatened Western liberal democracy (Western civilization more broadly). The WoT simultaneously strengthened the primacy of the securitizing actor (in this case the US). As a political instrument that was able to facilitate and justify US primacy, leadership, and to a lesser-extent unilateralism to both American and foreign public spheres as well as elites. Having securitized the threat of transnational terrorism, the WoT featured numerous extraordinary measures. Chief among these were and continue to be intervention and military campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan, long-term military occupations and presence in both of those countries, human rights violations including extreme forms of interrogation and torture (i.e., the Central Intelligence Agency’s CIA policy of Rendition, Detention, Interrogation RDI), a reduction of civil liberties including phone-tapping and excessive surveillance measures, and even the acceptability of excessive collateral damage in order to meet the vague objectives of the WoT security program (Record 2003; Council of Europe CoE 2011). One of the most, if not the most, controversial measures employed during the WoT (and still to this day with no sign of abating) is the use of drones in America’s targeted killing (TK) operations (Roth, 2012).
Their security discourse causes genocide and interventionism in the name of cleansing the world of violent “others”.  Friis 2k

Friis, UN Sector at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2k, (Karsten, Peace and Conflict Studies 7.2, “From Liminars to Others: Securitization Through Myths,” http://shss.nova.edu/pcs/journalsPDF/V7N2.pdf#page=2).  NS

The problem with societal securitization is one of representation. It is rarely clear in advance who it is that speaks for a community. There is no system of representation as in a state. Since literately anyone can stand up as representatives, there is room for entrepreneurs. It is not surprising if we experience a struggle between different representatives and also their different representations of the society. What they do share, however, is a conviction that they are best at providing (a new) order. If they can do this convincingly, they gain legitimacy. What must be done is to make the uncertain certain and make the unknown an object of knowledge. To present a discernable Other is a way of doing this. The Other is represented as an Other -- as an unified single actor with a similar unquestionable set of core values (i.e. the capital “O”). They are objectified, made into an object of knowledge, by representation of their identity and values. In other words, the representation of the Other is depoliticized in the sense that its inner qualities are treated as given and non-negotiable. In Jef Huysmans (1998:241) words, there is both a need for a mediation of chaos as well as of threat. A mediation of chaos is more basic than a mediation of threat, as it implies making chaos into a meaningful order by a convincing representation of the Self and its surroundings. It is a mediation of “ontological security”, which means “...a strategy of managing the limits of reflexivity ... by fixing social relations into a symbolic and institutional order” (Huysmans 1998:242). As he and others (like Hansen 1998:240) have pointed out, the importance of a threat construction for political identification, is often overstated. The mediation of chaos, of being the provider of order in general, is just as important. This may imply naming an Other but not necessarily as a threat. Such a dichotomization implies a necessity to get rid of all the liminars (what Huysmans calls “strangers”). This is because they “...connote a challenge to categorizing practices through the impossibility of being categorized”, and does not threaten the community, “...but the possibility of ordering itself” (Huysmans 1998:241). They are a challenge to the entrepreneur by their very existence. They confuse the dichotomy of Self and Other and thereby the entrepreneur’s mediation of chaos. As mentioned, a liminar can for instance be people of mixed ethnical ancestry but also representations of competing world-pictures. As Eide (1998:76) notes: “Over and over again we see that the “liberals” within a group undergoing a mobilisation process for group conflict are the first ones to go”. The liminars threaten the ontological order of the entrepreneur by challenging his representation of Self and Other and his mediation of chaos, which ultimately undermines the legitimacy of his policy. The liminars may be securitized by some sort of disciplination, from suppression of cultural symbols to ethnic cleansing and expatriation. This is a threat to the ontological order of the entrepreneur, stemming from inside and thus repoliticizing the inside/outside dichotomy. Therefore the liminar must disappear. It must be made into a Self, as several minority groups throughout the world have experienced, or it must be forced out of the territory. A liminar may also become an Other, as its connection to the Self is cut and their former common culture is renounced and made insignificant. In Anne Norton’s (1988:55) words, “The presence of difference in the ambiguous other leads to its classification as wholly unlike and identifies it unqualifiedly with the archetypal other, denying the resemblance to the self.” Then the liminar is no longer an ontological danger (chaos), but what Huysmans (1998:242) calls a mediation of “daily security”. This is not challenging the order or the system as such but has become a visible, clear-cut Other. In places like Bosnia, this naming and replacement of an Other, has been regarded by the securitizing actors as the solution to the ontological problem they have posed. Securitization was not considered a political move, in the sense that there were any choices. It was a necessity: Securitization was a solution based on a depoliticized ontology.10 This way the world-picture of the securitizing actor is not only a representation but also made into reality. The mythical second-order language is made into first-order language, and its “innocent” reality is forced upon the world. To the entrepreneurs and other actors involved it has become a “natural” necessity with a need to make order, even if it implies making the world match the map. Maybe that is why war against liminars are so often total; it attempts a total expatriation or a total “solution” (like the Holocaust) and not only a victory on the battlefield. If the enemy is not even considered a legitimate Other, the door may be more open to a kind of violence that is way beyond any war conventions, any jus in bello. This way, securitizing is legitimized: The entrepreneur has succeeded both in launching his world-view and in prescribing the necessary measures taken against it. This is possible by using the myths, by speaking on behalf of the natural and eternal, where truth is never questioned. 

Threats are constructed – their security discourse creates a self fulfilling prophecy that makes true understanding of structural causes behind “threats” impossible.  Mack 91

Dr. Mack, professor at Harvard Medical School, 1991, (John E., “The Psychodynamics of International Relationships” Vol 1 p. 58-59)

Attempts to explore the psychological roots of enmity are frequently met with an argument that, reduced to its essentials , goes something like this: “It’s very well to psychologize but my enemy is real. The Russians (or Germans, Arabs, Israelis, Americans) are armed, threaten us, and intend us harm. Furthermore, there are real struggles between us and them and differing national interests: competition over oil, land or scarce resources and genuine conflicts of values between our two nations (or political systems) It is essential that we be strong and maintain a balance of superiority of (military and political) power, lest the other side take advantage of our weakness.” This argument is neither wrong nor right, but instead simply limited. It fails to grapple with a critical distinction that informs the entire subject. Is the threat really generated by the enemy as it appears to be at any given moment, or is it based on one’s own contribution to the threat, derived from distortion of perception by provocative words and actions in a cycle of enmity and externalization of responsibility? In sum, the enemy IS real, but we have not learned to identify our own role in creating that enemy or in elaborating the threatening image we hold of the other group or country and its actual intentions or purposes. “we never see our enemy’s motives and we never labor to asses his will with anything approaching objectivity.”

Security is an ontological condition based on the desire to control and manage states of being – this makes endless violence inevitable and destroys value to life.  Burke 07

Burke 7 — Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales (Anthony, Theory and Event, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason,” Project MUSE)

This essay develops a theory about the causes of war -- and thus aims to generate lines of action and critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based either on a given sequence of events, threats, insecurities and political manipulation, or the play of institutional, economic or political interests (the 'military-industrial complex'). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be discounted, but they flow over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only come to form a powerful structure of common sense but the apparently solid ground of the real itself. In this light, the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-making and justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are more than merely arguments, rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly they mobilise forms of knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media, citizens, bureaucracies and military forces with organising systems of belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than that. They are truth-systems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in modernity: ontologies, statements about truth and being which claim a rarefied privilege to state what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I am thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement about the nature and ideality of being (in this case political being, that of the nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and application of strategic knowledge for the use of armed force, and the creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security and national survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or positivistic inquiry into the fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of things inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential attributes'.17 In contrast, drawing on Foucauldian theorising about truth and power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a claim to the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity, existence and action; one that is not essential or timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and conflictual socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'18 in its most sweeping and powerful form. I see such a drive for ontological certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it takes the form of the existential and rationalist ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that confines it within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation with violence: the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual structure that generates violence. Here we are witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an ontology of violence (the national security state). When we consider their relation to war, the two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and doubly in combination) tends both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in scale and duration, or in unintended effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost and with limited impact -- it permeates being. 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 their own substance'. 21 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. The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy doctrine) claims positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national existence, security, or order. However in practice, technique quickly passes into ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence which itself admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict, and the resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for an ultimate purpose (securing being) that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a technique not merely becomes an instrument of state power but ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have no essence or integrity outside their value as objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized manoeuvres in the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the "deterrent power" that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that these dual ontologies of war link being, means, events and decisions into a single, unbroken chain whose very process of construction cannot be examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S. neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in his 2002 West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached from strong ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war on terror'.24 Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that obsessive ontological commitments have led to especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25 However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to disentangle strategic from existential reason, and to open up choice in that way. However without interrogating more deeply how they form a conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will continue to be made. The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the national security state and the violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out every other possibility of revealing being', how can they be escaped?26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is there any scope for agency and resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the political -- needs to be respected and understood. However, we are far from powerless in the face of them. The need is to critique dominant images of political being and dominant ways of securing that being at the same time, and to act and choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global rule of the political. Friend and Enemy: Violent Ontologies of the Nation-State In his Politics Among Nations Hans Morgenthau stated that 'the national interest of a peace-loving nation can only be defined in terms of national security, which is the irreducible minimum that diplomacy must defend with adequate power and without compromise'. While Morgenthau defined security relatively narrowly -- as the 'integrity of the national territory and its institutions' -- in a context where security was in practice defined expansively, as synonymous with a state's broadest geopolitical and economic 'interests', what was revealing about his formulation was not merely the ontological centrality it had, but the sense of urgency and priority he accorded to it: it must be defended 'without compromise'.27 Morgenthau was a thoughtful and complex thinker, and understood well the complexities and dangers of using armed force. However his formulation reflected an influential view about the significance of the political good termed 'security'. When this is combined with the way in which security was conceived in modern political thought as an existential condition -- a sine qua non of life and sovereign political existence -- and then married to war and instrumental action, it provides a basic underpinning for either the limitless resort to strategic violence without effective constraint, or the perseverance of limited war (with its inherent tendencies to escalation) as a permanent feature of politics. While he was no militarist, Morgenthau did say elsewhere (in, of all places, a far-reaching critique of nuclear strategy) that the 'quantitative and qualitative competition for conventional weapons is a rational instrument of international politics'.28 The conceptual template for such an image of national security state can be found in the work of Thomas Hobbes, with his influential conception of the political community as a tight unity of sovereign and people in which their bodies meld with his own to form a 'Leviathan', and which must be defended from enemies within and without. His image of effective security and sovereignty was one that was intolerant of internal difference and dissent, legitimating a strong state with coercive and exceptional powers to preserve order and sameness. This was a vision not merely of political order but of existential identity, set off against a range of existential others who were sources of threat, backwardness, instability or incongruity.29 It also, in a way set out with frightening clarity by the theorist Carl Schmitt and the philosopher Georg Hegel, exchanged internal unity, identity and harmony for permanent alienation from other such communities (states). Hegel presaged Schmitt's thought with his argument that individuality and the state are single moments of 'mind in its freedom' which 'has an infinitely negative relation to itself, and hence its essential character from its own point of view is its singleness': Individuality is awareness of one's existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states, each of which is autonomous vis-a-vis the others...this negative relation of the state to itself is embodied in the world as the relation of one state to another and as if the negative were something external.30 Schmitt is important both for understanding the way in which such alienation is seen as a definitive way of imagining and limiting political communities, and for understanding how such a rigid delineation is linked to the inevitability and perpetuation of war. Schmitt argued that the existence of a state 'presupposes the political', which must be understood through 'the specific political distinction...between friend and enemy'. The enemy is 'the other, the stranger; and it sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in an extreme case conflicts with him are possible'.31 The figure of the enemy is constitutive of the state as 'the specific entity of a people'.32 Without it society is not political and a people cannot be said to exist: Only the actual participants can correctly recognise, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict...to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence.33 Schmitt links this stark ontology to war when he states that the political is only authentic 'when a fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to the whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship...in its entirety the state as an organised political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction'.34 War, in short, is an existential condition: the entire life of a human being is a struggle and every human being is symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.35 Schmitt claims that his theory is not biased towards war as a choice ('It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but devastating war and every political deed a military action...it neither favours war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism') but it is hard to accept his caveat at face value.36 When such a theory takes the form of a social discourse (which it does in a general form) such an ontology can only support, as a kind of originary ground, the basic Clausewitzian assumption that war can be a rational way of resolving political conflicts -- because the import of Schmitt's argument is that such 'political' conflicts are ultimately expressed through the possibility of war. As he says: 'to the enemy concept belongs the ever-present possibility of combat'.37 Where Schmitt meets Clausewitz, as I explain further below, the existential and rationalistic ontologies of war join into a closed circle of mutual support and justification. This closed circle of existential and strategic reason generates a number of dangers. Firstly, the emergence of conflict can generate military action almost automatically simply because the world is conceived in terms of the distinction between friend and enemy; because the very existence of the other constitutes an unacceptable threat, rather than a chain of actions, judgements and decisions. (As the Israelis insisted of Hezbollah, they 'deny our right to exist'.) This effaces agency, causality and responsibility from policy and political discourse: our actions can be conceived as independent of the conflict or quarantined from critical enquiry, as necessities that achieve an instrumental purpose but do not contribute to a new and unpredictable causal chain. Similarly the Clausewitzian idea of force -- which, by transporting a Newtonian category from the natural into the social sciences, assumes the very effect it seeks -- further encourages the resort to military violence. We ignore the complex history of a conflict, and thus the alternative paths to its resolution that such historical analysis might provide, by portraying conflict as fundamental and existential in nature; as possibly containable or exploitable, but always irresolvable. Dominant portrayals of the war on terror, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, are arguably examples of such ontologies in action. Secondly, the militaristic force of such an ontology is visible, in Schmitt, in the absolute sense of vulnerability whereby a people can judge whether their 'adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life'.38 Evoking the kind of thinking that would become controversial in the Bush doctrine, Hegel similarly argues thAT:  ...a state may regard its infinity and honour as at stake in each of its concerns, however minute, and it is all the more inclined to susceptibility to injury the more its strong individuality is impelled as a result of long domestic peace to seek and create a sphere of activity abroad. ....the state is in essence mind and therefore cannot be prepared to stop at just taking notice of an injury after it has actually occurred. On the contrary, there arises in addition as a cause of strife the idea of such an injury...39 Identity, even more than physical security or autonomy, is put at stake in such thinking and can be defended and redeemed through warfare (or, when taken to a further extreme of an absolute demonisation and dehumanisation of the other, by mass killing, 'ethnic cleansing' or genocide). However anathema to a classical realist like Morgenthau, for whom prudence was a core political virtue, these have been influential ways of defining national security and defence during the twentieth century and persists into the twenty-first. They infused Cold War strategy in the United States (with the key policy document NSC68 stating that 'the Soviet-led assault on free institutions is worldwide now, and ... a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere')40 and frames dominant Western responses to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and like groups (as Tony Blair admitted in 2006, 'We could have chosen security as the battleground. But we didn't. We chose values.')41 It has also become influential, in a particularly tragic and destructive way, in Israel, where memories of the Holocaust and (all too common) statements by Muslim and Arab leaders rejecting Israel's existence are mobilised by conservatives to justify military adventurism and a rejectionist policy towards the Palestinians. On the reverse side of such ontologies of national insecurity we find pride and hubris, the belief that martial preparedness and action are vital or healthy for the existence of a people. Clausewitz's thought is thoroughly imbued with this conviction. For example, his definition of war as an act of policy does not refer merely to the policy of cabinets, but expresses the objectives and will of peoples: When whole communities go to war -- whole peoples, and especially civilized peoples -- the reason always lies in some political situation and the occasion is always due to some political object. War, therefore, is an act of policy.42 Such a perspective prefigures Schmitt's definition of the 'political' (an earlier translation reads 'war, therefore, is a political act'), and thus creates an inherent tension between its tendency to fuel the escalation of conflict and Clausewitz's declared aim, in defining war as policy, to prevent war becoming 'a complete, untrammelled, absolute manifestation of violence'.43 Likewise his argument that war is a 'trinity' of people (the source of 'primordial violence, hatred and enmity'), the military (who manage the 'play of chance and probability') and government (which achieve war's 'subordination as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone') merges the existential and rationalistic conceptions of war into a theoretical unity.44 The idea that national identities could be built and redeemed through war derived from the 'romantic counter-revolution' in philosophy which opposed the cosmopolitanism of Kant with an emphasis on the absolute state -- as expressed by Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Bismarkian Realpolitik and politicians like Wilhelm Von Humbolt. Humbolt, a Prussian minister of Education, wrote that war 'is one of the most wholesome manifestations that plays a role in the education of the human race', and urged the formation of a national army 'to inspire the citizen with the spirit of true war'. He stated that war 'alone gives the total structure the strength and the diversity without which facility would be weakness and unity would be void'.45 In the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel made similar arguments that to for individuals to find their essence 'Government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by war'.46 The historian Azar Gat points to the similarity of Clausewitz's arguments that 'a people and a nation can hope for a strong position in the world only if national character and familiarity with war fortify each other by continual interaction' to Hegel's vision of the ethical good of war in his Philosophy of Right.47 Likewise Michael Shapiro sees Clausewitz and Hegel as alike in seeing war 'as an ontological investment in both individual and national completion...Clausewitz figures war as passionate ontological commitment rather than cool political reason...war is a major aspect of being.'48 Hegel's text argues that war is 'a work of freedom' in which 'the individual's substantive duty' merges with the 'independence and sovereignty of the state'.49 Through war, he argues, the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so the corruption in nations would be the product of a prolonged, let alone 'perpetual' peace.50 Hegel indeed argues that 'sacrifice on behalf of the individuality of the state is a substantial tie between the state and all its members and so is a universal duty...if the state as such, if its autonomy, is in jeopardy, all its citizens are duty bound to answer the summons to its defence'.51 Furthermore, this is not simply a duty, but a form of self-realisation in which the individual dissolves into the higher unity of the state: The intrinsic worth of courage as a disposition of mind is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualise this end, and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality. This form of experience thus contains the harshness of extreme contradictions: a self-sacrifice which yet is the real existence of one's freedom; the maximum self-subsistence of individuality, yet only a cog playing its part in the mechanism of an external organisation; absolute obedience, renunciation of personal opinions and reasonings, in fact complete absence of mind, coupled with the most intense and comprehensive presence of mind and decision in the moment of acting; the most hostile and so most personal action against individuals, coupled with an attitude of complete indifference or even liking towards them as individuals.52 A more frank statement of the potentially lethal consequences of patriotism -- and its simultaneously physical and conceptual annihilation of the individual human being -- is rarely to be found, one that is repeated today in countless national discourses and the strategic world-view in general. (In contrast, one of Kant's fundamental objections to war was that it involved using men 'as mere machines or instruments'.53) Yet however bizarre and contradictory Hegel's argument, it constitutes a powerful social ontology: an apparently irrefutable discourse of being. It actualises the convergence of war and the social contract in the form of the national security state. Strategic Reason and Scientific Truth By itself, such an account of the nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core element of politics. It does not explain why so many policymakers think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married to a more rationalistic form of strategic thought that claims to link violent means to political ends predictably and controllably, and which, by doing so, combines military action and national purposes into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire to decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it is helpful to focus on the modernity of this ontology -- one that is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological progress, and in its insistence on imposing images of scientific truth from the physical sciences (such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For example, the military theorist and historian Martin van Creveld has argued that one of the reasons Clausewitz was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed to have chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological outlook associated with the industrial revolution'.54 Set into this epistemological matrix, modern politics and government engages in a sweeping project of mastery and control in which all of the world's resources -- mineral, animal, physical, human -- are made part of a machinic process of which war and violence are viewed as normal features. These are the deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of the most revealing contemporary examples comes from the writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a Harvard professor and later U.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. He wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945 U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in emerging countries'. This 'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of power in foreign policy'.55 Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the United States, but in a particular epistemology (theory of knowledge). Kissinger asserted that the West is 'deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and classifying data -- the more accurately the better'. This, he claimed, has since the Renaissance set the West apart from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that have escaped the early impact of Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost entirely internal to the observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for control was beset by a corrosive anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons proliferation and constant military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and militancy of new post-colonial states, order and mastery were harder to define and impose. He worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had 'encouraged political multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is difficult to achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience' (emphasis added). He mourned that 'the greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order'.57 Here were the driving obsessions of the modern rational statesman based around a hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For the two decades after 1945, our international activities were based on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct "operational" concept of international order has proved too simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. Our deepest challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though overwhelming military strength will remain with the two superpowers.58 Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for order and certainty continually confront chaos, resistance and uncertainty: clay that won't be worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that refuse to surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons of the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words. Yet as his sinister, Orwellian exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world' demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This is a vicious, historic irony: a desire to control nature, technology, society and human beings that is continually frustrated, but never abandoned or rethought. By 1968 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the rationalist policymaker par excellence, had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not prevail in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's refusal to accept this conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to condemn hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of Cambodia to two more decades of horror and misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another Republican Administration crowned more than decade of failed and destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In this struggle with the lessons of Vietnam, revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical transformation, we are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a craving for order, control and certainty in the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that Kissinger's thinking -- and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was embedded in instrumental images of technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of power and an image of social and political order. In his essay 'The Government of Subject Races' Cromer envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as best achieved by a central authority working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine'.60 Kissinger analogously invoked the virtues of 'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that technological progress no longer brought untroubled control: the Westernising 'spread of technology and its associated rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of reality'.61 We sense the rational policymaker's frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a machine, ordered by a form of power and governmental reason which deploys machines and whose desires and processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine. Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a seat of power in the West and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it from the East -- human material, material wealth, knowledge, what have you -- is processed by the machine, then converted into more power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance.62 This desire for order in the shadow of chaos and uncertainty -- the constant war with an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern thought, and was a major impetus to the development of technological reason and its supporting theories of knowledge. As Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the 'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern strategy, foreign policy and Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the apparently stable soil of natural science, in the hope of finding immovable and unchallengeable roots there. While this process has origins in ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the Renaissance. The key figures in this process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a hunger for political and ontological certainty, a positivist epistemology and a naïve faith in the goodness of invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order, and with it a new human power over the world, through a new empirical methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the senses and the understanding. With this method, he argued, we can 'derive hope from a purer alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted'.63 In a similar move, Descartes sought to conjure certainty from uncertainty through the application of a new method that moved progressively out from a few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a divinely granted faculty of judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos.64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that scientists should privilege 'objective', quantifiable qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative analysis could science attain certain knowledge of the world'.65 Such doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth were to have powerful echoes in the 20th Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis, game theory, cybernetics and computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of matter and energy and applied the most advanced applications of mathematics and computing to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a terrible irony: as even Morgenthau understood, the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the control of the weapons themselves, into political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method not merely as way of achieving a purer access to truth and epistemological certainty, but as liberating a new power that would enable the creation of a new kind of Man. He opened the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and human power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a firmer foundation, and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative comparison between 'men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the new Indies' -- one that echoes in advance Kissinger's distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of empirical science: anyone making this comparison, he remarked, 'will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man'.68 We may be forgiven for blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man' was indeed in the process of stealing a new fire from the heavens and seizing God's power over the world for itself. Not only would the new empirical science lead to 'an improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation of the Fall of Adam: For man, by the fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, 'in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford mankind in some degree his bread...69 There is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement -- one that, in many ways, came to characterise western modernity itself, and which is easily recognisable in a generation of modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam was the Judeo-Christian West's primal creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship and ambivalence. Bacon forecast here a return to Eden, but one of man's own making. This truly was the death of God, of putting man into God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of faith could disguise the awesome epistemological violence which now subordinated creation to man. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As such, there is nothing but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most distinguished of human actions...inventions are a blessing and a benefit without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And what would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over creation'? If the new method and invention brought modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation, communications, education and comfort, it also enabled the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and two world wars; napalm, the B52, the hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and military strategy. Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching inventions -- radar, television, rocketry, computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national security and militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass -- brought in their wake upheaval and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery; navigation, slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new empirical science would be ambivalence as much as certainty; degradation as much as enlightenment; the destruction of nature as much as its utilisation. Doubts and Fears: Technology as Ontology If Bacon could not reasonably be expected to foresee many of these developments, the idea that scientific and technological progress could be destructive did occur to him. However it was an anxiety he summarily dismissed: ...let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and sciences becoming depraved to malevolent or luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good; talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches, light itself...Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion.71 By the mid-Twentieth Century, after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such fears could no longer be so easily wished away, as the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer recognised. He said in a 1947 lecture: We felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting and in the end in large measure achieving the realization of atomic weapons...In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no over-statement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.72 Adam had fallen once more, but into a world which refused to acknowledge its renewed intimacy with contingency and evil. Man's empire over creation -- his discovery of the innermost secrets of matter and energy, of the fires that fuelled the stars -- had not 'enhanced human power and dignity' as Bacon claimed, but instead brought destruction and horror. Scientific powers that had been consciously applied in the defence of life and in the hope of its betterment now threatened its total and absolute destruction. This would not prevent a legion of scientists, soldiers and national security policymakers later attempting to apply Bacon's faith in invention and Descartes' faith in mathematics to make of the Bomb a rational weapon. Oppenheimer -- who resolutely opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb -- understood what the strategists could not: that the weapons resisted control, resisted utility, that 'with the release of atomic energy quite revolutionary changes had occurred in the techniques of warfare'.73 Yet Bacon's legacy, one deeply imprinted on the strategists, was his view that truth and utility are 'perfectly identical'.74 In 1947 Oppenheimer had clung to the hope that 'knowledge is good...it seems hard to live any other way than thinking it was better to know something than not to know it; and the more you know, the better'; by 1960 he felt that 'terror attaches to new knowledge. It has an unmooring quality; it finds men unprepared to deal with it.'75 Martin Heidegger questioned this mapping of natural science onto the social world in his essays on technology -- which, as 'machine', has been so crucial to modern strategic and geopolitical thought as an image of perfect function and order and a powerful tool of intervention. He commented that, given that modern technology 'employs exact physical science...the deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science'.76 Yet as the essays and speeches of Oppenheimer attest, technology and its relation to science, society and war cannot be reduced to a noiseless series of translations of science for politics, knowledge for force, or force for good. Instead, Oppenheimer saw a process frustrated by roadblocks and ruptured by irony; in his view there was no smooth, unproblematic translation of scientific truth into social truth, and technology was not its vehicle. Rather his comments raise profound and painful ethical questions that resonate with terror and uncertainty. Yet this has not prevented technology becoming a potent object of desire, not merely as an instrument of power but as a promise and conduit of certainty itself. In the minds of too many rational soldiers, strategists and policymakers, technology brings with it the truth of its enabling science and spreads it over the world. It turns epistemological certainty into political certainty; it turns control over 'facts' into control over the earth. Heidegger's insights into this phenomena I find especially telling and disturbing -- because they underline the ontological force of the instrumental view of politics. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger's striking argument was that in the modernising West technology is not merely a tool, a 'means to an end'. Rather technology has become a governing image of the modern universe, one that has come to order, limit and define human existence as a 'calculable coherence of forces' and a 'standing reserve' of energy. Heidegger wrote: 'the threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence.'77 This process Heidegger calls 'Enframing' and through it the scientific mind demands that 'nature reports itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and remains orderable as a system of information'. Man is not a being who makes and uses machines as means, choosing and limiting their impact on the world for his ends; rather man has imagined the world as a machine and humanity everywhere becomes trapped within its logic. Man, he writes, 'comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall...where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile Man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.'78 Technological man not only becomes the name for a project of lordship and mastery over the earth, but incorporates humanity within this project as a calculable resource. In strategy, warfare and geopolitics human bodies, actions and aspirations are caught, transformed and perverted by such calculating, enframing reason: human lives are reduced to tools, obstacles, useful or obstinate matter. This tells us much about the enduring power of crude instrumental versions of strategic thought, which relate not merely to the actual use of force but to broader geopolitical strategies that see, as limited war theorists like Robert Osgood did, force as an 'instrument of policy short of war'. It was from within this strategic ontology that figures like the Nobel prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling theorised the strategic role of threats and coercive diplomacy, and spoke of strategy as 'the power to hurt'.79 In the 2006 Lebanon war we can see such thinking in the remark of a U.S. analyst, a former Ambassador to Israel and Syria, who speculated that by targeting civilians and infrastructure Israel aimed 'to create enough pain on the ground so there would be a local political reaction to Hezbollah's adventurism'.80 Similarly a retired Israeli army colonel told the Washington Post that 'Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land.'81 Conclusion: Violent Ontologies or Peaceful Choices? I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that the available critical, interpretive or performative languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform or refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought and remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war doctrines seek mainly to improve the accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82 In the case of a theorist like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat and espouses a moral community that stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires the resort to war as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I suspect that even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the is. The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of 'human beings as we know them' -- which ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates (indeed reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an ontology of being for one of becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new possibilities through agonistic relation to others, provides a less destructive and violent way of acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference.85 My argument here, whilst normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and rational instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and community -- my analysis does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation. Neither the progressive flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the conceptual and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come, against everything Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress, modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that the challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government, technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our entire space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -- militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive not merely from particular choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical' discourses of scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment images of being. Confined within such an epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers' choices become necessities, their actions become inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die. Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing cascade of discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses, however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does, admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark ontology of the friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that, even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities.88) There seems no point in following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique. However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully, policy choices could aim to bring into being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and autonomy? Do they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and environmental price? Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and consequences which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and violence? Will our thought?

The alternative is to reject the AFF’s security representations as a critical intellectual labor that makes imagination of a more peaceful future possible.  Neocleous 08

Neocleous 8 — Prof of Government @ Brunel University; London (Mark, Critique of Security, pg. 184-5)

Anyone well versed in history or with experience of university life will know about the shameful ways in which large numbers of academics have elevated venality into the cardinal academic virtue, complying with the demands of those in power and the wishes of those with money: witness the political scientists, historians, anthropologists, geographers, cartographers, sociologists, linguists and many others who reworked their disciplines according to the principles and myths, and the principle myths, of fascism.' 'Academic life under fascism', notes Christopher Hutton, 'is a dismal ... episode in an unedifying story of relations between the modem academic and the state, and between academics and power both within and outside the university. But this part of the history of fascism is merely the worst moment in the wider and equally unedifying story of relations between academics and the state more generally, merely one way m which intellectuals have kowtowed to the principles and myths, and the principle myths, concerning security and the state. Spouting the jargon of security and enthralled by the trappings of power, their intellectual labour consists of nothing less than attempts to write hand-books for the princes of the new security state. The death of countless numbers in a more 'efficient' bombing of a city, the stationing of troops halfway around the World in order to bring to an end any attempt at collective self-determination, the use of military machines against civilians, the training of police forces in counter-insurgency practices, but more than anything the key concepts and categories used to explain and justify these things - all defended, supported and even ‘improved” by security intellectuals for whom, ultimately, intelIecua1 labour boils down to little more than the question of the most efficient manner. In which to achieve the security demanded by the state and bourgeois order. In rationalizing the political and corporate logic of security, the security intellectual conceals the utter irrationality of the system as a whole. The security intellectual then is nothing less than the security ideologue, peddling the fetish of our time. The only way out of such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is perhaps to eschew the logic of security altogether - to reject it as so ideologically loaded in favour of the state that any real political thought other than the authoritarian and reactionary should be pressed to give it up, That is clearly something that can not be achieved within the limits of bourgeois thought and thus could never even begin to be imagined by the security intellectual. It is also something that the constant iteration of the refrain ‘this is an insecure world’ and reiteration of one fear, anxiety and insecurity after another will also make it hard to do, but it is something that the critique of security suggests we may have to consider if we want a political way out of the impasse of security. This impasse exists because security has now become so all-encompassing that it marginalizes all else, most notably the constructive conflicts, debates and discussions that animate political life. The constant prioritizing of a mythical security as a political end - as the political end - constitutes a rejection of politics in any meaningful sense of the term. That is, as a mode of action in which differences can be articulated, in which the conflicts and struggles that arise from such differences can be fought for and negotiated, in which people might come to believe that another world is possible - that they might transform the world and in turn be transformed. Security politics simply removes this; worse, it removes it while purportedly addressing it. In so doing it suppresses all issues of power and turns political questions into debates about the most efficient way to achieve ‘security’, despite the fact that we are never quite told - never could be told – what might count as having achieved it. Security politics is, in this sense, an anti-politics,” dominating political discourse in much the same manner as the security state tries to dominate human beings, reinforcing security fetishism and the monopolistic character of security on the political imagination. We therefore need to get beyond security politics, not add yet more ‘sectors to it in a way that simply expands the scope of the state, and legitimizes state intervention in yet more and more areas of our lives. Simon Dalby reports a personal communication with Michael Williams, co-editor of the important text Critical Security Studies, in which the latter asks: if you take away security, what do you put in the hole that’s left behind? But I’m inclined to agree with Dalby: maybe there is no hole. The mistake has been to think that there is a hole and that this hole needs to be filled with a new vision or revision of security in which it is re-mapped or civilised or gendered or humanised or expanded or whatever. All of these ultimately remain within the statist political imaginary, and consequently end up re-affirming the state as the terrain of modem politics, the grounds of security. The real task is not to fill the supposed hole with yet another vision of security, but to fight for an alternative political language which takes us beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois security and which therefore does not constantly throw us into the arms of the state. That’s the point of critical politics: to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of society we want. Thus while much of what I have said here has been of a negative order, part of the tradition of critical theory is that the negative may be as significant as the positive in setting thought on new paths. For if security really is the supreme concept of bourgeois society and the fundamental thematic of liberalism, then to keep harping on about insecurity and to keep demanding ‘more security’ (while meekly hoping that this increased security doesn’t damage our liberty) is to blind ourselves to the possibility of building real alternatives to the authoritarian tendencies in contemporary politics. To situate ourselves against security politics would allow us to circumvent the debilitating effect achieved through the constant securitizing of social and political issues, debilitating in the sense that ‘security’ helps consolidate the power of the existing forms of social domination and justifies the short-circuiting of even the most democratic forms. It would also allow us to forge another kind of politics centered on a different conception of the good. We need a new way of thinking and talking about social being and politics that moves us beyond security. This would perhaps be emancipatory in the true sense of the word. What this might mean, precisely, must be open to debate. But it certainly requires recognizing that security is an illusion that has forgotten it is an illusion; it requires recognising that security is not the same as solidarity; it requires accepting that insecurity is part of the human condition, and thus giving up the search for the certainty of security and instead learning to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and ‘insecurities’ that come with being human; it requires accepting that securitizing an issue does not mean dealing with it politically, but bracketing it out and handing it to the state; it requires us to be brave enough to return the gift.
The role of the ballot is to critically interrogate the 1AC’s security representations – that’s a pre requisite to evaluating the consequences of the plan so they do not get to weigh the case:
 

1.  Representations must precede policy discussion – they determine what is politically thinkable.  Crawford 02

Crawford 02 — Neta, PhD MA MIT, BA Brown, Prof. of poli sci at boston univ.   Argument and Change in World Politics, p. 19-21

Coherent arguments are unlikely to take place unless and until actors, at least on some level, agree on what they are arguing about. The at least temporary resolution of meta-arguments- regarding the nature of the good (the content of prescriptive norms); what is out there, the way we know the world, how we decide between competing beliefs (ontology and epistemology); and the nature of the situation at hand( the proper frame or representation)- must occur before specific arguments that could lead to decision and action may take place. Meta-arguments over epistemology and ontology, relatively rare, occur in instances where there is a fundamental clash between belief systems and not simply a debate within a belief system. Such arguments over the nature of the world and how we come to know it are particularly rare in politics though they are more frequent in religion and science. Meta-arguments over the “good” are contests over what it is good and right to do, and even how we know the good and the right. They are about the nature of the good, specifically, defining the qualities of “good” so that we know good when we see it and do it. Ethical arguments are about how to do good in a particular situation. More common are meta-arguments over representations or frames- about how we out to understand a particular situation. Sometimes actors agree on how they see a situation. More often there are different possible interpretations. Thomas Homer-Dixon and Roger karapin suggest, “Argument and debate occur when people try to gain acceptance for their interpretation of the world”. For example, “is the war defensive or aggressive?”. Defining and controlling representations and images, or the frame, affects whether one thinks there is an issue at stake and whether a particular argument applies to the case. An actor fighting a defensive war is within international law; an aggressor may legitimately be subject to sanctions. Framing and reframing involve mimesis or putting forward representations of what is going on. In mimetic meta-arguments, actors who are struggling to characterize or frame the situation accomplish their ends by drawing vivid pictures of the “reality” through exaggeration, analogy, or differentiation. Representations of a situation do not re-produce accurately so much as they creatively re-present situations in a way that makes sense. “mimesis is a metaphoric or ‘iconic argumentation of the real.’ Imitating not the effectivity of events but their logical structure and meaning.” Certain features are emphasized and others de-emphasized or completely ignored as their situation is recharacterized or reframed. Representation thus becomes a “constraint on reasoning in that it limits understanding to a specific organization of conceptual knowledge.” The dominant representation delimits which arguments will be considered legitimate, framing how actors see possibities. As Roxanne Doty argues, “the possibility of practices presupposes the ability of an agent to imagine certain courses of action. Certain background meanings, kinds of social actors and relationships, must already be in place.” If, as Donald Sylvan and Stuart Thorson argue, “politics involves the selective privileging of representations, “it may not matter whether one representation or another is true or not. Emphasizing whether frames articulate accurate or inaccurate perceptions misses the rhetorical import of representation- how frames affect what is seen or not seen, and subsequent choices. Meta-arguments over representation are thus crucial elements of political argument because an actor’s arguments about what to do will be more persuasive if their characterization or framing of the situation holds sway. But, as Rodger Payne suggests, “No frame is an omnipotent persuasive tool that can be decisively wielded by norm entrepreneurs without serious political wrangling.” Hence framing is a meta-argument.

2.  Serial policy failure – without prior questioning the AFF reproduces the same bad results.  Dillon 2k

Dillon and Reid 2K — (Michael, Professor of Politics – University of Lancaster, and Julian, Lecturer in International Relations – King’s College, “Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, January / March, 25(1))

More specifically, where there is a policy problematic there is expertise, and where there is expertise there, too, a policy problematic will emerge. Such problematics are detailed and elaborated in terms of discrete forms of knowledge as well as interlocking policy domains. Policy domains reify the problematization of life in certain ways by turning these epistemically and politically contestable orderings of life into "problems" that require the continuous attention of policy science and the continuous resolutions of policymakers. Policy "actors" develop and compete on the basis of the expertise that grows up around such problems or clusters of problems and their client populations. Here, too, we may also discover what might be called "epistemic entrepreneurs." Albeit the market for discourse is prescribed and policed in ways that Foucault indicated, bidding to formulate novel problematizations they seek to "sell" these, or otherwise have them officially adopted. In principle, there is no limit to the ways in which the management of population may be problematized. All aspects of human conduct, any encounter with life, is problematizable. Any problematization is capable of becoming a policy problem. Governmentality thereby creates a market for policy, for science and for policy science, in which problematizations go looking for policy sponsors while policy sponsors fiercely compete on behalf of their favored problematizations. Reproblematization of problems is constrained by the institutional and ideological investments surrounding accepted "problems," and by the sheer difficulty of challenging the inescapable ontological and epistemological assumptions that go into their very formation. There is nothing so fiercely contested as an epistemological or ontological assumption. And there is nothing so fiercely ridiculed as the suggestion that the real problem with problematizations exists precisely at the level of such assumptions. Such "paralysis of analysis" is precisely what policymakers seek to avoid since they are compelled constantly to respond to circumstances over which they ordinarily have in fact both more and less control than they proclaim. What they do not have is precisely the control that they want. Yet serial policy failure--the fate and the fuel of all policy--compels them into a continuous search for the new analysis that will extract them from the aporias in which they constantly find themselves enmeshed. 35 Serial policy failure is no simple shortcoming that science and policy--and policy science--will ultimately overcome. Serial policy failure is rooted in the ontological and epistemological assumptions that fashion the ways in which global governance encounters and problematizes life as a process of emergence through fitness landscapes that constantly adaptive and changing ensembles have continuously to negotiate. As a particular kind of intervention into life, global governance promotes the very changes and unintended outcomes that it then serially reproblematizes in terms of policy failure. Thus, global liberal governance is not a linear problem-solving process committed to the resolution of objective policy problems simply by bringing better information and knowledge to bear upon them. A nonlinear economy of power/knowledge, it deliberately installs socially specific and radically inequitable distributions of wealth, opportunity, and mortal danger both locally and globally through the very detailed ways in which life is variously (policy) problematized by it. 

3. Their scenarios aren’t scholarly research – they’re random factoids from various news sources with various levels of qualifications who wouldn’t agree with each other thrown together to make extinction look likely , when really the risk is minimal – their solvency is rigged since the prefigured the plan to look like a good idea.

Tournament: Loyola | Round: 2 | Opponent: Peninsula JL | Judge: Adam Bistagne
A.  Interp:  The aff must defend that all countries prohibit the production of nuclear power. To clarify, they can’t advocate that a certain country or subset of countries prohibit nuclear power. 

Counterplans that prohibit nuclear power for all countries except for one country or a subset of countries are theoretically illegitimate. 

Generic nouns such as “countries” without an article are the most common type of generalization, used in all contexts of writing and speech. Byrd
“Generic Meaning,” Georgia State University, Transcript of lecture given by Pat Byrd (Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL).  
Douglas Biber and Susan Conrad, two of the authors of the Longman Grammar, have written about what they call "seemingly synonymous words." They have shown how the adjectives big, great, and large are used differently in academic writing from in fiction. Their point is that when a language has forms that seem to be synonyms--the forms are likely to be used in different ways in different settings. One can't just be substituted for another without a change in meaning or a violation of style. A big toe isn't the same as a large toe. And I don't think I know what a great toe might be. Or, for another example, a political scientist would call Georgia a large state but not necessarily a great state. But a politician from Georgia is likely to talk about the great State of Georgia.¶ A similar process is at work with the use of these generic forms in context. We have a set of sentences that seem to have very much the same meaning. It is probable that the uses of these forms do not entirely overlap. However, we do not yet have a complete picture of how generic forms are used. But the use of computers for linguistic research is a new field, and we get more information all the time. ¶ Here are some things that we do know about these generic noun phrase types when they are used in context:¶ 1. The + singular: The computer has changed modern life. ¶ This form is considered more formal than the others--and is not as likely to be used in conversation as the plural noun: Computers have changed modern life. ¶ Master (1987) found in the sample that he analyzed that this form with the was often used to introduce at topic--and came at the beginning of a paragraph and in introductions and conclusions.¶ 2. Zero + plural: Computers are machines. Computers have changed modern life. ¶ Probably the most common form for a generalization. It can be used in all contexts--including both conversation (Basketball players make too much money) and academic writing (Organisms as diverse as humans and squid share many biological processes). ¶ Perhaps used more in the hard sciences and social sciences than in the humanities. ¶ 3. A + singular: A computer is a machine. ¶ This generic structure is used to refer to individual instances of a whole group and is used to classify whatever is being discussed.¶ The form is often used for definitions of terms. ¶ It is also often used to explain occupations. My sister is a newspaper reporter. I am a teacher. ¶ Use is limited to these "classifying" contexts. Notice that this form can't always be subtituted for the other: *Life has been changed by a computer. *A computer has changed modern life. ¶ 4. Zero + noncount: Life has been changed by the computer. ¶ The most basic meaning and use of noncount nouns is generic--they are fundamentally about a very abstract level of meaning. Thus, the most common use of noncount nouns is this use with no article for generic meaning. ¶ Zero Article and Generic Meaning¶ Most nouns without articles have generic meaning. Two types are involved.¶ 1. Zero + plural: Computers are machines. Computers have changed modern life.¶ 2. Zero + noncount: Life has been changed by the computer.

This outweighs other arguments because it links to the specific metric used to determine whether the resolution is true or false, as opposed to just the meaning of individual words or phrases. I thus establish the best holistic sense of what the aff burden is.

Determining semantics comes before other standards:
A.  It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement, and there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it.  B.  Grammar is the most objective since it doesn’t rely on arbitrary determinants of what constitutes the best type of debate – it’s the only impact you can evaluate.  C.  The AFF isn’t topical regardless of fairness or education since it doesn’t affirm the text - we wouldn’t debate rehab again just because it was a good topic.  Regardless of theory, you negate substantively because they fail their resolutional burden.  

B.  Violation:  They specify 

C.  Standards:

1.  Limits – they allow way too many affs. In addition to the 45 countries with plants or plants under-construction, there are over 45 additional countries considering nuclear power – some of which don’t even have government level consideration. WNA 16
   “Emerging Nuclear Energy Countries,” World Nuclear Association, July 2016.
   Over 45 countries are actively considering embarking upon nuclear power programs.¶ These range from sophisticated economies to developing nations.¶ The front runners are UAE, Turkey, Vietnam, Belarus, and Poland.¶ Nuclear power is planned in over 20 countries which do not currently have it, and under some level of consideration in over 20 more (in a few, consideration is not necessarily at government level). For countries listed immediately below in bold, nuclear power prospects are more fully dealt with in specific country papers:¶ In Europe: Italy, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Portugal, Norway, Poland, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Ireland, Turkey.¶ In the Middle East and North Africa: Gulf states including UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, Yemen, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan.¶ In west, central and southern Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia.¶ In Central and South America: Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay.¶ In central and southern Asia: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka¶ In SE Asia: Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Australia, New Zealand.¶ In east Asia: North Korea.

Over 90 affs (some of which are only considering a nuclear power program) explodes the NEG prep burden and predictability which kills fairness and engagement.  Procedurally, if I can’t access their education it doesn’t matter.  T version of the AFF solves their offense – they can read advantages specific to any country which ensures NEG responses

Even if there are some turns, that AFF is massively over prepared for them since it limits their prep burden.  Generics don’t solve – agent CPs or state bad Ks aren’t persuasive vs a nuanced AFF.  

2.  Core Controversy – they shift focus from key NEG args like the energy crisis, the global economy, renewable energy, and technology – we’re better off having nuanced policy debates over these issues. 

And, there’s strong, equitable, and recent literature for the debate over blanket bans for nuclear power. Herbst 07
“New Debate Over Nuclear Option,” Moira Herbst, 3/26/07, Bloomberg.
In recent years, as prices for oil have surged and concerns over global warming have grown, experts around the world have debated ways to develop alternatives to traditional energy, from using corn for ethanol to harnessing wind for electricity. And governments from India to Britain to the U.S. are considering whether to make more use of a long-standing, but controversial energy source: nuclear power.¶ In the U.S., politicians as diverse as President George W. Bush and onetime rival Al Gore have expressed interest in expanding nuclear power (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/21/07, "Gore Rings a Green Alarm"). A key reason is nuclear power's reputation for being clean, because such plants typically don't generate the carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. Just this month, Exelon (EXC) won approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a site on which they could build the first new U.S. nuclear power plant since 1979.¶ The controversy, of course, has long been over the hazards of using radioactive materials to produce energy. Twenty-eight years ago this week, on Mar. 28, 1979, an accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania sparked protests against nuclear plants in the U.S. The movement was solidified seven years later by the Chernobyl meltdown in the Soviet Union. Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club remain staunchly opposed to nuclear power.

D.  Vote on substantive engagement:  otherwise we’re speaking without debating and there’s nothing to separate us from dueling oratory.   It also creates the most valuable long-term skills since we need to learn how to defend our beliefs in any context, like politics.

Drop the debater on T:

A. Hold them accountable for their interp – a topical advocacy frames the debate - drop the arg lets them jump ship to a new layer killing NEG ground.
B. Drop the arg on T is the same thing as drop the debater since T indicts their advocacy 

Competing interps since reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.

No RVIs:
A. They incentivize debaters to go all in in theory and bait it with abusive practices, killing substantive clash on other flows. B.  They can run theory on me too if I’m unfair so 1) theory is reciprocal because we’re both able to check abuse and 2) also cures time skew because they can collapse in the 2ar to their shell.

Tournament: Yale | Round: 1 | Opponent: Success Academy SC | Judge: Zhou, Paul
Nuclear power is currently progressing – many reactors are being built with only more planned. Groskopf ‘01/26
Christopher Groskopf – reporter. “New nuclear reactors are being built a lot more like cars.” Quartz. January 26, 2016. http://qz.com/581566/new-nuclear-reactors-are-being-built-a-lot-more-like-cars/ JJN
At its birth, nuclear power was a closely guarded national enterprise, only accessible to the most prosperous nations. But over the last 50 years it has evolved into a robust international market with a global supply chain. Not only are more countries starting or considering new nuclear plants, a great many more countries are contributing to their construction. According to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 66 nuclear reactors are under construction around the world. Dozens more are in various stages of planning. The vast majority of new reactors are being built in China, which has invested in nuclear power in a way not seen since the United States and France first built out their capacity in the 1960’s and 70’s. China’s 2015 Five Year Plan calls for 40 reactors to be built by 2020 and as many as ten more are planned for every year thereafter. Fifteen other countries around the world are also building reactors. The Chinese sprint toward nuclear power is along a path toward becoming a major exporter of nuclear technology and expertise. In addition to adopting western designs, China also has its own reactor designs. Plants based on those designs are also under construction both China and in Pakistan. Other countries are considering them. At the same time China has upgraded its capacity to produce pressure vessels, turbines and other heavy manufacturing components—all of which it is expected to begin exporting. This sort of globalized manufacturing is nothing new: cars, airplanes and most other complicated machines are built in this way. However, it is new for reactors, which must be constructed on-site and rely on highly specialized parts. Those parts must be manufactured to tolerances well beyond what is required in other industries. In some cases even the equipment needed to creating them must be purpose-built. Consider, for example, the steel pressure vessel at the heart of the most common reactor designs. These vessels can only be created in the world’s largest steel presses—some of which exert more than 30,000 pounds of force. The vessels are forged out of solid steel ingots that may weigh more than a million pounds. Until recently there were only a handful of such presses in the world. Today there are at least 23, spread across 11 countries, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA). Such specialization is not limited to heavy manufacturing. Nuclear reactors require thousands of other mechanical and electronic components, many of which are purpose-made. A brochure from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) identifies hundreds of individual parts. (pdf) Even otherwise common products may need to meet extraordinarily fine tolerances. Standards require that steel elements relevant to safety are manufactured with exceptional “nuclear-grade steel.” According to another NEI list, the construction of a new reactor may require a total of: 500 to 3,000 nuclear grade valves 125 to 250 pumps 44 miles of piping 300 miles of electric wiring 90,000 electrical components According to Greg Kaser, who analyzes supply chains for the WNA, the market for nuclear components has been driven by US-based reactor companies, namely Westinghouse Electric Company. “The US can’t produce everything that’s required for a nuclear reactor anymore, so they have to go international,” Kaser told Quartz. Reactors based on Westinghouse’s AP1000 design are under construction in both the US and China. The parts for these reactors are sourced from all over the world. Many come from European companies that were originally created to supply domestic nuclear programs, but have since become important exporters. This trade in nuclear components is difficult to measure. Despite the specific qualifications of a nuclear-grade valve, it is still a valve and doesn’t necessarily show up in trade statistics as anything more. A great deal of trade is also in expertise. Engineers from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States frequently consult on (or lead) nuclear projects around the world. A 2014 WNA report (paywall) estimates that the total value of investments in new nuclear facilities through 2030 will be $1.2 trillion. But this nuclear globalization has not been greeted with enthusiasm everywhere. The 2011 nuclear contamination disaster at Fukushima, Japan, briefly stalled development of some projects and prompted Germany to begin shutting down all of its reactors. A decision by the UK to allow a Chinese company to develop new nuclear reactors in England has led to both domestic and international hand-wringing over the security implications. Others worry about about safety issues resulting from companies faking the certifications required for selling reactor components. In 2013, two South Korean nuclear reactors were shut down when it was discovered that they had installed cables with counterfeit nuclear certifications. This year the IAEA will update a procurement guide for plant operators that was published in 1996. (pdf) The new version will include a chapter specifically addressing counterfeit components. For the moment, it’s unlikely any of these concerns will be enough to slow the resurgent growth of the global nuclear industry. Though big nuclear companies often speak of localizing the supply chain—and keeping those jobs in their home country—international competition can drive down the price of building a reactor. In fact, the supply chain is likely to become even more important to the construction process in the future. New reactors being designed today are both smaller and more modular, and plans call for large sections of them to be assembled in factories and shipped to the site. If it sounds a lot like the assembly line at a automobile plant, that’s because it is. But of course, one small oversight or production flaw could make a much greater difference.

Newest studies prove – warming is real, anthropogenic, and almost certainly caused by emissions from fossil fuels. Phys ‘8/24
Phys.org. “Humans have caused climate change for 180 years: study.” Phys.org. August 24, 2016. Originally provided by Australia National University from Nature Journal. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-humans-climate-years.html JJN
An international research project has found human activity has been causing global warming for almost two centuries, proving human-induced climate change is not just a 20th century phenomenon. Lead researcher Associate Professor Nerilie Abram from The Australian National University (ANU) said the study found warming began during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and is first detectable in the Arctic and tropical oceans around the 1830s, much earlier than scientists had expected. "It was an extraordinary finding," said Associate Professor Abram, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. "It was one of those moments where science really surprised us. But the results were clear. The climate warming we are witnessing today started about 180 years ago." The new findings have important implications for assessing the extent that humans have caused the climate to move away from its pre-industrial state, and will help scientists understand the future impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. "In the tropical oceans and the Arctic in particular, 180 years of warming has already caused the average climate to emerge above the range of variability that was normal in the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution," Associate Professor Abram said. The research, published in Nature, involved 25 scientists from across Australia, the United States, Europe and Asia, working together as part of the international Past Global Changes 2000 year (PAGES 2K) Consortium. Associate Professor Abram said anthropogenic climate change was generally talked about as a 20th century phenomenon because direct measurements of climate are rare before the 1900s. However, the team studied detailed reconstructions of climate spanning the past 500 years to identify when the current sustained warming trend really began. Scientists examined natural records of climate variations across the world's oceans and continents. These included climate histories preserved in corals, cave decorations, tree rings and ice cores. The research team also analysed thousands of years of climate model simulations, including experiments used for the latest report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to determine what caused the early warming. The data and simulations pinpointed the early onset of warming to around the 1830s, and found the early warming was attributed to rising greenhouse gas levels. Co-researcher Dr Helen McGregor, from the University of Wollongong's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said humans only caused small increases in the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere during the 1800s. "But the early onset of warming detected in this study indicates the Earth's climate did respond in a rapid and measureable way to even the small increase in carbon emissions during the start of the Industrial Age," Dr McGregor said. The researchers also studied major volcanic eruptions in the early 1800s and found they were only a minor factor in the early onset of climate warming. Associate Professor Abram said the earliest signs of greenhouse-induced warming developed during the 1830s in the Arctic and in tropical oceans, followed soon after by Europe, Asia and North America. However, climate warming appears to have been delayed in the Antarctic, possibly due to the way ocean circulation is pushing warming waters to the North and away from the frozen continent.

Prohibiting nuclear power means warming can’t be solved – impracticality of renewables combined with a switch to coal only makes warming worse. Harvey ‘12
Fiona Harvey - award-winning environment journalist for the Guardian, used to work for financial times. “Nuclear power is only solution to climate change, says Jeffrey Sachs.” The Guardian. May 3, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/03/nuclear-power-solution-climate-change JJN *bracketing in original
Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it provided a low-carbon source of power, while renewable energy was not making up enough of the world's energy mix and new technologies such as carbon capture and storage were not progressing fast enough. "We won't meet the carbon targets if nuclear is taken off the table," he said. He said coal was likely to continue to be cheaper than renewables and other low-carbon forms of energy, unless the effects of the climate were taken into account. "Fossil fuel prices will remain low enough to wreck low-carbon energy unless you have incentives and carbon pricing," he told the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Manila. A group of four prominent UK environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and former heads of Friends of the Earth UK Tony Juniper and Charles Secrett, have been campaigning against nuclear power in recent weeks, arguing that it is unnecessary, dangerous and too expensive. Porritt told the Guardian: "It nuclear power cannot possibly deliver – primarily for economic reasons. Nuclear reactors are massively expensive. They take a long time to build. And even when they're up and running, they're nothing like as reliable as the industry would have us believe." But Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and professor of sustainable development at Columbia University in the US, said the world had no choice because the threat of climate change had grown so grave. He said greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise despite the financial crisis and deep recession in the developed world, were "nowhere near" falling to the level that would be needed to avert dangerous climate change. He said: "Emissions per unit of energy need to fall by a factor of six. That means electrifying everything that can be electrified and then making electricity largely carbon-free. It requires renewable energy, nuclear and carbon capture and storage – these are all very big challenges. We need to understand the scale of the challenge." Sachs warned that "nice projects" around the world involving renewable power or energy efficiency would not be enough to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming – a wholesale change and overhaul of the world's energy systems and economy would be needed if the world is to hold carbon emissions to 450 parts per million of the atmosphere – a level that in itself may be inadequate. "We are nowhere close to that – as wishful thinking and corporate lobbies are much more powerful than the arithmetic of climate scientists," he said.
Climate change disproportionately affects people of color. Pellow 12
David Naguib Pellow 12, Ph.D. Professor, Don Martindale Endowed Chair – University of Minnesota, “Climate Disruption in the Global South and in African American Communities: Key Issues, Frameworks, and Possibilities for Climate Justice,” February 2012, http://www.jointcenter.org/sites/default/files/upload/research/files/White_Paper_Climate_Disruption_final.pdf
It is now known unequivocally that significant warming of the  atmosphere is occurring, coinciding with increasing levels of  atmospheric CO2. Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House  Office of Science and Technology Policy, prefers the term “global climate disruption” to “climate change” because it more fully captures the harm being done to the planet (Holdren 2007). The term “climate change” infers a naturally occurring process rather than a disruption created by specific human activity. Moreover, the terms “global warming” and “climate change” might be construed as occurring in a uniform, even, gradual, and benign fashion, none of which is true. One solid indicator of Holdren’s point is the fact that climate disruptions affect communities, nations, and regions of the globe in vastly different ways. While contributing the least of anyone to the causes of climate disruption, people of color, women, indigenous communities, and global South nations often bear the brunt of climate disruption in terms of ecological, economic, and health burdens—thereby giving rise to the concept of climate injustice (Roberts and Parks 2007). These communities are among the first to experience the effects of climate disruption, which can include “natural” disasters, rising levels of respiratory illness and infectious disease, heat-related morbidity and mortality, and large increases in energy costs. They also bear the burdens created by ill-conceived policies designed to prevent climate disruption. The effects of climate injustice have been evident for years. Flooding from severe storms, rising sea levels and melting glaciers affect millions in Asia and Latin America, while sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing sustained droughts. Consider that nearly 75 percent the world’s annual CO2 emissions come from the global North, where only 15 percent of the global population resides. If historic responsibility for climate change is taken into account, global North nations have consumed more than three times their share of the atmosphere (in terms of the amount of emissions that we can safely put into the atmosphere) while the poorest 10 percent of the world’s population has contributed less than 1 percent of carbon emissions. Thus the struggle for racial, gender, and economic justice is inseparable from any effort to combat climate disruption. Climate justice is a vision aimed at dissolving and alleviating the unequal burdens created by climate change. The topic of climate justice is a major point of tension in both U.S. and international policy efforts to address climate disruption because it would require wealthy nations that have contributed the most to the problem to take on greater responsibilities for solutions. For many observers, the path is clear: for humanity’s survival, for justice, and for sustainability, they maintain that we must reduce our emissions  and consumption here at home in the global North.