Tournament: HW | Round: 1 | Opponent: LOOK | Judge: LOOK
Framework
Answering the question of how political institutions or policies should be formed is fundamentally a question of justification – government must be responsive to the interests of citizens and must be justifiable to them.
MARTIN RHONHEIMER Prof Of Philosophy at The Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. “THE POLITICAL ETHOS OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY AND THE PLACE OF NATURAL LAW IN PUBLIC REASON: RAWLS’S “POLITICAL LIBERALISM” REVISITED” The American Journal of Jurisprudence vol. 50 (2005), pp.  
1-70
It is a fundamental feature of political philosophy to be part of practical philosophy. Political philosophy belongs to ethics, which is practical, for it both reflects on practical  knowledge and aims at action. Therefore, it is not only normative, but must consider the concrete conditions of realization. The rationale of political institutions and action must be understood as embedded in concrete cultural and, therefore, historical contexts and as meeting with problems that only in these contexts are understandable. A normative political philosophy which would abstract from the conditions of  realizability would be  trying to establish norms for realizing the “idea of the good” or of “the just” (as Plato, in  fact, tried to do in his Republic). Such a purely metaphysical view, however, is doomed to failure. As a theory of political praxis, political philosophy must include in its reflection the concrete historical context, historical experiences and the corresponding knowledge of the proper logic of the political. 14 Briefly: political philosophy is not metaphysics, which contemplates the necessary order of being, but practical philosophy, which  deals with partly contingent matters and aims at action.  Moreover, unlike moral norms in general—natural law included,—which rule the  actions of a person—“my acting” and pursuing the good—, the logic of the political is  characterized by acts like framing institutions and establishing legal rules by which not only personal actions but the actions of a multitude of persons are regulated by the coercive force of state power, and by which a part of citizens exercises power over others.  Political actions are, thus, both actions of the whole of the body politic and referring to  the whole of the community of citizens. 15 Unless we wish to espouse a platonic view according to which some persons are by  nature rulers while others are by nature subjects, we will stick to the Aristotelian differentiation between the “domestic” and the “political” kind of rule 16 : unlike domestic rule,  which is over people with a common interest and harmoniously striving after the same good despotism and, therefore, according to Aristotle is essentially “despotic,” political rule is exercised over free persons who represent a plurality of interests and pursue, in the common context of the polis, different goods. The exercise of such political rule, therefore, needs justification and is continuously in search of consent among those who are  ruled, but who potentially at the same time are also the rulers.

Equality is an axiom of political theory. Any political arrangement that makes some worse-off would not be acceptable to them, and would be rejected. In order to justify a political arrangement, it is necessary to combat hegemonic power relations because they make any political order unacceptable to those the power relation harms. This creates a dilemma since people have different views, meaning that the government cannot rely on moral truths to rule.
John Rawls 97 Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. 765-807.
The idea of public reason, as I understand  it,'  belongs to  a conception of  a  well  ordered  constitutional  democratic society. The form and content of this reason-the way it is understood by citizens and how it interprets their political relationship-is  part of the idea of democracy itself. This is because a basic feature of democracy is the fact of reasonable pluralism-the fact  that a plurality of conflicting reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious, philosophical, and moral, is the normal result of its  culture of free institutions.3 Citizens realize that they cannot reach agreement or even approach mutual understanding on the basis of their irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines. In view of this, they need to consider what kinds of reasons they may reasonably give one  another when  fundamental political questions  are  at stake. I propose that in public reason comprehensive doctrines of truth or right be replaced by an idea of the politically reasonable addressed to citizens as citizens.4 Central to the idea of public reason is that  it  neither  criticizes nor attacks any comprehensive doctrine, religious or nonreligious, except insofar as that  doctrine is incompatible with the essentials  of public reason and a democratic polity. The basic requirement is that a reasonable doctrine accepts a constitutional democratic regime and its companion idea of legitimate law. While democratic societies  will  differ in  the  specific doctrines that are influential and active within them-as they differ in the western  democracies of Europe and the  United  States,  Israel, and India-finding  a suitable idea of public reason is  a concern that faces them all.

However, agonistic democracy can form the basis of a mutually acceptable political arrangement. Allowing equal, vibrant participation in democracy makes exclusions visible and contestable – even if exclusions are inevitable, this model is the best way to make them as just as possible
Wingenbach 11 – Ed, Notre Dame Government and international studies, PhD (“Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy,” pg 190-198)
Third, because Knops ignores the situated source of antagonism and the persistence of hegemony in the construction of meaning he misconceives the problem of subordination and oppression. The objective of agonistic democracy is not to eliminate all relations of domination and oppression; this sort of utopian aspiration leads precisely to the rationalist exclusions they are at pains to expose. Rather, the goal is to craft conditions under which these relations can be made visible, and thus contested. The common values that make agonism possible, and their dominant institutional interpretations, inevitably and explicitly favor some identities, interests, or other articulations of subjectivity over others. In fact, these values and their dominant interpretations act to shape subjectivity so that they are seen not as constructions but simply "the way things are." Because Knops assumes the project of agonism is to eliminate these hegemonic relations of domination, he also assumes that Mouffe needs to establish an unbiased and objective set of criteria by which to identify and ameliorate these injustices. Hence his claim that her theory ultimately must rely on rationalist arguments. But agonism does not share this aspiration. Instead pluralist agonism accepts that the inevitability of injustice is the price of democratic plurality, and endeavors to identify practices that render these injustices amenable to contestation. Agonism hopes to set interpretation against interpretation, identity against identity, hegemonic claim against hegemonic claim, so that in the perpetual conflict between citizens the burden of domination shifts and moves. Where Knops sees unbiased consensus on rational principles eliminating domination, Mouffe sees an elaboration of hegemonic power so thorough as to make the injustices it produces not merely invisible but unthinkable. When Knops concludes that Mouffe's agonism should be seen as an adjunct to deliberation, one that calls attention to "the erroneous projection of one party's understandings onto another, constraining their meanings - it is fraught with the possibility of hegemony" (2007, 125), he is mistakenly subsuming agonism into deliberation by eliding the ontological distinctions between the two accounts. Deliberative democracy has faith that careful scrutiny of arguments, rational evaluation of principles, and deliberation oriented toward understanding will produce an unforced consensus shorn of power, domination, and manipulation. Its reconstruction of democratic principles is one that aspires to transcend the ambiguity of the everyday in order to resolve injustice. It takes this possibility as a real one, because its ontology is fundamentaily committed to the universality of human nature. Agonistic democrats refuse any such commitments, asserting instead that the premises of social life are themselves products of humanity, and that the ontology within which our politics emerges is itself a product of political assertions. No standard can be found or created that can extract us from this process of meaning creation, and thus all political standards should be understood as both historically constraining (we cannot start anew) and subject to collective reconstruction (we can act upon our situation by rendering it visible). Nonetheless, Knops's confusion is understandable-how is one to know what this process of contestation and reinterpretation looks like, absent some institutional suggestions consistent with the particularity of the history that makes agonism attractive? Political liberalism, modified as I suggested in the last chapter, helps clarify this question. Pluralist agonism requires some shared commitments without which the unavoidably contentious process of disputing hegemonic interpretations will descend into antagonism. Precisely because the clashes of politics are not oriented toward consensus, and precisely because democratic engagement always involves challenges with the potential to become explicitly violent (as all challenges are, at some level, hegemonic contestations), some institutional norms are needed to confine or limit the range of these battles. Agonism proposes that our situated context may provide governing norms that permit the procedures of contestation to occur, without those same norms becoming idealized or acquiring pseudo¬transcendent status. We begin from "our" norms, which contain within them some commitment to fundamental values (liberty/equality), but make the contest over the meaning and implementation of these norms a central aspect of institutional and political debate. Schmittian violence emerges when contestants cannot perceive a commonality sufficient to justify limitations of the tactics employed. But the commonality that permits these shared limits need not hold extra-political status. Put differently, the concern of critics of agonism seems to be that the barrier to violence can only be effective if it is itself uncontaminated by the conflicts it is meant to mediate, or can be sufficiently abstracted from these conflicts as to play a semi-transcendental role. If the boundaries of engagement are recognized as being themselves in play, then they will lack sufficient purchase to restrain politics. Thus the proposed dichotomy: either agonism will collapse into warfare, or agonism presupposes a hidden extra-political claim. Emphasizing the post-foundational elements from which agonism derives helps illustrate why this dichotomy can be plausibly refused. This is why the tum to Rawls (and, to a lesser extent, Habermas) is useful for agonistic democracy. Political liberalism details the way institutional and cultural structures shape and constrain political engagement without demanding an external anchor. Political liberalism is a situated reconstruction of the emergence of the values of liberal democracy and the operation of those values upon citizens. It is only the Rawlsian insistence upon a well-ordered society that makes political liberalism appear as a moralized account of democratic politics rather than a situated and contingent one. As I show in the previous chapter, the effectiveness of the situated norms of liberalism does not, ultimately, depend upon the semi-transcendental status Rawls evokes. That these values are ours historically, and that they shape our identities and aspirations contingently, provides sufficient status to guide political action. Highlighting this contingency and inviting citizen engagement in conflicts over the interpretation and application of these values need not weaken their pragmatic significance. It is only dangerous to expose the contingency of our deeply shared ontopolitical premises if one of those premises suggests that legitimacy must be derived from criteria not subject to human agency. It is on this point that agonism captures better than many theories the central insights of democratic theory. To the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective autonomy from imposed authority, to the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective agency over the terms of social cooperation, and to the extent democracy is identified with the rights of individuals and collectives to challenge these authorities and those terms, an agonistic account of democracy as situated historically while engaged in ongoing reconstruction of the contingent but deeply shared values of liberal democracy represents a powerful vision. It shares with other post-metaphysical theorists, like Habermas and Rawls, an emphasis on the reconstructive aspects of democratic theory, designed to adduce from extant practices and necessary assumptions the best possible description of legitimate democratic politics. But it pushes these reconstructive projects further by demanding that the practices and institutions of democracy itself be engaged in this reconstruction rather than merely governed by it. Agonistic democracy emerged reactively, offered as an alternative vision of liberalism, deliberation, and democratic engagement. The emphasis of this work on critique, practices of identity, contestation of power, exposure of hegemonic interpretations, and so on depict a vision of democracy that is primarily procedural: democracy reflects practices that take place within the existing realm of the political. Agonism thus explicitly situates itself within existing institutional forms, not outside them. Unlike radical democracy, agonistic thinkers propose not a revolution but a reformation, urging that extant democratic resources be strengthened, democratic values reinterpreted, and hegemonic structures exposed and contested.  To the extent agonism is transformative, it is transformative from within the horizon of politics from which it emerges. Agonism does not evoke sudden and rapid change in the character of social order. Over time agonism might lead, directly and indirectly, to dramatic reforms to, and even revolutionary redesign of, democratic institutions, but that change is inevitably slow. This makes agonism appear conservative when compared to radical democracy, as radical democracy takes as its goal the near term transformation and elimination of social and economic injustice. Agonism aspires to create a democratic social order that will lead to the amelioration or destruction of injustice, but recognizes that such injustices are embedded in the context of politics within which such work occurs and against which organization, mobilization, and resistance must take place. Agonism does not represent transformation, but it creates democratic conditions out of which real transformation might arise. To claim that liberalism in its Rawlsian variant represents the best path for agonism is not a capitulation to the narratives of liberalism and its inevitable injustices, nor an endorsement of chastened conservatism about social change. It is to recognize that transformative politics begins within existing politics, and that an effective strategy must identify the structures most amenable to that project. Agonism as a political practice demands both the common ontopolitical framework within which conflict can take place and an institutional framework open to this practice. Political liberalism offers both, without also requiring agonism to shed its skepticism about foundational or teleological claims. Agonism presupposes active engagement with the situated character of social life in order to grasp our own circumstances without demanding to be liberated from them. Political liberalism takes these circumstances as the frame from which a governing interpretation of justice emerges; as long as this conception remains open to further reinterpretation (as it can be once severed from the insistence on stability) political liberalism supports agonistic politics. The objections of Mouffe and others can be attributed to Rawls's insistence that the governing interpretation of the political embody an overlapping consensus with deep roots in comprehensive moral doctrines, and which can be invoked to resolve contentious questions of democratic life. But as I demonstrated in the previous chapter, the political conception can also be understood as a relatively contingent modus vivendi, subject itself to debate when invoked to resolve conflict. For Rawls an overlapping consensus is necessary to forestall the sort of deeper public debate and passionate engagement that agonistic democrats hope to foster. Understanding the political conception as the negotiated but revisable shared interpretation of liberal democratic principles permits both the channeling of passionate conflict into agonistic engagement and the possibility that the governing interpretation can be itself an object of engagement. In fact, Mouffe makes the same distinction as Rawls between a political conception ("commitment to principles") and substantive moral doctrines, as does Connolly when he describes the practices of contemporary democratic citizenship: They embrace their faith at one level, and recoil back upon it at another to come to terms with the obdurate fact that it does not convince millions of others. Sometimes their own commitment is punctuated with a residual element of uncertainty. That seems noble to me, but perhaps not necessary to deep pluralism. What is needed is pursuit of a bicameral orientation to citizenship and being, in which you embrace your creed as you bring it into the public realm; and then recoil back without deep resentment on its contestability to open up negotiating space with others (Schoolman 2008: 316). The agonistic practice so envisioned is strikingly similar to that proposed by Rawls: citizens hold their own moral doctrines as true and complete, while recognizing that the entrance of this doctrine into the public realm will expose your absolute in its partiality. The bicameralism Connolly describes mirrors the distinction between comprehensive doctrines and the political conception, with the difference that Connolly does not think that faith is incompatible with democratic negotiation. Rawls excludes the metaphysical because it undermines the overlapping consensus, which must be minimal in order to be consensual. An agonistic political liberalism maintains this model without the demand that the passions, ideals, and beliefs of citizens be confined to the private realm. Since the political conception is recognizably partial, understood as hegemonic, and an explicit subject of political engagement, the line between metaphysical and political need not be policed. What the political conception does, once generated, is provide a guiding framework within which democratic conflicts can be engaged openly, where a real possible result of that engagement is a revision of the negotiated interpretation that is the condition of agonistic encounters. Mouffe asserts that "a difficult balance has to be struck between, on the one hand, democracy understood as a set of procedures required to cope with plurality, and, on the other, democracy as the adherence to values which inform a particular mode of coexistence" (1993: 131 ). Political liberalism shorn of the imperative to consensus capture this balance by offering the framework through which democratic societies can manage plurality by articulating a shared understanding of liberal values, while also permitting this articulation to be contested and revised. Agonism thus forestalls the idea that any democratic institution can claim substantive legitimacy for its use of power-any act of government is an act of a particular identity or interest acting upon (not implementing) the collective. There are collectively binding decisions but no collective decisions; the institutional conditions of democratic agonism are much like those described by Dahl's vision of polyarchy, where minorities rule and liberty is preserved by ensuring that no minority comes to dominate in the name of a fictionalized popular identity. Similarly, Connolly envisages a society "made up of intersecting and independent minorities of numerous types and sorts who occupy the same territorial space and who negotiate an ethos of engagement between themselves" (2000: 92). This is the structural argument for an agonistic liberalism-a competitive environment of plural identities and interests will tend to undercut any and all claims to overcome contingency, thus cultivating practices that make visible and contest hegemonic interpretations. If this can happen within an agonistic cultural order, within a shared symbolic framework (liberty/equality), exercised by citizens informed by an ethos of reciprocity and presumptive gratitude (which will, of course, require some material conditions to be maintained), it is likely to maximize inclusion and minimize domination. Under such circumstances the range of emancipatory visions and contested democratic norms is likely to be vast. Since the shared interpretation of common principles that permits agonistic participation is itself subject to the same regular challenge and renegotiation, the mechanism for significant democratic change resides at the heart of agonistic liberalism. And to the extent the experience of living in a society in which peaceful but passionate negotiation and renegotiation of the inherited values that bind people collectively is likely to shape subjectivity, as post-foundational thinkers and Rawlsian liberals all suggest, the possibilities for dramatic transformation to the ontopolitical grounds of that social order increase as citizens come to see both conflict and reciprocity as living norms of political life. There is room in this modus vivendi for radical visions of the future, and room for these visions to transform the temporary hegemony of the political conception of justice. While no political order, liberal or otherwise, can ever attain full transparency, consensus, or inclusion, an institutional commitment to negotiate and renegotiate terms of agreement that are themselves both the condition of further conflict and themselves subjects of this same conflict offers a vision of political life sufficiently capacious to render transformative change conceivable. I began thisbook with a discussion ofpost-foundationalism and its implications for politics. Agonistic democracy, I claimed, offers the account of democratic politics best suited to post-foundational circumstances in which claims to have achieved a stable consensus to guide political action, whether rooted in truth, nature, identity, morality, rationality, or any other extra-contextual criteria, cannot be sustained. I also argued that the justification for democracy, agonistic or otherwise, does not derive from the recognition of post-foundational conditions; like any other hegemonic ideal democracy is a situated product of the history within which its dominant position emerged. That is not to say that convergence on some sort of democratic norms is unlikely, as absent massive coercion or uncommon homogeneity the radical pluralism post-foundationalism tends to provoke is also likely to undermine claims to authority based upon claims of truth. In the case of western societies with liberal democratic histories, however, the convergence of post-foundational pluralism and an historical framework that privileges the values of equality and liberty produces circumstances in which democratic institutions are the unavoidable default for politics. A commitment to liberalism also shapes these historical conditions, so attempts to articulate an appropriate vision of democratic politics that expresses these situated values and embraces a post-foundational account of meaning must also grapple with the powerful role liberalism plays in the interpretation of democratic values in western democracies. These constraints are neither optional nor binding. We find ourselves always already inhabiting a history of meaning, practice, and identity, and these elements of our being are not infinitely malleable. They may be transformed, reinterpreted, and eventually even overcome, but such work begins with recognition of our limitations. Marx, despite his otherwise universalistic commitments, captured these circumstances as clearly anything in Heidegger's work, writing in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that "men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted." The inherited circumstances of western democratic theory include the powerful presence of liberalism, and a viable theory aspiring to deepen democratic possibilities must grapple with this fact. This commitment to dealing with the world as we find it helps explain the recurrent frustration with agonism expressed by more radical critics. Because pluralist agonists focus on the situated possibilities inherent to the hegemonic interpretations and norms already in place and then try to expand these possibilities, they appear to those committed to the complete transformation of contemporary liberalism to be defending the status quo. Tally makes this argument in his review ofMouffe: The most damning critique of On the Political may be that it winds up reinforcing the status quo ... Indeed, Mouffe's agonistic politics does not seem very radical at all. Whenever Mouffe addresses practical matters, she uses the language of adversarial or agonistic politics, but evokes tame and familiar scenes. Mouffe argues for a pluralism that recognizes real differences, but that also ensures that everyone plays by the same rules. "Partisans" who really want to change the political landscape may not be allowed to participate (2007: 7-8). Vazquez-Arroyo (2004) develops a similar critique of Connolly. There are two problems with this critique, and addressing each will help clarify why an agonistic pluralism is best cultivated within liberal institutional bounds. First, the critique underestimates the democratic capacities of liberalism, associating all liberal accounts with a broader indictment of capitalist rationality. Second, the critique fails to account for the situated character of politics, asserting a transformative radicalism that agonism rejects. Often the objection to liberalism offered by radical theorists represents an objection to an idea of liberalism imbricated with existing structures of inequality, a rationalistic account of individual interests, and the problems of global capitalism. Liberalism thus represents a constellation of problems against which democratic advocates position themselves. Dietz identifies this view of liberalism as an abstracted enemy of democracy: "The polemic that afflicts so many current studies of democracy and citizenship is most evident at the level of discourse on liberal ism, where this complex and multifaceted historical phenomenon has become little more than an ideational enemy, or a suspect to be processed and called forth for 'rebuke'" (1998: 116). But liberalism is as complex and pluralistic as any other major account of contemporary politics, and both its theoretical and historical specificity should not be elided. Some aspects of liberal politics contribute to visions of subjectivity that will generate resentment and oppression, but elements within these same theories might also be used to mitigate such pressures. Some versions of liberalism identify closely with capitalism and neo-liberal aspirations, but others endeavor to identify an economic order consistent with liberal values without offering any such privilege to markets or competition. Some versions of liberalism presuppose strong forms of rationality while others are attentive to the variety of ways different identities organize and prioritize their values and actions. There is no single liberalism, and-democratic theory would do well to be attentive to the range of possibilities available within this plurality. Instead, liberalism "in much contemporary democratic theory, particularly post-structural and post¬foundational work, is taken to embody the flaws of modernity generally and thus becomes the flaw that democratic theorizing is intended to overcome" (Dietz 1998: 117). But a theory of democracy that takes historicity seriously cannot reduce liberalism to polemic and the dominant mode of democratic institution to that which is to be overcome. That liberal democracy is in practice and theory flawed is beyond dispute, but if it also lacks any potential to nurture a more democratic and less flawed practice then there is little hope for post-foundational democratic theory. If only a rupture and overcoming can achieve democratic outcomes and democracy will ever be over the horizon of history, a democratic theory of institutions and engagement rather than resistance and aspiration is impossible. I hope to have shown by looking carefully at Rawlsian liberalism as a singular and situated example of a particular and historically viable form of liberalism that the more radical aspirations of democratic theory need not begin and end with the rejection of the dominant interpretation of democracy within and against which political action must engage. Agonistic theory can offer an account of democracy mindful of both the danger and the potential of the liberal hegemony. Agonism does not envision contestation extending "all the way" down, as it were. The ontopolitical foundations of agonistic democracy are contingent and revisable, but they cannot be the constant object of debate. If, as I have tried to argue, a post-foundational politics demands the recognition both of the contingency of foundations and the situated limits to the range of possible meanings found in any particular grounds of the political, then an agonistic politics must also be a bounded politics. Agonism works within historicity in order to expand the constellation of conceivable conflicts, without rejecting the tragic reality that limits to inclusion are endemic to politics. Hegemony can be productive or destructive, democratic or authoritarian, contested or univocal, but hegemony cannot be universal. Post-foundational politics embraces the inevitability of boundaries and limits, and then works to make those boundaries as wide as possible without turning debates into ontological conflicts, conflicts that cannot but be violent as they take place outside the grounds of shared ontopolitical premises. Calling perspectives that accept the contingent liberal principles of democratic politics legitimate may seem dangerous, as it implies that perspectives beyond this consensus are illicit and excluded. And it does so imply. But the language of legitimacy is unavoidable for post-foundational politics. "Contrary to the dialogic approach, the democratic debate is conceived as a real confrontation. Adversaries do fight - even fiercely - but according to a shared set of rules, and their positions, despite being ultimately irreconcilable, are accepted as legitimate perspectives" (Mouffe 2005a: 52). The condition of peaceful democratic agonism is a willingness to accept some set of principles, interpretations, or procedures as legitimate, even if that legitimacy is understood as subject to legitimate conflict itself. Pluralist agonism endeavors not to utterly transform the political in order to bring about a new democratic dawn. Instead, it aspires to deepen, extend, and intensify the democratic capacity for contestation and questioning already latent within the situated norms and hegemonic articulations of the political. At some point the confrontation between principles is so vast that the contest must be antagonistic, and enemies simply cannot recognize one another as legitimate. Political liberalism offers a set of principles and practices compatible with the type of "conflictual consensus" agonistic democrats advocate, while also highlighting the historically contingent yet also ontologically powerful status of these same principles. Post-foundationalism dictates democratic theorizing both pay close attention to the ontopolitical grounds of any proposed politics and propose ways to preserve the pluralism that inevitably follows from the recognition of contingency. A theory of agonistic democracy embedded within a modified version of political liberalism can support institutions capable of addressing both imperatives, and the institutions it supports are not remarkably different from those envisioned by liberal theory. The resources necessary for agonistic transformation are present in the political institutions, political culture, and political theory of contemporary democracy. The modified political liberalism proposed in this book is probably not the only institutional possibility for agonistic democracy, but its plausibility demonstrates that institutionalization is neither incompatible with agonistic principles nor impossible to develop within existing social norms. By situating liberalism explicitly within a post-foundational ontology, liberalism is transformed in significant ways and its practices opened up to greater contestation, generosity, and active re-constitution.
The standard is preserving avenues for agonistic democratic participation.

1. Democratic participation is instrumentally necessary to ensure citizens’ interests are met – the forum itself is the source of public value because the public ought to decide what counts as valuable
   Festenstein 05 , Matthew. “Dewey’s Political Philosophy.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Feb 9, 2005.
   At the minimum, for Dewey, democracy involves the expression of interests on the part of voters; the vote helps to protect individuals from putative experts about where the interests of people lie. A class of experts will inevitably slide into a class whose interests diverge from those of the rest and becomes a committee of oligarchs. So ‘the strongest point to be made in behalf of even such rudimentary political forms as democracy has attained, popular voting, majority rule and so on, is that to some extent they involve a consultation and discussion which concerns social needs and troubles’ (The Public and Its Problems, LW2, p. 364). Dewey stresses the importance of discussion, consultation, persuasion and debate in democratic decision-making. These processes extend and deepen the public awareness of the problems under discussion, and help to inform the ‘administrative specialist’ of social needs. This way of viewing the desirability of democracy is instrumental and minimal; instrumental, in that the desirability of democracy derives from its protecting the interests of each individual against the depredations of an elite class, and minimal, in that the rationale for popular participation is limited to the need for the elite to be informed where the shoe pinches, if its policies are not to be misguided. Dewey deepens this minimal and instrumental justification by taking democracy to be a form of social inquiry: Democracy as public discussion is viewed as the best way of dealing with the conflict of interests in a society: ‘The method of democracy – inasfar as it is that of organized intelligence – is to bring these conflicts out into the open where their special claims can be discussed and judged in the light of more inclusive interests than are represented by either of them separately’ (Liberalism and Social Action, LW11, 56). Democratic societies are thought of as both seeking to attain desirable goals, and arguing over how to do so, and also as arguing over what a desirable goal is. In other words, democratic politics is not simply a channel through which we can assert our interests (as it is for the first argument), but a forum or mode of activity in which we can arrive at a conception of what our interests are. As the experimentalist conception of inquiry insists, this does not imply that we need a priori criteria in order to establish if this process has been successful. Rather, criteria for what counts as a satisfactory solution may be hammered out in the process of searching for one. Democracy is experimental for Dewey in that it allows, or should allow, a profound questioning of the idées fixes of the established order, even if, of course, much democratic politics will not take the form of such questioning.
   2. Democratic participation is key to create policies that benefit people – it’s key to achieve any other social good
   Anderson 06 Anderson, Elizabeth. “The Epistemology of Democracy” Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2006, pp. 8-22 (Article) Published by Edinburgh University Press.
   Dewey’s experimentalist model enables a fairly fine-grained assessment of the epistemic powers of social arrangements, both legal and cultural. Diversity and discussion need to be embodied and facilitated in the institutions and customs of civil society. If a social arrangement has a systematic and significant impact on some social group, information about that impact needs to be conveyed to decision makers. This typically requires that the group organize into an association or party, so that its members can share their experiences and, through discussion, articulate shared complaints and advance proposals to address them. The lack of such associations in civil society makes the state blind to the impacts of its policies, and decision makers immune from accountability for these impacts, even if the formal apparatus of democracy is in place. This helps explain why democrats in post-Communist Europe have focused so much energy on the construction of civil society, rather than constitutional arrangements: they had to overcome the legacy of totalitarianism, which systematically destroyed independent associations of citizens by forbidding independent political parties and assemblies of citizens.
   Contention
   Contention 1 is Civic Engagement
   A lack of democratic participation has resulted in elite governments disconnected from their constituents’ experiences - an ethos of democratic participation is key to fair representation and social justice and is best inculcated by colleges and universities
   Thomas and Benenson 16 “The Evolving Role of Higher Education in U.S. Democracy” Opening Essay: Volume 5, Issue 2, eJournal of Public Affairs aT
   The higher education community has long accepted that colleges and universities serve two distinct but complementary purposes with respect to student development: Academics educate students for individual prosperity and well-being, and for public participation in democracy and civic life. Appropriately, both roles get recalibrated periodically based on societal needs—witness current shifts in credentialing, fields of study, online learning, and opportunities for people who have historically been marginalized—with the view to educating more Americans for the changing workforce and for their personal economic security. Higher education’s civic mission is also undergoing scrutiny and revitalization, and to understand that recalibration, one must trace the last 70 years of the academy’s civic role. In 1947, horrified by the rise of Nazi Germany and the atrocities of World War II, President Truman established the Commission on Higher Education, which identified education as a “necessity” critical to “the foundation of democratic liberties.” The commission challenged higher education to cultivate educated citizens who would apply their “creative imagination and trained intelligence to the solution of social problems and to the administration of public affairs.” An expanded community college system, the GI Bill, the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s, and the growth in cooperative extension addressed this challenge and exponentially increased access to higher education. Yet, 50 years later, educational and civic leaders began to question higher education’s commitment to civic life (Gamson, 1997) and opined that colleges and universities had “lost their sense of purpose” (Boyer, 1996). In 1997, the National Commission on Civic Renewal warned that the United States had become “a nation of spectators” in which people disengaged from their governments, from their communities, and from each other, a problem captured in the image of Americans “bowling alone” rather than in leagues (Putnam, 2000). In a series of national dialogues on the role of colleges and universities in American society, civic leaders expressed concern that higher education institutions were not educating their “successors” (Thomas, 2001, p. 13), people with a concern for public affairs and a commitment to public service careers. Civic leaders worried that the disciplines overlooked their “public relevance” and lacked “place-based strategies” (p. 15). In 2000, Thomas Ehrlich published Civic Responsibility and Higher Education, a collection of essays by educators on higher education’s civic purpose. In this seminal book, Ehrlich framed higher education’s civic goal as “working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make that difference” (Ehrlich, 2000, p. vi). In response, colleges and universities bolstered valuable forms of civic learning: community-based partnerships, student service-learning, local research collaborations and public scholarship, study abroad and other forms of global learning, and campus efforts to encourage social responsibility, such as recycling programs. Yet, at that time, the culture wars raged, “social justice” was labelled a liberal agenda, and “political” became equated with “partisan.” Administrators undoubtedly wanted to avoid the turbulent and sometimes violent student uprisings of the 1960s. By framing student civic engagement as “working to make a difference in the civic life of communities,” higher education adopted socially acceptable and safe approaches to the development of students as citizens. As a result, self-selected students gain a sense of empathy for others, a commitment to serve, and even an interest in public service careers. The question remains, however: Are students applying the necessary “creative imagination and trained intelligence to the solution of social problems and to the administration of public affairs”? One way to gauge student interest in public affairs is to examine the most basic form of democratic engagement: voting, an arguably objective measure of student concern with public affairs. Launched in 2013, the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE)1 at Tufts University found that turnout among undergraduate and graduate students at participating institutions was 1 The NSLVE database consists of enrollment and voting records of approximately 8.5 million students attending over 900 colleges and universities in the U.S. eJournal of Public Affairs 5(2) 2 EVOLVING ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN U.S. DEMOCRACY 45 in 2012 and 18 in 2014. These voting rates were significantly lower than the average turnout in the U.S. during the presidential election of 2012 (60) and during the midterm election of 2014 (42). When further disaggregating the numbers at NSLVE institutions, the findings become even more concerning: Only 13 of 18- to 24-year-old college students voted in the 2014 midterm election, and at some institutions, student voter turnout was below 5. These numbers should serve as a wake-up call to the academy to revisit how young people are educated. There is also a difference between whether students vote and who votes, recognizing that disparities exist across groups. In 2015, Demos published a comprehensive review of voter participation to highlight “the significantly lower turnout rates among lower-income Americans and people of color compared to richer Americans and whites as a whole” (McElwee, 2015). Overall, nearly 80 of high-income Americans vote, compared with barely 50 of their low-income peers (Leighley and Nagler, 2014). The demographics of the nation’s elected officials reflect this dynamic. The median wealth for a member of Congress, about $1.1 million in 2014, far outpaces that of the typical American family, estimated at $56,355 in 2013. Voting disparities result in unequal representation, with White people holding 90 of the 40,000 elected positions from the federal to the county levels (Who Leads Us, 2014). Although more African, Hispanic, Asian and Native Americans serve in the 114th Congress than at any time in history, these numbers are increasingly disproportionate to U.S. demographics. Whites account for 83 of the new Congress but just 62 of the population. These patterns of underrepresentation have significant public policy consequences: Money in politics and a lack of empathy based on lived experiences exacerbate the disconnect between elected officials and the people they ostensibly serve. Colleges and universities should be concerned with not only whether their students vote, but which students vote, and work to correct disparities by race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. When the eJournal of Public Affairs published the call for articles for this special issue, the editors were not sure how the issue would shape up. Because of our time spent in the field conducting research on politically engaged campuses, we envisioned an issue that would be part scholarship, part reflection, and part concrete tools. The authors lived up to those expectations. This issue consists of scholarly articles and reflection pieces on the scope of educating for democracy, barriers to educating for democracy, and ways to overcome those barriers. The issue begins with two articles on political learning and engagement, exploring the role of student affairs and assessment of student affairs activities in higher education. Authors Demetri Morgan (Loyola University Chicago) and Cecilia Orphan (University of Denver) warn that students must develop agency to understand and address systems that perpetuate power disparities and political inequality, lest the movement be “relegated to volunteerism and stopgap service.” They argue that this challenge rests with senior student affairs officers (SSAOs) on campuses. Their qualitative study examined how socialization influenced the ways in which SSAOs approached student civic development. Study participants pointed to their gender, socioeconomic, racial, and sexual identities, along with their life experiences with politics, as integral to their understanding of how to shape student co-curricular learning experiences. The study participants also highlighted the challenges of reducing partisanship and maintaining “political neutrality” (and avoiding student unrest) as significant to political learning. As one participant explained, “You have to be Switzerland,” emphasizing her role as impartial facilitator and the need to model a healthy democratic process. Indeed, new assessment tools have emerged to help student affairs staff and faculty mentors encourage student groups to build their “civic muscles” by practicing democratic decision making. Cherie Strachan (Central Michigan University) and Elizabeth Bennion (Indiana University South Bend) present the first findings from the National Survey of Student Leaders, an assessment tool designed to measure the degree to which student organizations develop students’ civic skills and political efficacy, and identify room for improvement in these aspects of student life. The tool seeks to provide higher education institutions with the means to regularly assess whether their version of “campus civil society” promotes the priorities of recent higher education reform. The next three articles examine initiatives and practices that address how to educate for political citizenship and engagement on college and university campuses. Timothy Shaffer (Kansas State University) draws from his relationship with the Kettering Foundation and The Democracy Imperative to design a course around the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. In addition to co-creating the syllabus with his students, he grounded their learning in their biographical statements. Students learned to plan, organize, and conduct deliberative forums using the National Issues Forums Institute approach, one that can be used as a pedagogical tool by faculty across disciplines. Stephen Hunt, Kevin Meyer, John Hooker, Cheri Simonds, and Lance Lippert (Illinois State University) examine the effects of the Political Engagement Project (PEP) on students’ political outcomes. PEP began in 2007 as the American Association of State Colleges and Universities partnered with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and The New York Times to enhance political efficacy and a sense of civic duty among undergraduates. To achieve this goal, PEP campuses integrate political education and engagement into a variety of disciplines and undergraduate courses on campuses. Hunt and colleagues conducted a quasi-experiment to infuse this pedagogical approach into an introductory communications course to examine outcomes related to student political knowledge, efficacy, general interpersonal skills, skills of influence and action, political behavior, concern for political issues, and political ideology. The study findings suggest that political engagement pedagogy can complement other pedagogical strategies to enhance disciplinary knowledge and influence key student learning outcomes. Windy Lawrence (University of Houston-Downtown UHD) and John Theis (Lone Star College) combine their communication and political science expertise to explore and measure student growth resulting from organizing and facilitating two-hour deliberations on “wicked” policy questions during Houston’s Citizenship Month. One interesting finding: Students broadened their understanding of political engagement beyond voting and electoral engagement to include deliberative dialogue as a model for self-governance and democratic engagement. This article may also be valuable to readers interested in exploring structures for community-based problem solving, in this case, a Center for Public Deliberation (UHD) and a Center for Civic Engagement (Lone Star-Kingwood). Next, Abe Goldberg (University of South Carolina Upstate) provides a vision for the kind of political learning and engagement called for by the Truman Commission. He makes a compelling case for examining political engagement through the lens of students with diverse social identities and life experiences, particularly those with low socioeconomic status who are, according to the research, less likely to engage in politics. USC Upstate serves a large low-income constituency (44 of the students receive Pell grants) with a range of progressive and conservative perspectives which can divide along racial lines. Institutions like eJournal of Public Affairs 5(2) 5 EVOLVING ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN U.S. DEMOCRACY USC-Upstate, Goldberg argues, are uniquely positioned to advance political equality through community engagement, political classroom discussion, and attentiveness to the well-being of students. Elections at all levels of government provide a context for enhancing students’ political knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Elizabeth Matto (Rutgers University) reflects on elections as “teachable moments” and shares ways she has used primaries and elections as springboards for political learning in the classroom and on campus. She describes her use of readings, discussion, reflection, and experiential and project-based learning to facilitate laboratories of democracy in her classroom. As mentioned earlier, one of the responses to the Truman Commission report was the exponential expansion of the community college system. Currently, nearly half of U.S. college students attend community colleges, and the number of community college students that continue their education and graduate from four- year institutions continues to grow. By any standard, these students represent a crucial constituency for the health and sustainability of democracy. The next article details the results of a study by three leaders among community colleges: Carrie Kisker (independent researcher), John Theis (Lone Star College), and Alberto Olivas (Arizona State University, previously of the Center for Civic Participation at the Maricopa Community College system). In this study, the authors examined how community college educators viewed their role as civic educators, the challenges they faced, and how they engaged students in democratic learning. As in the two previous articles, the authors identify deliberation in the classroom or across the student experience as critical to democratic education in large part because deliberation allows and encourages students to see themselves as having a strong political voice, essential to democracy. Higher education’s civic responsibility is not just to educate for political learning and engagement, but for political agency and equity. The final two reflections in this issue are shared by student leaders themselves who discuss two pressing issues affecting colleges today: racial equity and immigration. Callie Watkins Liu (Brandeis University) draws on her experiences during the 2015 Ford Hall student protests at Brandeis University. She identifies structural patterns in resistance and counter-resistance around racially centered student activism, and examines how institutional amnesia and narrative framing can be used to protect the interests of power at higher education institutions. Matias Ramos (Tufts University) reflects on his time as an undocumented student at the University of California Los Angeles and stresses the critical role college campuses play in creating transformative experiences for students in an increasingly multicultural world. He details his first encounter with fellow activists, describing their impact on his leadership development and how students around the country took part in a movement that led to executive changes in federal immigration policy. We are grateful to these authors for their contribution to this issue and the field. While this issue is being published during a rather unusual presidential election season, the tools and institutional attributes described in the articles will help to facilitate political learning and democratic engagement long after the election of 2016. We hope that colleges and universities are using this provocative election season to develop habits of intergroup discussion, to learn about and experience U.S. governance systems, to study how each academic discipline offers expertise relevant to public policy making, to correct misinformation and critique unethical conduct, and hold elected officials and candidates accountable. The future and health of democracy depends on how well colleges and universities educate “to the solution of social problems and to the administration of public affairs.”
   Political participation is key to deliberation to reformulate government policy and social movements against injustice – protections must be content-neutral
   Tsesis 14 Alexander, Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law “Free Speech Constitutionalism” 2014 is last date cited AT
   Oral and written deliberations facilitate the relationship between individual constituents and the polity. Speech about public matters is therefore not solely of value to the speaker or to the state as a whole but for the public person, who lives in the sphere of private and external concerns. This is not to say there is no private side. In so far as government is created for the people,36 its obligation requires laws guaranteeing the testing of ideas behind closed doors and in public spaces. Speech is not only an end for personal catharsis but also for the achievement of social ends through courtroom litigation, ending policy overreaching such as intrusion into bodily integrity;37 administration of vaccination plans,38 the establishment of social security benefits39 and affordable health care,40 and personal intimacy. The people’s vested rights to speak about abuses of government, private likes and dislikes, and various areas of expertise are not only a necessary function of American constitutionalism but that of any representative democracy. Focusing on the U. S. Constitution, the principle of free speech–as it is protected through the First Amendment and incorporated through the Fourteenth41 –provides an organizing social value. It protects an individual’s rights to participate in debates and engage in private conversations. The ability to express ideas even when they are contrary to the government’s positions can further public tranquility by enriching discourse and, simultaneously, empowering individuals.43 Mutual respect for divergent opinions, coupled with an enforceable right against state infringement, is essential to basic civic functions extending from litigation to legislation and execution. The exchange of ideas presupposes an evolving community that can analyze, process, and act on new ideas, while nevertheless being tethered to a constitutional norm. It is important to remark here that the avowed openness to differences of opinion also enables social movements to wage vigorous campaigns against institutionalized stereotyping, discrimination, and parochialism that have riddled the nation from its founding.44 The Preamble’s obligation for government to provide for the general welfare45 and the Declaration’s statement on the equality of innate human rights46 express a vision of government beholden to the will of the people. The original Constitution and the succeeding amendments provide governing structure and specificity about the terms of federalism, whose goal is to further the common good by protecting essential human entitlements against corrosive state actions. Just as the statements of the Preamble and Declaration are in need of elaboration through judicial opinions, statutes, and regulations, so too the First Amendment is only a shell without the details supplied by stare decisis and evolving legal culture.47 Freedom of speech, then, is essential for all representative democracies because it provides the people, collectively and individually, represented by their elected office holders, with the means to express themselves publically through political debate, compromise, statutory formation, and constitutional amendment and privately through creative endeavors, associations, and day-to-day conversations.

2. constitution
Contention 2 is solvency
Campuses are the cornerstone of open dialogue – ending speech restrictions is key to retain their role in protecting American civic life
Maloney 16 (Cliff Maloney, Jr., ) Colleges Have No Right to Limit Students' Free Speech, TIME Oct. 13, 2016 AT
In grade school, I learned that debate is defined as “a discussion between people in which they express different opinions about something.” Such open discourse was historically encouraged on our college campuses. Universities exemplified intellectual discussion and debate in America. No one voiced their opinions louder than students, professors and administrators. They pushed society’s limits by admitting women and people of color, and by encouraging diversity of thought amongst the college community. Historically, young people flocked to universities to learn more about the world around them, to encounter people from different backgrounds, to expand their minds and to form their own opinions. Unfortunately, things have changed. Recently on college campuses, our open discourse has been threatened, particularly when discussing politics. While the current presidential election represents polarizing wings of both the Democratic and Republican parties, we should be able to openly debate their policies and the direction in which they plan to take our country if elected. We should be able to discuss the abuse of power within our government and the consistent violations of our Bill of Rights. We should be able to participate in the free market of ideas. But our students are being silenced. University campuses are now home to a plethora of speech restrictions. From sidewalk-sized “free-speech zones” to the criminalization of microaggressions, America’s college campuses look and feel a lot more like an authoritarian dictatorship than they do the academic hubs of the modern free world. When rolling an inflated free-speech ball around campus, students at the University of Delaware were halted by campus police for their activities. A Young Americans for Liberty leader at Fairmont State University in West Virginia was confronted by security when he was attempting to speak with other students about the ideas he believes in. A man at Clemson University was barred from praying on campus because he was outside of the free-speech zone. And a student at Blinn College in Texas abolished her campus’ free-speech zone in a lawsuit after administrators demanded she seek special permission to advocate for self-defense. How have we let this happen in America, the land of the free? It’s because of what our universities have taught a generation of Americans: If you don’t agree with someone, are uncomfortable with an idea, or don’t find a joke funny, then their speech must be suppressed. Especially if they don’t politically agree with you. Instead of actually debating ideas that span topics from the conventional to the taboo, a generation of American students don’t engage, they just get enraged. In doing so, many students believe that they have a right to literally shut other people up. This is not only a threat to the First Amendment, but also to American democracy. In their manifestation, safe spaces and free-speech zones at public universities enable prejudice against unfavorable ideologies. Guised as progressive measures to ensure inclusion, these often unconstitutional policies exclude new and competing ideas, and are antithetical to a free academia. In excluding different ideologies, supposedly progressive campus speech codes do one thing: prevent the progression of ideas.  Restrictive campus speech codes are, in fact, regressive.
The status quo is locked into expert-led forms of dialogue that privilege elite viewpoints – the aff’s deliberationist model is key to revitalize dialogue and combat apathy – colleges are a key site
Carcasson 13 Martín Carcasson, Ph.D. Colorado State University, Rethinking Civic Engagement on Campus: The Overarching Potential of Deliberative Practice Prepared for the Kettering Foundation Project #35.13.00 July 1, 2013 AT
Advocacy is not inherently problematic, and high-quality advocacy is certainly possible. It is thus worth acknowledging that, at its best, adversarial engagement can lead to good decisions. Philosophers like John Stuart Mill (1869) championed notions of individual freedom and liberty partly on the idea of the marketplace of ideas. He argued that freedom of speech was critical because he believed that naturally the best ideas would ultimately “win out.” Similar to modern arguments about the free market, the initial assumptions were that with sufficient freedom, the marketplace would regulate itself. The best arguments would naturally rise to the top. When the marketplace is vibrant, adversarial tactics can work rather well. Advocates compete in the marketplace, selling their particular point of view, whoever has the best idea attracts a majority and thus “wins,” and the community adopts that idea or policy. Individual idea merchants would soon realize that they needed to have a good product to compete, otherwise they would be unable to sell their wares. The market, in other words, would naturally encourage high quality inquiry and debate. The flaws in one argument would be exposed by those in opposition, and working like a cauldron, impurities would burn off until only the best arguments 9 (some would say the “truth”) would remain in play. The question, of course, is how well the marketplace of ideas is functioning, particularly when addressing wicked problems, an issue we will return to soon. Expert-dominated forms of problem-solving focuses on the importance of high-quality data, and therefore foregrounds the role of particular forms of inquiry and the contributions of credential experts. It assumes that there usually are technical answers to difficult questions; therefore, experts should ideally make or at least significantly influence public decisions based on rigorous, often empirical, research and analysis. The public, in other words, should defer to experts. Key players here are thus engineers, policy researchers and analysts, and scientists. In local communities, city managers and superintendents often play more of an expert role as well. Often the “public” is considered too uninformed, too uninterested, or too emotional to be involved in decision-making. Both adversarial and expert forms of engagement have strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, their weaknesses are particularly exposed and consequential when dealing with wicked problems. The zero-sum, winner-take-all nature of adversarial tactics tends to incentivize problematic communication patterns that cause polarization, misunderstanding, and cynicism, making already wicked problems much more wicked. Rather than help communities uncover and work through the competing values that underlie wicked problems, issues are often framed strategically to narrow the issue to one dominant value, supporting the assumption that those that disagree must reject strongly held values, rather than recognizing they likely support alternative values that are in tension. With adversarial engagement, most messages are designed to either mobilize the like-minded (the “choir” or the “base”) or entice the undecided, meaning productive communication between perspectives is oddly rare. Adversaries seek to make one side sound 10 flawless and the other depraved, while opposing advocates make the same argument, leading to dominant communication patterns of opposing sides completely talking past each other in what political scientists have termed “noncontradictory argumentation”( Baumgartner and Jones, 1993). Communications that recognize the value of and provide respect for opposing perspectives are actually seen as weak and ineffective, rather than prudent. Admitting to tradeoffs is simply poor strategy. Said differently, adversarial engagement results in patterns of communication where people that disagree—an inherent aspect of a diverse democracy and wicked problems—have little incentive to interact or understand each other genuinely. When combined with the natural egoistic tendency of humans to function as selective listeners that prefer to surround themselves with people that agree and avoid those that disagree, adversarial engagement creates situations were groups see issues through very different lenses, making the collaboration, coordination, and innovation so important to addressing wicked problems particularly difficult. As a result, the level of conflict becomes severely exaggerated, and those groups never genuinely discuss (or work through) their true differences because they are blinded by the false polarization caused by poor communication. In sum, the natural marketplace of ideas breaks down. The “best” arguments are often punished, and the demand for low quality products is high. Expert dominated engagement struggles with wicked problems primarily due to the privileging of particular forms of knowledge. As scholars such as Yankelovich and Boyte have argued, experts support a technocratic view of decision-making that overly focuses on empirical data and being “value free,” meaning they are adept at examining what is or what could be but not what should be. Experts are trained to focus on specific aspects of problems, which works well with tame problems but is far too narrow for wicked problems. Wicked problems require 11 significant engagement with both facts and values, and experts tend to only deliver on half of that equation. Both adversarial and experts forms are also limiting because they typically support very narrow roles for citizens, which clearly impedes the need for adaptive changes that are so important to tackling wicked problems. Adversarial engagement often leads to citizens serving primarily as spectators or voters (in many ways, primarily as objects of manipulation), whereas experts tend to shut the public out altogether, or attempt to dictate appropriate behavior from one high, which rarely works. Whereas advocates focus primarily on interaction and persuasion to the detriment of genuine inquiry, experts focus primarily on inquiry and fall short on the genuine inclusion and interaction. The nature of wicked problems requires both genuine inquiry and significant public engagement, including broad inquiry and engagement in defining the problem, developing approaches to address the problem, considering the various consequences to those approaches, and finally managing the changes necessary to implementing any actions. Addressing wicked problems calls for cooperation, shared understanding and ownership, and, ultimately, action from a broad range of stakeholders; therefore citizens must take up the role of (and have the skills to be) engaged and collaborative problem solvers, a role neither adversarial or expert forms of engagement encourages or equips citizens to play. An alternative to adversarial and expert engagement that is slowly gaining more and more traction is deliberative engagement. A broad review will not be repeated here (see Gastil and Levine, 2005; Mathews, 1999; McIvor, Barker, and McAfee, 2012 for examples), but briefly deliberative engagement relies on citizens, not just experts or politicians, to be deeply involved in public decision making. Ideally, citizens come together and consider relevant facts and values from multiple points of view, listen to one another in order to think critically about the various 12 options before them, and discover and work through the underlying tensions and tough choices inherent to wicked problems. In this process, participants are open to refining their opinions as they consider their personal interests and the interests of fellow community members and the broader community, identify the common ground that may exist, and ultimately come to some conclusion for various forms of action in the form of a reasoned public judgment. Most importantly for tackling wicked problems, deliberative engagement focuses on the tough choices and paradoxes inherent to public problems and the need for publics to interact with each other and “work through” issues across perspectives (Yankelovich and Friedman, 2010). In doing so, it tends to foster mutual understanding across perspectives, which then fuels greater potential for collaboration and innovation. Freed from the simplistic one-sided views and wishful thinking of advocacy and the narrow perspectives of the expert model, ideally participants confronted with the true “wickedness” of the issue work together to imagine a broad range of potential actions to negotiating the tensions. Here is yet another major advantage of deliberative engagement: its potential to open up the conversation to innovation regarding multiple mechanisms of action, which connects to developing notions of democratic or collaborative governance (Boyte, 2005). Addressing wicked problems at the local level must in particular go beyond a focus on governmental policy or individual behavior, and also consider potential actions from groups, non-profits, educational institutions, and private industry. With adversarial and expert engagement, possible actions are typically much more narrowly construed, and in the case of adversarial, when a particular campaign is successful, it may only work to mobilize the opposition even more strongly to oppose it, as we have seen with “Obamacare.” Deliberative engagement therefore not only supports broader and more innovative ways of thinking about 13 change, but the processes themselves tend to build long term support and legitimacy for those actions. Deliberative engagement, however, takes significant time and effort. It is, again, an ideal to strive for which will never fully be reached. The primary problem with deliberative engagement, therefore, is how to build capacity and support for it, and ultimately make it a habit in our communities (Carcasson, 2009). In order to support all the various process points deliberative engagement requires—i.e. broad and inclusive research, identifying and negotiating both tensions and common ground, issue framing, nurturing genuine engagement across perspectives, and supporting the move to collaborative action—deliberative practice generally requires the assistance of individuals or organizations that take an “impartial” perspective on issues and focus primarily on improving the quality of communication in order to hopefully improve the quality of the decisions made. Such resources increase community capacity by fulfilling a broad range of critical roles, such as conveners, process designers, facilitators, reporters, and impartial researchers that name and frame issues to support deliberation. Elsewhere I have termed those that take on these roles as key resources of “passionate impartiality” (Carcasson, 2010; Carcasson and Sprain, 2010). They represent people who are passionate about their community, about democracy, and about solving problems but nonetheless realize that serving as impartial resources focused on building capacity for deliberative democracy will fill a unique, critical void in their community. Here again is why expanding the deliberative nature of campus civic engagement programs can have a critical dual effect, both increasing the ability of future generations to address wicked problems, but also to serve their communities as critical capacity for deliberative work at that time. Deliberative practice requires dedicated, smart, and passionate people to serve critical impartial roles to support the process, 14 and clearly such individuals are rare, and becoming more and more rare by the minute in our polarized political culture. College students, with instruction and support from professors and staff, however, have enormous potential to fill this role in their local communities, as they have with the Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation model (Carcasson, 2011). The key is getting to the college students early, so they serve as antidotes to the polarization rather than either join the fray or avoid politics altogether. At its best, deliberative engagement also works to bring out the best of the expert and adversarial forms while working against their limitations and negative consequences. Indeed, looking through a deliberative lens, the importance and instrumental need for both expert and adversarial engagement can be clearly established. Addressing wicked problems requires high quality information and the insights that can be brought to bear from the work of experts. Such information is necessary, but not sufficient. High quality deliberative practice therefore utilizes expert information in a way that seeks the ideal mean between being overly reliant and overly dismissive, as well as between being overly narrow and overly broad. Wicked problems essentially require a different epistemological stance that deliberative perspectives are more equipped to support.3 Similarly, deliberative engagement does rely on advocacy in important ways. Deliberative engagement tends to focus on incremental changes and tweaks to the system as communities work to find better balances between the various tensions. At its best, advocacy provides the raw material, the values, passions, and concerns of a wide range of perspectives. Activists can be critical to challenging the status quo and the dominant assumptions of society, as they have so many times in history. They can also be essential to providing the energy and motivation to sustain change efforts that may come out of deliberative processes. In sum, both expert and adversarial processes remain critical to addressing wicked problems, but without an overarching deliberative perspective to amplify their best qualities and calm or overcome their worst, their value remains problematic and counterproductive. Application to Civic Engagement Efforts Shifting back to civic education and civic engagement, I would argue that, understandably, the bulk of the college experience focuses on the expert model. Simply put, higher education is primarily tied to the notion of knowledge and data playing an important role in solving various problems. I can’t delve into the history of higher education in too much detail here, but generally I agree with Gerald Hauser (2004), who argued that the higher education system in the United States primarily followed the German model in focusing on discovering new knowledge, rather than the Athens model that is more tied to judgment and democratic decision-making. There are certainly numerous efforts to encourage institutions to engage more directly in community problem solving, and many institutions do, but the dominant model remains a detached and empirically focused model of hard science and social science working to emulate hard science. Such a model in turn incentivizes professors to focus on publishing in “top journals in their field” (which are inherently narrow and thus rather disconnected from wicked problems), keeping research behind both teaching and service in order of importance. Defenders of this perspective argue that focusing on developing new knowledge and technical expertise is a critical means to solving problems, and indeed millions of discoveries have been made that have positively impacted tough public issues. The expert model therefore dominates higher education, particularly in terms of student’s chosen discipline of study. Of course, the expert model is often purposely detached from the 16 community, and students often pick majors based on their market not civic value, but the point here is that the primary connection, however indirect, made to democracy or the community for most institutions of higher learning is best understood through the lens of expertise. Students learn, in other words, that the best way to solve problems is to research them from a particular lens and seek a technical solution. Secondarily, colleges and universities also offer numerous opportunities for training in adversarial politics, though perhaps more often outside of the curriculum. The most obvious examples are student government, campus “get out the vote” campaigns, and the availability of student groups such as College Democrats and Republicans or chapters of activist groups on a wide variety of issues. Certainly the “free speech zone” of most campuses is often awash with activists seeking signatures for petitions, speakers working to mobilize their respective choirs, and activist groups seeking members. Official campus civic engagement efforts can also often connect more with adversarial versus deliberative engagement. Many civic engagement efforts have a particular activist/social justice focus,4 for example, and work to connect students with projects that have a progressive ideology. The degree to which such programs begin with a particular political goal in mind push them into the adversarial realm. Lastly, many courses on campus will likely have a more adversarial bend to them, particularly in the liberal arts. Courses in Women’s studies, Ethnic Studies, and critical theory on the left, and then perhaps Economics, Business, or Religion classes on the right, blur the line between expert and adversarial perspectives. Students in those classes in many cases are learning how to be activists on a particular side of controversial issues, and, in many cases they are not provided a robust or fair accounting of opposing views. Indeed, many students are exposed to several different ideological perspectives while in college, unfortunately that exposure is often one at a time based on the professor, discipline, and course, and rarely are the differences—and tensions—between the ideologies explained clearly or worked through (see Graff, 1992, for further exploration of the need to “teach the conflicts” to revitalize higher education). College and universities also tend to provide opportunities for students to combine the expert and adversarial forms, which generally have been blurring more and more with the growth of political “think tanks” that have politicized policy research. Two examples closely tied to my own discipline of communication studies, for example, are public speaking and argumentation/debate classes. In these classes, students often complete several projects— speeches, research briefs, and debates—either individually or in groups that combine expert and adversarial perspectives. Many public speaking courses even require some “informational” speeches (i.e. expert only) and some “persuasive” speeches (combining expert and adversarial). In argumentation/debate classes in particular, students are required to do research and cite sources, and are often instructed on the difference between good and bad arguments, logical appeals, and how to avoid fallacies, etc., which are connected to the expert view. Overall, however, their assignments are often exercises in advocacy. They perform persuasive speeches designed to convince their classmates to support particular perspectives or policies, and in their debates, they are assigned to play the affirmative or negative role—and often each in turn— regarding a “yes/no” policy issue. They generally take a position first (“We should abolish the university’s parking police”) and then seek to find evidence and data to support that position. 18 Less frequently do they more broadly engage a question, and aim to find where the data may take them on the issue. Much less frequently do they focus on the underlying values and tensions inherent to the issue, or generally view issues as wicked problems. Some may argue that requiring students to argue both sides of the issue pushes the assignment into the deliberative realm, and in important ways it may, but it nonetheless tends to fall short because the students take turns on each extreme of the issue, but rarely spend time negotiating the tensions in the middle (and it should be noted that in debate classes, students are often required to frame the issue as a “yes/no” debate concerning a specific policy question, so it is inherently only a two-sided debate). My experience of teaching Argumentation and Debate for several years, for example, lead to significant frustration as students tended to move from their initial position of being a strong, rather simplistic, advocate for a particular perspective to now understanding the value of the opposing position and the complexity of the issue—important progress certainly—but then seemed to get stuck there. Beyond these connections to adversarial and expert forms of engagement, civic engagement programs at many colleges and universities also have come to focus on much more narrow, service-oriented aspects of civic engagement. Recent reports have examined the growing “apolitical” nature of many civic education programs that focus primarily on service and volunteerism (Saltmarsh, Hartley, and Clayton, 2009; Saltmarsh and Hartley, 2010; National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2011). When civic engagement is primarily tied to community service, they too often focus more on addressing symptoms of problems rather than bringing broad groups of citizens together to develop shared understanding, build capacity, and systemically address the problems themselves. Viewed from the perspective of democratic or collaborative governance introduced earlier, engagement focused primarily on 19 service tend to consider too narrow a view of change, essentially skipping over the “working through” phase so critical to deliberative engagement, and connecting students primarily to nonprofit organizations doing good work in the community. Research on youth engagement has also shown that students have grown to prefer these service-dominated, apolitical forms of engagement and tend to reject formal politics (Long, 2002; Kiesa and others, 2007). While I certainly support service learning as a useful aspect of the college experience, and recognize the valuable work that is often done through service learning that can make a real impact on lives, when such programs substitute for democratic engagement, they are nonetheless simply too limited. Service is thus a critical aspect of community problem-solving, but must be considered one possibility among many. Said differently, civic engagement programs have come to focus more and more on addressing the problems in democracy (and primarily only the symptoms of those problems), and have seemingly moved away from addressing the problems of democracy. In response to such shifts, commentators in these reports are now calling for the more specific term “democratic engagement” to replace “civic engagement.” Connecting civic engagement with deliberation is another way to do just that. One additional form of civic engagement needs to be introduced, but its place on campus is more difficult to place.
Colleges are the key site of First Amendment activity – it’s key to academic inquiry which supports students’ abilities to filter through bad arguments
Hall 2 (Kermit L., CONTRIBUTING WRITER, ) Free Speech On Public College Campuses Overview, The First Amendment Center 9-13-2002 AT
Free speech at public universities and colleges is at once the most obvious and the most paradoxical of constitutional principles. It is obvious because given the nature of academic inquiry, only an open, robust and critical environment for speech will support the quest for truth. At the same time, universities are at once communities that must balance the requirements of free speech with issues of civility, respect and human dignity. They are also part and parcel of the larger social order with its own, often competing set of values. Public universities are particularly rich grounds for conflict over matters of speech. They bring together persons with often strongly held yet contradictory views. Universities, for example, have their own newspapers, some of which may be operated by the university, by the students or by an off-campus group. Public institutions in their diversity often have students and faculty of different political persuasions, sexual orientations and religious commitments. Moreover, one of the driving concepts of the university campus is academic freedom, the right to inquire broadly, to question and to promote an environment where wrong answers, seemingly absurd ideas and unconventional thought are not just permitted but even encouraged. As Robert M. O’Neil, a former university president and expert on First Amendment issues, wrote in his book Free Speech in the College Community, the fate of free speech on public campuses became increasingly important, considerably more controversial, and generally more supportive of openness over the course of the 20th century. In recent times the most contentious issues have involved the development of so-called speech codes designed to restrict certain kinds of speech deemed by the administration to be offensive. But the issue of free expression on campus goes beyond speech codes and involves a host of other matters. They include outspoken university faculty; technologically mediated discussions that transcend through the World Wide Web the requirements of time and place so essential to traditional First Amendment analysis; visiting speakers expressing controversial views; the use of student fees to support gay, lesbian and other organizations; the reporting and editorializing of the campus newspaper; artistic expression; and the faculty’s freedom to pursue, publish and proclaim their research findings. In each of these instances, the underlying issue for a university is its duty to teach its students the lessons of responsibility that accompany the privilege of academic freedom. The concept of academic freedom The concept of academic freedom and its connection to freedom of expression received full treatment in the landmark 1957 decision Sweezy v. New Hampshire. In that case, the attorney general of New Hampshire, acting on behalf of the state Legislature under a broad resolution directing him to determine whether there were “subversive persons” working for the state, had charged Paul Sweezy, a visiting lecturer at the University of New Hampshire, with failing to answer questions. The questions were about whether he had delivered a lecture with leftist contents at the university and about his knowledge of the Progressive Party of the state and its members. Sweezy refused to answer those questions, on the grounds that doing so would violate his rights under the First Amendment and the freedom that it provided him to engage in academic pursuits. In 1957 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a plurality opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren, held in Sweezy’s favor and in so doing authored a ringing endorsement of academic freedom. “The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. … Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding, otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.” In recent times, however, this broad statement in support of academic freedom has come under increasing attack, and ironically that attack has come from the liberal side of the political spectrum that the Supreme Court sought to protect in Sweezy. Despite that seemingly ringing declaration, the justices have failed to define the exact nature and scope of academic freedom. They have also failed to develop a real constitutional theory to support it. Generally, the concept, as applied to public universities, is rooted in the First Amendment’s concern with free inquiry and promotion of heterodox views that critically examine conventional wisdom. As with related areas of First Amendment jurisprudence, the justices have subscribed to the view that truth is discovered in the marketplace of ideas, culled from a cacophony of diverse views. Indeed, the Court has referred interchangeably to academic freedom and the right to political expression. The Court, however, has imposed certain limitations upon academic freedom, because employees of academic institutions are treated almost identically to all other public employees. Although the Court has not directly limited academic freedom through the public-employee doctrine, it has constricted the rights of faculty at public institutions. According to case law, speech on matters of public concern is constitutionally protected, while speech on internal institutional matters is entitled to considerably less protection. The justices have accepted that a university has a legitimate need to maintain orderly operations and to regulate its own affairs, and that its duty to do so may outweigh the employee’s free-speech interests. Furthermore, the Court has concluded expressly that academic freedom protects neither intimidating acts, actual threats nor disruptive acts interfering with an educational program. Speech codes Speech codes have emerged from this constitutional milieu. They are the most controversial ways in which universities have attempted to strike a balance between expression and community order. Many major universities have introduced these codes to deal especially with so-called hate speech; that is, utterances that have as their object groups and individuals that are identified on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Beginning in the 1980s, a variety of studies, including one by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching titled “Campus Tensions,” highlighted instances of racial hatred and harassment directed at racial minorities. Over the past two decades the harassment has grown to include gays and lesbians, women and members of other ethnic groups. On several campuses white students have worn blackface for sorority and fraternity parties. On one campus a flier was distributed that warned: “The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Are Watching You.” Many campuses responded to such actions by adopting policies that officially banned such expression and made those found guilty of engaging in it susceptible to punishments ranging from reprimands to expulsion. The idea, of course, was to chill the environment for such expression by punishing various forms of speech based on either content or viewpoint. These codes found strong support from some administrators, faculty and students who were convinced that by controlling speech it would be possible to improve the climate for racial and other minorities. The assumption behind the codes was that limiting harassment on campus would spare the would-be victims of hate speech psychological, emotional and even physical damage. The supporters of such codes also argued that they represented good educational policy, insisting that such bans meant that the learning process on campus would not be disrupted and that the concept of rational discourse, as opposed to hate-inspired invective and epithet, would be enshrined. In developing these codes, university administrators relied on a well-known Supreme Court doctrine — i.e., the “fighting words” exception developed in the 1942 decision Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. Justice Frank Murphy, writing for a unanimous court, found that Walter Chaplinsky had been appropriately convicted under a New Hampshire law against offensive and derisive speech and name-calling in public. Murphy developed a two-tier approach to the First Amendment. Certain “well-defined and narrowly limited” categories of speech fall outside the bounds of constitutional protection. Thus, “the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous,” and insulting or “fighting” words neither contributed to the expression of ideas nor possessed any “social value” in searching for truth. While the Supreme Court has moved away from the somewhat stark formation given the fighting-words doctrine by Justice Murphy, lower courts have continued to invoke it. More important, universities have latched on to it as a device by which to constitutionalize their speech codes. The University of California in 1989, for example, invoked the fighting-words doctrine specifically, and other institutions of higher learning have done the same. Some institutions have recognized that the protean and somewhat vague nature of the fighting-words doctrine had to be focused. In 1990 the University of Texas developed a speech code that placed emphasis on the intent of the speaker to engage in harassment and on evidence that the effort to do so had caused real harm. Still other institutions, most notably the University of Michigan, attempted to link their speech codes to existing policies dealing with non-discrimination and equal opportunity. That tactic aimed to make purportedly offensive speech unacceptable because it had the consequence of producing discriminatory behavior. These codes frequently became parodies of themselves and even the subject of satirical skits on late-night television programs such as “Saturday Night Live.” As Robert O’Neil points out, perhaps the most notable example came from the University of Connecticut. Its policy, which was struck down by a federal court, went so far as to make “inappropriately directed laughter” and “conspicuous exclusion from conversations and/or classroom discussions” violations of its speech policy. ‘Political correctness’ The Connecticut example, however, raises a far more disquieting issue. The erection of these codes in the late 1980s and the early 1990s was done, at least in part, in response to dogged pressures brought by groups determined to use the authority of the university to eliminate harassment and discrimination while pressing their own causes. As former university president Sheldon Hackney has observed: “In this kind of argument, one is either right or wrong, for them or against them, a winner or a loser. Real answers are the casualties of such drive-by debate. This may be good entertainment, but it … only reinforces lines of division and does not build toward agreement.” As so-called political correctness ignited a nationwide debate about what universities could and should restrict, many liberals found themselves in the awkward position of supporting the very limitations on expression that they had fought against during and after the great McCarthy Red Scare of the 1950s and 1960s, and campuses divided into camps for and against. Moreover, states during these years also adopted bans on speakers, most notably those associated with the Communist Party. Hence, a new and left-wing form of political oppression seemed to be replacing an older, right-wing one, with the same effect: The views and voices of some were curtailed. Overbreadth, vagueness and content discrimination Speech codes are vulnerable in several ways and many have been struck down on constitutional grounds. Courts have viewed the codes as failing on two important points. First, they have been deemed to be overly broad and vague, reaching groups and persons not appropriately covered by such codes. In 1989, for example, a federal judge in Doe v. The University of Michigan, threw

Tournament: CPS | Round: 2 | Opponent: Neha Tallapragada | Judge: Park, Daniel
Part 1: Framing

Free speech is a pre-requisite to any rational moral system- without it self-realization is impossible. Eberle 94
Eberle, Law @ Roger Williams, 94  (Wake Forest LR, Winter)

The Court's decision in R.A.V. reaffirms the preeminence of free speech in our constitutional value structure. n62 Theoretically, free speech is intrinsically valuable as a chief means by which we develop our faculties and control our destinies. n63 Free speech is also of instrumental value in facilitating other worthy ends such as democratic or personal self-government, n64 public and private decisionmaking, n65 and the advancement of knowledge and truth. n66 Ultimately, the value of free speech rests upon a complex set of justifications, as compared to reliance on any single foundation. n67 The majority of the Court in R.A.V. preferred a nonconsequentialist view, finding that speech is valuable as an end itself, independent of any consequences that it might produce. In this view, free speech is an essential part of a just and free society that treats all people as responsible moral agents. Accordingly, people are entrusted with the responsibility of making judgments about the use or abuse of speech. n68 From this vantage point, the majority saw a certain moral equivalency in all speech. Even hate speech merits protection under the First Amendment, because all speech has intrinsic value. This is so because all speech, even hate speech, is a communication to the world, and therefore implicates the speaker's autonomy or self-realization. Additionally, any information might be valuable to a listener who can then decide its importance or how best to use it. Accordingly, any suspicion or evidence of governmental censorship must be vigilantly investigated.

Free speech facilitates the development of moral reasoning- restrictions should be prima facie rejected. Dwyer 01
(Susan, Phil@Maryland, Nordic Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2 ® Philosophia Press 2001)

Direct Nonconsequentialism Let us return to the central topic: free speech. From the perspective just sketched, the value of a marketplace of ideas – that notion so central to the consequentialist justification of free speech – lies not so much in its long-term all-things-considered good consequences (the avoidance of dogmatism, democracy, truth, etc.) Rather, free speech is seen as a necessary condition for the realization of any human goods. Constraints on inquiry and expression are constraints on humanity itself. Echoing this thought, Nagel (1995) writes: That the expression of what one thinks and feels should be overwhelmingly one's own business, subject to restriction only when clearly necessary to prevent serious harm distinct from the expression itself, is a condition of being an independent thinking being. It is a form of moral recognition that you have a mind of your own: even if you never want to say anything to which others would object, the idea that they could stop you if they did object is in itself a violation of your integrity (96). A simple yet powerful fact both explains why speech is valuable in and of itself and justifies its stringent protection: when speech is threatened, we are threatened. Direct nonconsequentialism stands in stark contrast to consequentialist approaches which, as we have seen, make the value of speech contingent on its effects. And unlike indirect nonconsequentialism, it makes our status as language users, not our autonomy, the ground for limiting the state's attempts to interfere with our liberty. To repeat: direct nonconsequentialism asserts that speech is valuable because linguistic capacities are the expression of the essence of creatures (us) to whom we attribute the highest moral status. The way in which the direct nonconsequentialist makes explicit what is special about speech helps to make sense of a commonly experienced wariness regarding restrictions on speech we hate. We worry equally when the state seeks to prohibit the speech of sexists or Flat-Earthers. The consequentialist thinks this reaction is explained by attributing to us the belief that any state restriction of speech is the thin end of a wedge: we are discomforted by the thought of the muzzled sexist or Flat-Earther because we think our speech may be next. This may well be the right account of human psychology in these matters. But it is hardly an explanation of the prima facie wrongness of restrictions on lunatics' and sexists’ speech. Our discomfort is a moral discomfort. In bringing out the idea that speech is the expression of our essence, the direct nonconsequentialist is able to capture the true nature of our reaction to state restrictions on others' speech we do not particularly care for. Direct nonconsequentialism also gives substance to a powerful idea that some influential critics – notably, Catharine Mackinnon (1987) – find hopelessly abstract. This is the thought that “every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere (164).” And seeing how direct nonconsequentialism does so will help illustrate some of the practical implications of this strategy for justifying free speech. Proponents of legislation designed to restrict or prohibit problematic speech and courts that rule on the constitutionality of such legislation, often reason in terms of how free speech interests are to be balanced with other interests. For example, proponents of speech codes argue that racist speech harms minorities’ interests in social and political equality; and in the United States, the constitutionality of restrictions on ‘fighting words’ is defended in light of the state’s interests in maintaining law and order. These arguments imply that the expressive rights of individual racists and troublemakers may sometimes be infringed in order to promote the good of some collective. But as the history of free speech debates reveal, once we admit that collective interests can trump individual rights, it is extremely difficult consistently to maintain the belief that a right to free speech imposes severe limits on what the state may do. The direct nonconsequentialist justification of free speech avoids this particular difficulty. Recall, we are working within the context of constitutional provisions – that is, we are thinking about rationales for stringent protections of speech, where these are understood as mechanisms for keeping the government out of some aspect of our lives. In this sense, such provisions express rights had by individuals against the state. But the direct nonconsequentialist’s account of the basis of these rights suggests that it is a mistake to think of them as radically individualistic. True, each of us has a right to free speech, but we have that right in virtue of our membership in a collective – the species H. sapiens – where every member has the same right for the same reason. Thus, in stressing that a universal feature of the species – language mastery – grounds protections on speech, the direct nonconsequentialist avoids individualizing the right to free speech in a way that makes it perpetually vulnerable to the assertion of some collective good. If we think of a person’s right to free speech as protecting just one aspect of his liberty among others, we run the risk of obscuring what is morally relevant about speech. The hatemonger and the pornographer each have a right to free speech, but this is not to be understood in terms of their being free to act on contingent desires they have. My occurrent desire to eat ice-cream holds no weight in the big scheme of things; even I would concede that it is permissible for the state to thwart my satisfying this desire, if doing so meant promoting some very important collective good. But speech is different. It is worthy of protection not because people want to say certain things, but (to repeat) because speech expresses our very nature. What someone wants to say is neither here nor there. Thus, in decoupling the value of free speech from individual desires, direct nonconsequentialism gives content to the idea that when we strengthen (protect) free speech in one place, we strengthen (protect) it everywhere.

Consequentially, Free speech is a gateway to every other impact. D’Souza 96
(Frances, Prof. Anthropology Oxford, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/hearings/19960425/droi/freedom_en.htm?textMode=on)

In the absence of freedom of expression which includes a free and independent media, it is impossible to protect other rights, including the right to life. Once governments are able to draw a cloak of secrecy over their actions and to remain unaccountable for their actions then massive human rights violations can, and do, take place. For this reason alone the right to freedom of expression, specifically protected in the major international human rights treaties, must be considered to be a primary right. It is significant that one of the first indications of a government's intention to depart from democratic principles is the ever increasing control of information by means of gagging the media, and preventing the freeflow of information from abroad. At one end of the spectrum there are supposedly minor infringements of this fundamental right which occur daily in Western democracies and would include abuse of national security laws to prevent the publication of information which might be embarrassing to a given government: at the other end of the scale are the regimes of terror which employ the most brutal moves to suppress opposition, information and even the freedom to exercise religious beliefs. It has been argued, and will undoubtedly be discussed at this Hearing, that in the absence of free speech and an independent media, it is relatively easy for governments to capture, as it were, the media and to fashion them into instruments of propaganda, for the promotion of ethnic conflict, war and genocide. 2. Enshrining the right to freedom of expression The right to freedom of expression is formally protected in the major international treaties including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, it is enshrined in many national constitutions throughout the world, although this does not always guarantee its protection. Furthermore, freedom of expression is, amongst other human rights, upheld, even for those countries which are not signatories to the above international treaties through the concept of customary law which essentially requires that all states respect the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by virtue of the widespread or customary respect which has been built up in the post World War II years. 3. Is free speech absolute? While it is generally accepted that freedom of expression is, and remains the cornerstone of democracy, there are permitted restrictions encoded within the international treaties which in turn allow for a degree of interpretation of how free free speech should be. Thus, unlike the American First Amendment Rights which allow few, if any, checks on free speech or on the independence of the media, the international treaties are concerned that there should be a balance between competing rights: for example, limiting free speech or media freedom where it impinges on the individual's right to privacy; where free speech causes insult or injury to the rights and reputation of another; where speech is construed as incitement to violence or hatred, or where free speech would create a public disturbance. Given that these permitted restrictions are necessarily broad, the limits of free speech are consistently tested in national law courts and, perhaps even more importantly, in the regional courts such as the European Commission and Court of Human Rights. In recent years several landmark cases have helped to define more closely what restrictions may be imposed by government and under what circumstances. In particular, it has been emphasised by the European Court that any restriction must comply with a three-part test which requires that any such restriction should first of all be prescribed by law, and thus not arbitrarily imposed: proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued, and demonstrably necessary in a democratic society in order to protect the individual and/or the state. 4. Who censors what? Despite the rather strict rules which apply to restrictions on free speech that governments may wish to impose, many justifications are nevertheless sought by governments to suppress information which is inimical to their policies or their interests. These justifications include arguments in defence of national and/or state security, the public interst, including the need to protect public morals and public order and perfectly understandable attempts to prevent racism, violence, sexism, religious intolerance and damage to the indi-vidual's reputation or privacy. The mechanisms employed by governments to restrict the freeflow of information are almost endless and range from subtle economic pressures and devious methods of undermining political opponents and the independent media to the enactment of restrictive press laws and an insist-ence on licensing journalists and eventually to the illegal detention, torture and disappearances of journalists and others associated with the expression of independent views. 5. Examples of censorship To some the right to free speech may appear to be one of the fringe human rights, especially when compared to such violations as torture and extra-judicial killings. It is also sometimes difficult to dissuade the general public that censorship, generally assumed to be something to do with banning obscene books or magazines, is no bad thing! It requires a recognition of some of the fundamental principles of democracy to understand why censorship is so immensely dangerous. The conditon of democracy is that people are able to make choices about a wide variety of issues which affect their lives, including what they wish to see, read, hear or discuss. While this may seem a somewhat luxurious distinction preoccupying, perhaps, wealthy Western democracies, it is a comparatively short distance between government censorship of an offensive book to the silencing of political dissidents. And the distance between such silencing and the use of violence to suppress a growing political philosophy which a government finds inconvenient is even shorter. Censorship tends to have small beginnings and to grow rapidly. Allowing a government to have the power to deny people information, however trivial, not only sets in place laws and procedures which can and will be used by those in authority against those with less authority, but it also denies people the information which they must have in order to monitor their governments actions and to ensure accountability. There have been dramatic and terrible examples of the role that censorship has played in international politics in the last few years: to name but a few, the extent to which the media in the republics of former Yugoslavia were manipulated by government for purposes of propaganda; the violent role played by the government associated radio in Rwanda which incited citizens to kill each other in the name of ethnic purity and the continuing threat of murder issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran against a citizen of another country for having written a book which displeased them. 6. The link between poverty, war and denial of free speech There are undoubted connections between access to information, or rather the lack of it, and war, as indeed there are between poverty, the right to freedom of expression and development. One can argue that democracy aims to increase participation in political and other decision-making at all levels. In this sense democracy empowers people. The poor are denied access to information on decisions which deeply affect their lives, are thus powerless and have no voice; the poor are not able to have influence over their own lives, let alone other aspect of society. Because of this essential powerlessness, the poor are unable to influence the ruling elite in whose interests it may be to initiate conflict and wars in order to consolidate their own power and position. Of the 126 developing countries listed in the 1993 Human Development Report, war was ongoing in 30 countries and severe civil conflict in a further 33 countries. Of the total 63 countries in conflict, 55 are towards the bottom scale of the human development index which is an indicator of poverty. There seems to be no doubt that there is a clear association between poverty and war. It is reasonably safe to assume that the vast majority of people do not ever welcome war. They are normally coerced, more often than not by propaganda, into fear, extreme nationalist sentiments and war by their governments. If the majority of people had a democratic voice they would undoubtedly object to war. But voices are silenced. Thus, the freedom to express one's views and to challenge government decisions and to insist upon political rather than violent solutions, are necessary aspects of democracy which can, and do, avert war. Government sponsored propaganda in Rwanda, as in former Yugoslavia, succeeded because there weren't the means to challenge it. One has therefore to conclude that it is impossible for a particular government to wage war in the absence of a compliant media willing to indulge in government propaganda. This is because the government needs civilians to fight wars for them and also because the media is needed to re-inforce government policies and intentions at every turn.

Plan Text: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict constitutionally protected journalist speech.

Advantage 1: Stop The Press

Censorship of student journalism is increasing at the worst possible time. Censorship discourages questioning the government. Schuman 12-8
(Rebecca, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2016/12/student_journalists_are_under_threat.html)
Well, here’s some great news to cheer you up: The American student press is under siege! Apparently, we’ve been too busy blowing gaskets over professor watch lists and “safe spaces” to recognize the actual biggest threat to free speech on college campuses today. According to a new report by the American Association of University Professors, in conjunction with three other nonpartisan free-speech advocacy organizations, a disquieting trend of administrative censorship of student-run media has been spreading quietly across the country—quietly, of course, because according to the report, those censorship efforts have so far been successful. The report finds that recent headlines out of Mount St. Mary’s University, for example, may be “just the tip of a much larger iceberg.” Indeed, “it has become disturbingly routine for student journalists and their advisers to experience overt hostility that threatens their ability to inform the campus community and, in some instances, imperils their careers or the survival of their publications.” The report chronicles more than 20 previously unreported cases of media advisers “suffering some degree of administrative pressure to control, edit, or censor student journalistic content.” Furthermore, this pressure came “from every segment of higher education and from every institutional type: public and private, four-year and two-year, religious and secular.” It gets worse. In many of the cases in the report, administration officials “threatened retaliation against students and advisers not only for coverage critical of the administration but also for otherwise frivolous coverage that the administrators believed placed the institution in an unflattering light,” including an innocuous listicle of the best places to hook up on campus. In many cases, the student publications were subject to prior review from either an adviser who reported directly to the administration or the administration itself. Prior review means getting what’s in your newspaper signed off on by someone up top before it can be published. It is—to use the parlance of my years of professional journalistic training that began with my time as features editor of the Vassar College Miscellany News in the mid-’90s—absolute bullshit. (At public universities, it’s also illegal.) First, and most obviously, this is because a free student press is a hallmark of the American higher education system, and any threat to that freedom is on its face worrying. But there’s also this: The last thing we need right now, in the creeping shadow of American authoritarianism, is an entire generation of fledgling journalists who’ve come up thinking censorship is acceptable.

The legal justification for newspaper censorship is a 7th circuit decision that applied Hazelwood to universities-this allows unchecked arbitrary censorship by administrators. Goodman 05
( S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center 2005 WL 2736314 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 20, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief of Amici Curiae Student Press Law Center, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Advisers, Community College Journalism Association, Society for Collegiate Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, American Society of Newspaper Editors, National Newspaper Association, Newspaper Association of America, Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors, College Newspaper Business and Advertising Managers, National Federation of Press Women, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Independent Press Association/Campus Journalism Project in Support of Petition of Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba for Writ of Certiorari Of Counsel: S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Ste 1100, Arlington, VA 22209-2211, (703) 807-1904. Richard M. Goehler, (Counsel of Record), Frost Brown Todd LLC, 2200 PNC Center, 201 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, (513) 651-6800, Counsel for Amici Curiae.)
In contrast to many high school censorship incidents, public college administrators today are less likely to be successful in their efforts to restrict the student press. This is usually (and perhaps only) because of the First Amendment protections that courts have consistently accorded college journalists. That circumstance would surely change were Hazelwood extended to limit the rights of college student journalists. Among some of the stories in college student publications that could be subject to censorship under the Hazelwood standard: • An opinion piece opposing an upcoming referendum that would have provided the college with revenue collected from property taxes. University officials, claiming the paper contained typographical and grammatical errors, confiscated and destroyed 10,000 copies of the paper. After students threatened legal action, the school agreed to reprint the newspaper.14 • An article detailing the incoming university president’s expenditure of state funds, including more than $100,000 spent to remodel the president’s home and pay for *17 his inauguration. Following publication, the president transferred the newspaper’s adviser to another position at the school, an act that generated considerable public attention. The president later resigned after being questioned by state legislators regarding the spending that had been reported in the student newspaper. The adviser was remstated.15 • A yearbook story reporting that members of the school’s volleyball team were removed for bringing alcohol on a team trip and a feature spread on sex and relationships. Following publication, the yearbook editor lost his job. After the editor sued, the school agreed to a settlement in which it paid the editor $10,000 and agreed to a publications policy that prohibited administrative interference with the content of student publications.16 • An editorial cartoon, featuring cartoon figures as university officials, commenting on a U.S. Department of Education report that found the school had misused public funds when it paid for a trip to Disney World by students and school officials. One of those portrayed, the vice president of student affairs, temporarily halted printing of the issue - but released them after students objected.17 If Hazelwood is allowed to determine the level of First Amendment protection to which America’s college student media are entitled, there is no doubt university administrators are poised to take advantage of their new *18 censorship powers. Word has already begun to spread that the standard “hands-off student media” policies recognized by college officials in the past may no longer be required. In California, for example - 2,000 miles west of the Governors State University campus and far beyond the jurisdiction of the Seventh Circuit - administrators at California State University system schools received a memo from the system’s legal counsel on June 30, 2005 - ten days after the Seventh Circuit handed down its decision - informing them that “Hosty appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers….”18 Extending Hazelwood to the university setting is a recipe for encouraging censorship that would dramatically hinder the production of good journalism and the training of good journalists. Amici do not believe this Court intended the censorship of college and university student newspapers to be the legacy of Hazelwood.

Regulation of newspapers is a crucial precedent used to justify widespread campus censorship-it uniquely empowers and protects administrators to censor. Lukianoff 05
(George, Samantha Harris, Foundation for Individual, Rights in Education, 2005 WL 2736313 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY et al., Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 19, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief Amici Curiae of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; The Coalition for Student and Academic Rights; Feminists for Free Expression; The First Amendment Project; Ifeminists.Net; National Association of Scholars; Accuracy in Academia; Leadership Institute; The Individual Rights Foundation; The American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Students for Academic Freedom in Support of Petitioners)
Commentators from across the political spectrum, while often disagreeing on the source, the scale, and the cause of the chilling of free speech on campus, have described the current campus environment as one where the “marketplace of ideas” is under siege.13 Whether in the name of “ tolerance,” *17 risk management, or merely peace and quiet, hundreds (if not thousands) of universities have enacted policies and engaged in practices hostile to free and open discourse over the past few decades.14 Starting in the 1980s, colleges enacted “speech codes” under a variety of creative legal theories. Despite numerous decisions ruling these codes unconstitutional15 and this Court's decision in R.A. E v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), which indicated that viewpoint-based speech codes would be unconstitutional, the number of university speech codes actually increased through the 1990s, see Jon Gould, The Precedent that Wasn't, 35 Law and Soc'y Rev. 345 (2001). Over the past twenty years, numerous books have been written alleging an illiberal, intolerant, and/or partisan atmosphere on campus16 in which dissenting viewpoints and unpopular groups are repressed through a variety of measures. More recently, universities have adopted highly restrictive, and sometimes absurd “speech *18 zone” policies restricting speech from all but small comers of the university.17 Thus far, the law has served to protect the collegiate marketplace of ideas from overreaching administrations, requiring policies and practices in keeping with the First Amendment and academic freedom. For example, in Rosenberger, this Court granted religious student groups equal access to student fee funding. In Bait v. Shippensburg University, 280 F. Supp. 2d 357 (M.D. Pa. 2003), a federal court in Pennsylvania ruled Shippensburg University's speech code was unconstitutionally overbroad, and in Roberts v. Haragan, 346 F. Supp. 2d 853 (N.D. Tex. 2004), a federal court in Texas dismissed a speech zone policy as unconstitutionally overbroad. The Hosty decision, however, is a step in the opposite direction. College administrators have already demonstrated a tenacious will to censor even when the law clearly limited their ability to do so. The legal ambiguity that Hosty creates, the unparalleled discretion it grants college administrators, and the legal protection it provides to administrators who censor all threaten to dramatically worsen the campus free speech crisis. If allowed to stand, Hosty will have numerous, specific, predictable, and far reaching negative consequences for free speech and robust debate on America's college campuses. It is no exaggeration to say that the Hosty opinion threatens the existence of the independent collegiate media. Universities have not shown great tolerance for the free press. If there is no longer a presumption of independence or of public forum status when a public university establishes a student newspaper, *19 there should be no doubt that administrators who wish to censor will take advantage of this ambiguity. Public universities will be able to argue that any paper that receives any kind of benefit - whether financial support or simply the use of office space - from the university is subject to administrative control. If past experience is any guide, colleges will pay lip service to the importance of student press freedom, but they will quickly take advantage of any legal means available to punish or control student newspapers that anger or offend students or administrators. For example, in a memorandum to all California State University presidents written only ten days after the Hosty decision, California State University General Counsel Christine Helwick wrote that: while the Hosty decision is from another jurisdiction and, as such, does not directly impact the CSU, the case appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers, provided that there is an established practice of regularized content review and approval for pedagogical purposes.18 In this same way, Hosty threatens the existence of independent student groups. If the primary question under Hosty is whether a student group is in some way “subsidized,” any group that receives any sort of benefit or student fees could be threatened with administrative control. The possibility that a court might later determine that the student group or publication was entitled to some form of public forum status would hardly protect the overwhelming majority of these groups that are neither willing nor affluent enough to mount a legal defense. *20 This case also re-opens issues relating to collegiate liability for student media and student groups formerly considered settled. It also allows administrators virtually unlimited freedom to experiment with censorship above and beyond even the broad discretion granted to them under Hosty. Finally, there is no reason to believe this holding will remain limited to public colleges - private colleges that promise free speech to their students tend to base their own speech policies on First Amendment standards.19 Hosty v. Carter will have reverberations from the community college to the Ivy League. Administrators will impose the “intellectual strait jacket” that this Court has long feared, and the consequences will be profound. As FIRE co-founder Alan Charles Kors once said, “A nation that does not educate in freedom will not survive in freedom, and will not even know when it is lost.”20

Universities are the most important site of first amendment activity- ignore negative evidence written about other contexts. Goodman 2
( S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center 2005 WL 2736314 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba, Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 20, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief of Amici Curiae Student Press Law Center, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Advisers, Community College Journalism Association, Society for Collegiate Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, American Society of Newspaper Editors, National Newspaper Association, Newspaper Association of America, Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press Managing Editors, College Newspaper Business and Advertising Managers, National Federation of Press Women, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Independent Press Association/Campus Journalism Project in Support of Petition of Margaret L. Hosty, Jeni S. Porche, and Steven P. Barba for Writ of Certiorari Of Counsel: S. Mark Goodman, Michael C. Hiestand, Student Press Law Center, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Ste 1100, Arlington, VA 22209-2211, (703) 807-1904. Richard M. Goehler, (Counsel of Record), Frost Brown Todd LLC, 2200 PNC Center, 201 East Fifth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, (513) 651-6800, Counsel for Amici Curiae.)
The University is the paradigmatic “marketplace of ideas,” rendering “the vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms…nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools.” Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169, 180 (1972) (citation omitted). This Court has specifically recognized there is “no doubt that the First Amendment rights of speech and association extend to the campuses of state universities.” Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 268-69. This Court’s restrictive First Amendment standard in Hazelwood sprung from the premise that the special circumstances of the secondary and elementary school environment permit school authorities to exercise more control over school-sponsored student expression than the First Amendment would otherwise permit. However, the judicial deference necessary in the high school setting and below - and in the factual context of Hazelwood - is inappropriate for a university setting. A high school is an entirely different environment from a university. This Court acknowledged such a difference when it explicitly reserved the question of whether the same level of deference to school officials expressed in Hazelwood would be “appropriate with respect to school-sponsored expressive activity at the college and university level.” Hazelwood, Id. at 273, n.7. In fact, every effort to justify censorship of college student media under Hazelwood has been rejected by the lower courts except by the Seventh Circuit in Hosty. As Justice Souter has noted, the “cases dealing with the right of teaching institutions to limit expressive freedom of students have been *8 confined to high schools, whose students and their school’s relation to them are different and at least arguably distinguishable from their counterparts in college education.” Board of Regents of the Univ. of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, 529 U.S. 217 (2000) (Sourer, J., concurring in the judgment) (citations omitted). This Court has explicitly recognized that where the “vital” principles of the First Amendment are at stake, “the first danger to liberty lies in granting the State the power to examine publications to determine whether or not they are based on some ultimate idea and, if so, for the State to classify them. The second, and corollary, danger to speech is from the chilling of individual thought and expression.” Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 835-36 (1995). These dangers are especially threatening in the university setting, where “the quality and creative power of student intellectual life to this day remains a vital measure of a school’s influence and attainment.” Id. Yet that right to review and censor a student publication is precisely what the Seventh Circuit has approved in Hosty. Such restrictions have no place at a public college or university. “For the University, by regulation, to cast disapproval on particular viewpoints of its students risks the suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the Nation’s intellectual life.” Id. Lower courts have consistently struck down administrative attempts to limit free and robust student expression at the postsecondary level. Joyner v. Whiting, 477 F.2d 456 (4th Cir. 1973) (university withdrawal of funding to student publication at North Carolina State University based on editorial condemning integration rejected); Stanley v. Magrath, 719 F.2d 279 (8th Cir. 1983) (attempt by *9 University of Minnesota to change student newspaper funding mechanism after publication of controversial humor issue rejected); Bazaar v. Fortune, 476 F.2d 570 (5th Cir. 1973), aff’d with modification, 489 F.2d 255 (en banc per curiam) (University of Mississippi’s censorship of student magazine because of “coarse language” and story about interracial love affair rejected). In fact, two appellate courts have explicitly refused to apply Hazelwood to college student media. Student Government Association v. Board of Trustees of the University of Massachusetts, 868 F. 2d 473, 480 n. 6 (1st Cir. 1989); Kincaid v. Gibson, 236 F.3d 342, 346 n. 4-5 (6th Cir. 2001) (en banc). College student expression should be subject to no greater restrictions than those applicable to the public at large. Healy, 408 U.S. at 180. The driving force prompting the enactment of the First Amendment was the founders’ unwavering commitment to the freedom of the mind. Nowhere is the mind more provoked, more nurtured, more challenged to new levels of enlightenment than on the university campus. Hazelwood did not, and should not be interpreted to have taken these fundamental precepts of college education into account when it diluted high school students’ First Amendment rights. Nothing in Hazelwood or its progeny should be read to alter the venerated balance favoring free and independent thought on America’s college and university campuses.

Campus free speech preserves a free and productive society. Lukianoff 2
(George, Samantha Harris, Foundation for Individual, Rights in Education, 2005 WL 2736313 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Margaret L. HOSTY et al., Petitioners, v. Patricia CARTER, Respondent. No. 05-377. October 19, 2005. On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Brief Amici Curiae of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education; The Coalition for Student and Academic Rights; Feminists for Free Expression; The First Amendment Project; Ifeminists.Net; National Association of Scholars; Accuracy in Academia; Leadership Institute; The Individual Rights Foundation; The American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Students for Academic Freedom in Support of Petitioners)
This Court has long emphasized and understood the importance of free and open expression on campus: The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation … Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957). *6 In the nearly fifty years since Sweezy, this Court and lower courts have repeatedly reaffirmed the special importance of robust free expression in higher education.3 In Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), this Court made clear that students are an important part of the collegiate marketplace of ideas when it ruled that a college, acting “as the instrumentality of the State, may not restrict speech … simply because it finds the views expressed by any group to be abhorrent.” Healy at 187-88. See also Papish v. Bd. of Curators of the Univ. of Mo., 410 U.S. 667, 670 (1973) (“the mere dissemination of ideas - no matter how offensive to good taste - on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’ ”).

Advantage 2: Civic Engagement 

Censorship of college journalism guts civic engagement. LoMonte 12-1
(Frank D., http://www.splc.org/article/2016/12/college-media-threats-report-2016)
Frank D. LoMonte, executive director of the SPLC, said, “It is hypocritical for colleges to claim they support civic engagement while defunding student news organizations, removing well-qualified faculty advisers, and otherwise intimidating journalists into compliance. Colleges are more obsessed with promoting a favorable public image than ever before, but a college that retaliates against students and faculty for unflattering journalism doesn't just look bad—it is bad. We need a top-level commitment from the presidents of America's colleges and universities to support editorially independent student-run news coverage, including secure funding and retaliation protection for students and their advisers.” Joan Bertin, NCAC executive director, said, “This report exposes restrictions on press and speech freedoms on campus and exhorts college and university administrators to educate students in the operation of our constitutional system by allowing students to engage in its most critical functions: seeking information, becoming engaged and informed, and speaking out on matters of importance.” Kelley Lash, president of CMA, said, “This issue impacts millions of educators and students. College Media Association emphatically supports the First Amendment freedoms of all student media at all institutions, both public and private, and agrees that these media must be free from all forms of external interference designed to influence content. Student media participants, and their advisers, should not be threatened or punished due to the content of the student media. Their rights of free speech and free press must always be guaranteed.”

Civic engagement is the vital internal link to solving every existential problem- its try or die for the affirmative. Small 06
(Jonathan, former Americorps VISTA for the Human Services Coalition,  “Moving Forward,” The Journal for Civic Commitment,  Spring, http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/other/engagement/Journal/Issue7/Small.jsp)
What will be the challenges of the new millennium? And how should we equip young people to face these challenges? While we cannot be sure of the exact nature of the challenges, we can say unequivocally that humankind will face them together. If the end of the twentieth century marked the triumph of the capitalists, individualism, and personal responsibility, the new century will present challenges that require collective action, unity, and enlightened self-interest. Confronting global warming, depleted natural resources, global super viruses, global crime syndicates, and multinational corporations with no conscience and no accountability will require cooperation, openness, honesty, compromise, and most of all solidarity – ideals not exactly cultivated in the twentieth century. We can no longer suffer to see life through the tiny lens of our own existence. Never in the history of the world has our collective fate been so intricately interwoven. Our very existence depends upon our ability to adapt to this new paradigm, to envision a more cohesive society.  With humankind’s next great challenge comes also great opportunity. Ironically, modern individualism backed us into a corner. We have two choices, work together in solidarity or perish together in alienation. Unlike any other crisis before, the noose is truly around the neck of the whole world at once. Global super viruses will ravage rich and poor alike, developed and developing nations, white and black, woman, man, and child. Global warming and damage to the environment will affect climate change and destroy ecosystems across the globe. Air pollution will force gas masks on our faces, our depleted atmosphere will make a predator of the sun, and chemicals will invade and corrupt our water supplies. Every single day we are presented the opportunity to change our current course, to survive modernity in a manner befitting our better nature. Through zealous cooperation and radical solidarity we can alter the course of human events. Regarding the practical matter of equipping young people to face the challenges of a global, interconnected world, we need to teach cooperation, community, solidarity, balance and tolerance in schools. We need to take a holistic approach to education. Standardized test scores alone will not begin to prepare young people for the world they will inherit. The three staples of traditional education (reading, writing, and arithmetic) need to be supplemented by three cornerstones of a modern education, exposure, exposure, and more exposure. How can we teach solidarity? How can we teach community in the age of rugged individualism? How can we counterbalance crass commercialism and materialism? How can we impart the true meaning of power? These are the educational challenges we face in the new century. It will require a radical transformation of our conception of education. We’ll need to trust a bit more, control a bit less, and put our faith in the potential of youth to make sense of their world.  In addition to a declaration of the gauntlet set before educators in the twenty-first century, this paper is a proposal and a case study of sorts toward a new paradigm of social justice and civic engagement education. Unfortunately, the current pedagogical climate of public K-12 education does not lend itself well to an exploratory study and trial of holistic education. Consequently, this proposal and case study targets a higher education model. Specifically, we will look at some possibilities for a large community college in an urban setting with a diverse student body.  Our guides through this process are specifically identified by the journal Equity and Excellence in Education. The dynamic interplay between ideas of social justice, civic engagement, and service learning in education will be the lantern in the dark cave of uncertainty. As such, a simple and straightforward explanation of the three terms is helpful to direct this inquiry. Before we look at a proposal and case study and the possible consequences contained therein, this paper will draw out a clear understanding of how we should characterize these ubiquitous terms and how their relationship to each other affects our study. Social Justice, Civic Engagement, Service Learning and Other Commie Crap Social justice is often ascribed long, complicated, and convoluted definitions. In fact, one could fill a good-sized library with treatises on this subject alone. Here we do not wish to belabor the issue or argue over fine points. For our purposes, it will suffice to have a general characterization of the term, focusing instead on the dynamics of its interaction with civic engagement and service learning. Social justice refers quite simply to a community vision and a community conscience that values inclusion, fairness, tolerance, and equality. The idea of social justice in America has been around since the Revolution and is intimately linked to the idea of a social contract. The Declaration of Independence is the best example of the prominence of social contract theory in the US. It states quite emphatically that the government has a contract with its citizens, from which we get the famous lines about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Social contract theory and specifically the Declaration of Independence are concrete expressions of the spirit of social justice.  Similar clamor has been made over the appropriate definitions of civic engagement and service learning, respectively. Once again, let’s not get bogged down on subtleties. Civic engagement is a measure or degree of the interest and/or involvement an individual and a community demonstrate around community issues. There is a longstanding dispute over how to properly quantify civic engagement. Some will say that today’s youth are less involved politically and hence demonstrate a lower degree of civic engagement. Others cite high volunteer rates among the youth and claim it demonstrates a high exhibition of civic engagement. And there are about a hundred other theories put forward on the subject of civic engagement and today’s youth. But one thing is for sure; today’s youth no longer see government and politics as an effective or valuable tool for affecting positive change in the world. Instead of criticizing this judgment, perhaps we should come to sympathize and even admire it. Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president.” Maybe the youth’s rejection of American politics isn’t a shortcoming but rather a rational and appropriate response to their experience. Consequently, the term civic engagement takes on new meaning for us today. In order to foster fundamental change on the systemic level, which we have already said is necessary for our survival in the twenty-first century, we need to fundamentally change our systems. Therefore, part of our challenge becomes convincing the youth that these systems, and by systems we mean government and commerce, have the potential for positive change. Civic engagement consequently takes on a more specific and political meaning in this context.  Service learning is a methodology and a tool for teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and deepening practical understanding of a subject. Since it is a relatively new field, at least in the structured sense, service learning is only beginning to define itself. Through service learning students learn by experiencing things firsthand and by exposing themselves to new points of view. Instead of merely reading about government, for instance, a student might experience it by working in a legislative office. Rather than just studying global warming out of a textbook, a student might volunteer time at an environmental group. If service learning develops and evolves into a discipline with the honest goal of making better citizens, teaching social justice, encouraging civic engagement, and most importantly, exposing students to different and alternative experiences, it could be a major feature of a modern education. Service learning is the natural counterbalance to our current overemphasis on standardized testing. Social justice, civic engagement, and service learning are caught in a symbiotic cycle. The more we have of one of them; the more we have of all of them. However, until we get momentum behind them, we are stalled. Service learning may be our best chance to jumpstart our democracy. In the rest of this paper, we will look at the beginning stages of a project that seeks to do just that.

Trump victory proves the case is a disad to every K- failure to prioritize civic engagement causes rightwing takeover. Rorty 98
(Richard, Stanford Philosophy Professor, Achieving Our Country, pp. 87-94)
If the formation of hereditary castes continues unimpeded, and if the pressures of globalization create such castes not only in the United States but in all the old democracies, we shall end up in an Orwellian world.  In such a world, there may be no supernational analogue of Big Brother, or any official creed analogous to Ingsoc.  But there will be an analogue of the Inner Party—namely, the international, cosmopolitan super-rich.  They will make all the important decisions.  The analogue of Orwell’s Outer Party will be educated, comfortably off, cosmopolitan professionals—Lind’s “overclass,” the people like you and me.  The job of people like us will be to make sure that the decisions made by the Inner Party are carried out smoothly and efficiently.  It will be in the interest of the international super-rich to keep our class relatively prosperous and happy.  For they need people who can pretend to be the political class of each of the individual nation-states.  For the sake of keeping the proles quiet, the super-rich will have to keep up the pretense that national politics might someday make a difference.  Since economic decisions are their prerogative, they will encourage politicians, of both the Left and the Right, to specialize in cultural issues.7  The aim will be to keep the minds of the proles elsewhere—to keep the bottom 75 percent of Americans and the bottom 95 percent of the world’s population busy with ethnic and religious hostilities, and with debates about sexual mores.  If the proles can be distracted from their own despair by media-created psuedo-events, including the occasional brief and bloody war, the super-rich will have little to fear.  Contemplation of this possible world invites two responses from the Left.  The first is to insist that the inequalities between nations need to be mitigated—and, in particular, that the Northern Hemisphere must share its wealth with the Southern.  The second is to insist that the primary responsibility of each democratic nation-state is to its own least advantaged citizens.  These two responses obviously conflict with each other.  In particular, the first response suggests that the old democracies should open their borders, whereas the second suggests that they should close them.8  The first response comes naturally to academic leftists, who have always been internationally minded.  The second response comes naturally to members of trade unions, and to the marginally employed people who can most easily be recruited into right-wing populist movements.  Union members in the United States have watched factory after factory close, only to reopen in Slovenia, Thailand, or Mexico.  It is no wonder that  they see the result of international free trade as prosperity for managers and stockholders, a better standard of living for workers in developing countries, and a very much worse standard of living for American workers.  It would be no wonder if they saw the American leftist intelligentsia as on the same side of the managers and stockholders—as sharing the same class interests.  For we intellectuals, who are mostly academics, are ourselves quite well insulated, at least in the short run, from the effects of globalization.  To make things worse, we often seem more interested in the workers of the developing world than in the fate of our fellow citizens.  Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments.  Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future.  The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.  Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.  At that point, something will crack.  The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone will assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salemen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.  A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out.  For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen.  In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.  One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out.  Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion.  The words “nigger” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace.  All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back.  All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.  But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of selfishness.  For after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make peace with the international superrich, just as Hitler made with the German industrialists.  He will invoke the glorious memory of the Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will generate short-term prosperity.  He will be a disaster for the country and the world.  People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his evitable rise.  Where, they will ask, was the American Left?  Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the consequences of globalization?  Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossesed?  It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth century, no longer have a Left.  Since nobody denies the existence of what I have called the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is unable to engage in national politics.  It is not the sort of the Left which can be asked to deal with the consequences of globalization.  To get the country to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions.  It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma.  I have two suggestions about how to effect this transition.  The first is that the Left should put a moratorium on theory.  It should try to kick its philosophy habit.  The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans.  It should ask the public to consider how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved.  In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy in which he expresses his exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of “individualism versus communitarianism.”  Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a common defect.  They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought.  What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that concrete human being, this or that special institution or social arrangement.  For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and their dialectical relationships with one another.  Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction.  He was wrong when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one which supplies “the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the established order.”9 For such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right.  The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be.  The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique.  When one of today’s academic leftists says that some topic has been “inadequately theorized,” you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism.  Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan’s impossible object of desire, helps to subvert the established order.  Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by “problematizing familiar concepts.”  Recent attempts to subvert social institutitons by problematizing concepts have produced a few very good books.  They have also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worts.  The authors of these purportedly “subversive” books honestly believe that the are serving human liberty.  But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate or a political strategy.  Even though what these authors “theorize” is often something very concrete and near at hand—a curent TV show, a media celebrity, a recent scandal—they offer the most absract and barren explanations imaginable.  These futile attempts to philosophize one’s way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country.  Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations.  These result in an intellec- tual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is called "power." This is the name of what Edmund- son calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook."10

Underview

We need to embrace the state as a heuristic - all of their reasons the state is bad prove uniqueness for my argument – debate can be a tool where we truly sharpen the tools of the master. Coverstone 5
MBA (Alan, Acting on Activism, http://home.montgomerybell.edu/~coversa/Acting20on20Activism20(Nov2017-2005).doc)

An important concern emerges when Mitchell describes reflexive fiat as a contest strategy capable of “eschewing the power to directly control external actors” (1998b, p. 20). Describing debates about what our government should do as attempts to control outside actors is debilitating and disempowering. Control of the US government is exactly what an active, participatory citizenry is supposed to be all about. After all, if democracy means anything, it means that citizens not only have the right, they also bear the obligation to discuss and debate what the government should be doing. Absent that discussion and debate, much of the motivation for personal political activism is also lost. Those who have co-opted Mitchell’s argument for individual advocacy often quickly respond that nothing we do in a debate round can actually change government policy, and unfortunately, an entire generation of debaters has now swallowed this assertion as an article of faith. The best most will muster is, “Of course not, but you don’t either!” The assertion that nothing we do in debate has any impact on government policy is one that carries the potential to undermine Mitchell’s entire project. If there is nothing we can do in a debate round to change government policy, then we are left with precious little in the way of pro-social options for addressing problems we face. At best, we can pursue some Pilot-like hand washing that can purify us as individuals through quixotic activism but offer little to society as a whole. It is very important to note that Mitchell (1998b) tries carefully to limit and bound his notion of reflexive fiat by maintaining that because it “views fiat as a concrete course of action, it is bounded by the limits of pragmatism” (p. 20). Pursued properly, the debates that Mitchell would like to see are those in which the relative efficacy of concrete political strategies for pro-social change is debated. In a few noteworthy examples, this approach has been employed successfully, and I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed judging and coaching those debates. The students in my program have learned to stretch their understanding of their role in the political process because of the experience. Therefore, those who say I am opposed to Mitchell’s goals here should take care at such a blanket assertion. However, contest debate teaches students to combine personal experience with the language of political power. Powerful personal narratives unconnected to political power are regularly co-opted by those who do learn the language of power. One need look no further than the annual state of the Union Address where personal story after personal story is used to support the political agenda of those in power. The so-called role-playing that public policy contest debates encourage promotes active learning of the vocabulary and levers of power in America. Imagining the ability to use our own arguments to influence government action is one of the great virtues of academic debate. Gerald Graff (2003) analyzed the decline of argumentation in academic discourse and found a source of student antipathy to public argument in an interesting place. I’m up against…their aversion to the role of public spokesperson that formal writing presupposes. It’s as if such students can’t imagine any rewards for being a public actor or even imagining themselves in such a role. This lack of interest in the public sphere may in turn reflect a loss of confidence in the possibility that the arguments we make in public will have an effect on the world. Today’s students’ lack of faith in the power of persuasion reflects the waning of the ideal of civic participation that led educators for centuries to place rhetorical and argumentative training at the center of the school and college curriculum. (Graff, 2003, p. 57) The power to imagine public advocacy that actually makes a difference is one of the great virtues of the traditional notion of fiat that critics deride as mere simulation. Simulation of success in the public realm is far more empowering to students than completely abandoning all notions of personal power in the face of governmental hegemony by teaching students that “nothing they can do in a contest debate can ever make any difference in public policy.” Contest debating is well suited to rewarding public activism if it stops accepting as an article of faith that personal agency is somehow undermined by the so-called role playing in debate. Debate is role-playing whether we imagine government action or imagine individual action. Imagining myself starting a socialist revolution in America is no less of a fantasy than imagining myself making a difference on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, both fantasies influenced my personal and political development virtually ensuring a life of active, pro-social, political participation. Neither fantasy reduced the likelihood that I would spend my life trying to make the difference I imagined. One fantasy actually does make a greater difference: the one that speaks the language of political power. The other fantasy disables action by making one a laughingstock to those who wield the language of power. Fantasy motivates and role-playing trains through visualization. Until we can imagine it, we cannot really do it. Role-playing without question teaches students to be comfortable with the language of power, and that language paves the way for genuine and effective political activism. Debates over the relative efficacy of political strategies for pro-social change must confront governmental power at some point. There is a fallacy in arguing that movements represent a better political strategy than voting and person-to-person advocacy. Sure, a full-scale movement would be better than the limited voice I have as a participating citizen going from door to door in a campaign, but so would full-scale government action. Unfortunately, the gap between my individual decision to pursue movement politics and the emergence of a full-scale movement is at least as great as the gap between my vote and democratic change. They both represent utopian fiat. Invocation of Mitchell to support utopian movement fiat is simply not supported by his work, and too often, such invocation discourages the concrete actions he argues for in favor of the personal rejectionism that under girds the political cynicism that is a fundamental cause of voter and participatory abstention in America today.
The state is inevitable  - we need to understand how the state works to re-appropriate it.  Koopman 08
Koopman, 8- Sarah Koopman (Ph.D., political geography)  is a feminist political geographer who does collaborative research with international solidarity movements to support their efforts to decolonize the relationships between global North and South. Her work also speaks to dynamics in humanitarianism, development, and peacebuilding more generally.(“Imperialism Within: Can the Master’s Tools Bring Down Empire?”, http://www.acme-journal.org/vol7/SKo.pdf?q=within)

Those of us within the core of empire may think of empire as imposed over ‘there’ on ‘them’, but to effectively struggle against it we have to see how it also affects ‘us’ over ‘here’, and see the imperialism we carry within. The good helper role is one way empire becomes quite intimate. Solidarity activists have used it to try to bring down empire, but this master’s tool is toxic. When we use it we may appear to take tiles off of the master’s house, but we unintentionally reinforce the foundations, the systems of domination that prop up empire. We cannot simply ignore or throw away this tool. The good helper role is too strong a trope, and we continue to slip into these patterns or be read through them. There is no place outside of power, no pure opposition (Butler, 1999). There is no Zion off the grid. The master’s house is taking up all of the land. If we are going to build a new house it has to be on this same plot, and most of our building materials will be recycled from his house. We cannot ignore his tools, or we will constantly trip over them; but we can dismantle and rework them. Changing the good helper tool to become true compas is a constant process. With this modified tool in-the-making we can dismantle the master’s house, and at the same time be building our own. One of the key components of that better world is new ways of relating to others, which requires a new sense of self. As we build these, we also undercut some of the main beams of the master’s house.

Empirics prove free speech is empowering and an effective tool to fight discrimination on campus’. Strossen, Former President of the ACLU, 2k
Strossen, Nadine. "Incitement to hatred: Should there be a limit." S. Ill. ULJ 25 (2000): 243. CC

B. A Counterspeech Strategy is Both Principled and Pragmatic The viewpoint-neutrality principle reflects the philosophy, first stated in pathbreaking opinions by former United States Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, that the appropriate response to speech with which one disagrees in a free society is not censorship but counterspeech-more speech, not less. Persuasion, not coercion, is the solution. 38 Accordingly, the appropriate response to hate speech is not to censor it, but to answer it. Recall, as I discussed earlier, that this is the strategy that the Anti-Defamation League has been pursuing so effectively in response to Internet hate speech. This counterspeech strategy is better than censorship not only in principle, but also from a practical perspective. That is because of the potentially empowering experience of responding to hate speech with counterspeech. I say "potentially," since I realize that the pain, anger and other negative emotions provoked by being the target of hate speech could well have an incapacitating effect on some targeted individuals, preventing them from engaging in counterspeech. Even in such a situation, though, other members of the community who are outraged by the hate speech could engage in counterspeech, and that is likely to have a more positive impact than a censorial response. Furthermore, once other community members denounce the hate speech, it should be easier for the target to join them in doing so. I will illustrate these practical benefits of a non-censorial, counterspeech response to hate speech in the campus context. Far from being paternalistic, counterspeech is empowering to students; it transforms students who would otherwise be seen-and see themselves-largely as victims into activists and reformers. It underscores their dignity, rather than undermines it. One excellent example of the effective use of counterspeech comes from Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. Under the leadership of a law professor on that campus, Charles Calleros, the faculty and administration rejected any code that outlawed hate speech or punished students who expressed it. Instead, they endorsed an educational or counterspeech response to any hate speech. Significantly, as a Latino, Charles Calleros is himself a member of a minority group. As such, though, he believes that stifling or punishing hate speech is no better for advancing nondiscrimination and equality than it is for free speech. And, based on his university's actual experience with the non-censorial, more-speech response to hate speech, Professor Calleros' original speech-protective views have been reinforced. Professor Calleros has written articles about the positive impact of the non-censorial approach to hate speech at ASU, explaining how it has been empowering and supportive for the would-be "victims" of the hate speech, and also educational and promotive of tolerance and anti-discrimination values for the university community as a whole.39 Because it is so instructive, I would like to quote at some length Professor Calleros' description of the first hate speech incident under ASU's pro-educational, non-censorial campus policy: Four black women students... were understandably outraged when they noticed a racially degrading poster near the residence of a friend they were visiting in Cholla, a campus dormitory. Rather than simply complain to their friends ... they took positive action. First, they spoke with a Resident Assistant who told them that they could express their feelings to the owners of the poster and encourage them to remove it .... The students knocked on the door that displayed the racist poster and expressed their outrage in the strongest terms to the occupant who answered the door .... He agreed that the poster was inappropriate, removed it, and allowed the women to make a photocopy of it. The four students then met with the staff director of Cholla. That director set up a meeting for all members of Cholla .... A capacity crowd showed up .... All seemed to accept the challenging conclusion that the poster was protected by the First Amendment, and I regard what followed as a model example of constructive response. First, the black women who discovered the poster explained as perhaps only they could why the poster hurt them deeply .... The Anglo-American students assured the black women that they did not share the stereotypes reflected in the poster, yet all agreed that they would benefit from learning more about other cultures. The group reached a consensus that they would support ASU's Black History events and would work toward developing multicultural programming at Cholla. The four women who led the discussion expressed their desire to meet with the residents of the offending dormitory room to exchange views and to educate them about their feelings and about the danger of stereotyping. I understand that the owner of the poster is planning to publish an apology in this newspaper today and a personal communication with the four women would be an excellent followup .... The entire University community then poured its energy into the kind of constructive action and dialogue that took place in the Cholla meeting. Students organized an open forum. The message was this: at most, a few individuals on a campus think that the racist poster is humorous; in contrast, a great number of demonstrators represent the more prevalent campus view that degrading racial stereotypes are destructive. Such a message is infinitely more effective than disciplining the students who displayed the racist poster.4 0 In addition to empowering the students who encountered the racist poster and educating the students who had displayed it, the non-censorial response to this hate speech incident also galvanized constructive steps to counter bias campus-wide. One of the student leaders of this constructive college-wide response was Rossie Turman, who was then Chairman of the AfricanAmerican Coalition at Arizona State University. Turman's leadership in supporting both free speech and non-discrimination earned him much recognition, including an award from the Anti-Defamation League. As one press account stated: Turman and other campus minority group leaders handled their anger by calling a press conference and rally to voice their concerns and allow students and administrators to speak .... Within days, the ASU Faculty Senate passed a previously-proposed domestic diversity course requirement. Turman said: "When you get a chance to swing at racism, and you do, you feel more confident about doing it the next time. It was a personal feeling of empowerment, that I don't have to take that kind of stupidity .... The sickest thing would have been if the racists had been kicked out, the university sued, and people were forced to defend these folks. It would have been a momentary victory, but we would have lost the war." After this incident, Rossie Turman went on to be elected student body President at ASU, the first African-American to hold that position on a campus that had an African-American student population of only 2.3. Upon his graduation from college, he went to Columbia Law School. Therefore, for him, what could have been a disempowering, victimizing experience with hate speech became instead an empowering, leadership-development experience-not despite the absence of censorship-but precisely because of it. In contrast with the more-speech response to hate speech adopted by Arizona State University, a censorial response does not empower the maligned students. To the contrary, it may well perpetuate their victimization. Worse yet, ironically, censoring hate speech may well empower verbal abusers, by making them into free speech martyrs. This point was captured by the Progressive magazine: The attempt to ban or punish hateful speech does nothing at all to empower the presumed victims of bigotry. Instead, it compels them to seek the protection of authorities whose own commitment to justice is often, to put it mildly, less than vigorous. Restraining speech increases the dependency of minorities and other victims of hate and oppression. Instead of empowering them, it enfeebles them.4

AND AFF gets RVIs – 

1. AFF flex – neg has the ability to collapse to either layer so aff needs the same ability for the 2AR – this outweighs. A. 2NR collapse – time skew becomes 6-1 since I cover multiple layers, which makes it impossible to win B. 1AR is too short to read theory compared to the neg so AFF needs each layer to be reciprocal rather than adding more unreciprocal avenues
   2. Only neg can read T because only AFF has a T burden so since aff can’t reciprocally respond they need the RVI to compensate for neg’s unique avenue to the ballot.

Tournament: HARVARD WESTLAKE | Round: 4 | Opponent: LOOK | Judge: LOOK
The Nazis are back and Trump’s cabinet is whiter than Pence’s hair—welcome to Trump’s dystopian America where the script has been flipped and liberals live and die by their self-righteousness. Within spaces of education liberals have insulated themselves from the conservative voices around them, which allows for the rise of Trump—only engagement in constructive dialogue can solve.
Dahlen 12/5 (Nathan, reporter @ the Heights, “Political Correctness in the Age of Trump,” December 5, 2016, http://bcheights.com/opinions/op-ed/2016/political-correctness-age-trump///LADI)
“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.” By invoking PC culture to excuse his callous language and behavior throughout his campaign, Trump distracted from the way in which the phenomenon has actually become a problem. In these instances, and so many more, Trump isn’t voicing a reasoned view—he is being mean and vindictive. If our politically correct culture stops Trump and people like him from calling women “dogs”, that is, if it upholds commonly accepted norms of treating other people with respect, I hope we can all agree that it is actually a good thing. On college campuses, which pundits often point to as the worst examples of excessive political correctness, we may actually need an even stronger PC culture, if we define it as the suppression of hateful insults. Earlier this semester, on our own campus, someone rearranged the letters of a parking lot sign to spell an anti-gay slur. After the election, several instances of hateful and discriminatory acts toward minorities were documented on other college campuses. But we cannot let Trump distort the term. PC culture is actually beneficial insofar as it suppresses the use of hateful language. The real problem is that it prevents people from expressing their views, which inhibits constructive discourse. It empowers people to ignore other arguments or instinctively condemn them, or worse, their author, as some sort of “ism” without considering the view on its own. In this sense, political correctness does reign tyrannically on college campuses, where the demand for ideological conformity limits intellectual diversity. When people do share dissenting social and political views, some simply refuse to listen, or worse. Innumerable examples have been criticized in the media over and over: Speakers disinvited from campuses, professors and administrators forced to step down, student op-ed columnists attacked and disavowed. It seems to me that these examples, which draw ire from all corners, are the clearest manifestations of a much more subtle and insidious culture that represses thought and expression. Campus debate about Trump and everything he represents, or lack thereof (debate, after all, implies disagreement), is a perfect, though regrettable example. Political correctness, if I can use the term to describe this phenomenon, is definitely a problem when students on campus, and indeed people across the country, feel unable to express their views, their instincts—like their support for Donald Trump—for fear of being labeled and attacked. I was utterly shocked and upset the night Trump won. In the following days, I felt angry and despondent. I had no desire to speak with anyone who voted for him, even though I have very little personally on the line with a Trump presidency. I realize, then, that this is easier for me to say than for others, but I would not be making this point about our culture if I did not feel strongly that decent and respectful conversation is the only way forward. Not only is freedom of thought and expression critical to the preservation of civilization, but without conversation, hearts and minds cannot change. People can only be persuaded if they are engaged in dialogue. People can only be engaged in dialogue if they feel comfortable enough to express their views. The more we realize how much we share in common with each other simply by virtue of being human, and that our political views do not define us, the more comfortable we’ll be talking with one another. Let’s forge a culture that both condemns hateful language and supports respectful, intellectually diverse discussion.
The role of the ballot is to vote for the debater that best critically empowers students—Debate should focus on creating a new generation of citizens that are critical thinkers educated about social problems—that’s key to equality
Giroux 15 (Henry, American scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, “Higher Education and the Promise of Insurgent Public Memory,” March 3, 2015, http://truth-out.org/news/item/29396-higher-education-and-the-promise-of-insurgent-public-memory)// LADI
The current call to cleanse history in the name of a false patriotism that celebrates a new illiteracy as a way of loving the United States is a discourse of anti-memory, a willful attempt at forgetting the past in the manufactured fog of historical amnesia. This is particularly true when it comes to erasing the work of a number of critical intellectuals who have written about higher education as the practice of freedom, including John Dewey, George S. Counts, W.E.B. Du Bois, the Social Reconstructionists, and others, all of whom viewed higher education as integral to the development of both engaged critical citizens and the university as a democratic public sphere. (19) Under the reign of neoliberalism, with few exceptions, higher education appears to be increasingly decoupling itself from its historical legacy as a crucial public sphere, responsible for both educating students for the workplace and providing them with the modes of critical discourse, interpretation, judgment, imagination, and experiences that deepen and expand democracy. As universities adopt the ideology of the transnational corporation and become subordinated to the needs of capital, the war industries and the Pentagon, they are less concerned about how they might educate students about the ideology and civic practices of democratic governance and the necessity of using knowledge to address the challenges of public life. (20) Instead, as part of the post-9/11 military-industrial-academic complex, higher education increasingly conjoins military interests and market values, identities and social relations while the role of the university as a public good, a site of critical dialogue and a place that calls students to think, question, learn how to take risks, and act with compassion and conviction is dismissed as impractical or subversive. (21) The corporatization, militarization and dumbing down of rigorous scholarship, and the devaluing of the critical capacities of young people mark a sharp break from a once influential educational tradition in the United States. The corporatization, militarization and dumbing down of rigorous scholarship, and the devaluing of the critical capacities of young people mark a sharp break from a once influential educational tradition in the United States, extending from Thomas Jefferson to John Dewey to Maxine Greene, who held that freedom flourishes in the worldly space of the public realm only through the work of educated, critical citizens. Within this democratic tradition, education was not confused with training; instead, its critical function was propelled by the need to provide students with the knowledge and skills that enable a "politically interested and mobilized citizenry, one that has certain solidarities, is capable of acting on its own behalf, and anticipates a future of ever greater social equality across lines of race, gender, and class." (22) Other prominent educators and theorists such as Hannah Arendt, James B. Conant and Cornelius Castoriadis have long believed and rightly argued that we should not allow education to be modeled after the business world. Dewey, in particular, warned about the growing influence of the "corporate mentality" and the threat that the business model posed to public spaces, higher education and democracy. He argued:¶ The business mind, having its own conversation and language, its own interests, its own intimate groupings in which men of this mind, in their collective capacity, determine the tone of society at large as well as the government of industrial society.... We now have, although without formal or legal status, a mental and moral corporateness for which history affords no parallel. (23) Dewey and the other public intellectuals mentioned above shared a common vision and project of rethinking what role education might play in providing students with the habits of mind and ways of acting that would enable them to "identify and probe the most serious threats and dangers that democracy faces in a global world dominated by instrumental and technological thinking." (24) Conant, a former president of Harvard University, argued that higher education should create a class of "American radicals," who could fight for equality, favor public education, elevate human needs over property rights and challenge "groups which have attained too much power." (25) Conant's views seem so radical today that it is hard to imagine him being hired as a university president at Harvard or any other institution of higher learning.
Ethical focuses locks in a grammar of suffering – only a turn towards critical thought can create a new vocabulary for these discussions
Giroux 13 (Henry, American scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, “Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University,” 29 October 2013, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university) LADI
In a market-driven system in which economic and political decisions are removed from social costs, the flight of critical thought and social responsibility is further accentuated by what Zygmunt Bauman calls "ethical tranquillization."6  One result is a form of depoliticization that works its way through the social order, removing social relations from the configurations of power that shape them,  substituting what Wendy Brown calls "emotional and personal vocabularies for political ones in formulating solutions to political problems."6 Consequently, it becomes difficult for young people too often bereft of a critical education to translate private troubles into public concerns. As private interests trump the public good, public spaces are corroded, and short-term personal advantage replaces any larger notion of civic engagement and social responsibility. Under such circumstances, to cite C. W. Mills, we are witnessing the breakdown of democracy, the disappearance of critical intellectuals and "the collapse of those public spheres which offer a sense of critical agency and social imagination."8 Mill's prescient comments amplify what has become a tragic reality. Missing from neoliberal market societies are those public spheres - from public and higher education to the mainstream media and digital screen culture - where people can develop what might be called the civic imagination. For example, in the last few decades, we have seen market mentalities attempt to strip education of its public values, critical content and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships and the disappearance of the social state in the name of individual, expanded choice.  Tied largely to instrumental ideologies and measurable paradigms, many institutions of higher education are now committed almost exclusively to economic goals, such as preparing students for the workforce - all done as part of an appeal to rationality, one that eschews matters of inequality, power and the ethical grammars of suffering.9  Many universities have not only strayed from their democratic mission, they also seem immune to the plight of students who face a harsh new world of high unemployment, the prospect of downward mobility and debilitating debt.
The alt right is being energized in the status quo—this should control the uniqueness frame—students are already engaging in harmful dialogue in the status quo it’s just a question of engagement from the other side—limits on free speech are just being used to sustain white supremacy
Harkinson 12/6 (Josh, reporter @ mother jones, “The Push to Enlist "Alt-Right" Recruits on College Campuses,” December 6, 2016, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/richard-spencer-alt-right-college-activism//LADI)
How much support is there for the loose-knit coalition of white nationalists and other far-right extremists known as the "alt-right"? Despite a spike in media coverage for the movement in the wake of Donald Trump's victory, a recent conference hosted by white nationalist Richard Spencer, who coined the term "alt-right," drew only about 275 attendees in Washington, DC. And after a video from the event went viral, showing audience members giving Nazi salutes to Spencer's cry of "hail Trump," the movement faced a fierce backlash. Although Trump named alt-right hero Stephen Bannon as his chief White House strategist, the president-elect went on to disavow the alt-right—in general terms, at least—in an interview with the New York Times. The movement gained momentum online in 2016 but is no longer just about social media, says Spencer; he sees a need to prove that the alt-right can attract supporters in the real world. And he says the best place to do that is on college campuses, starting with a speech he plans to deliver on Tuesday on the campus of Texas AandM University. "People in college are at this point in their lives where they are actually open to alternative perspectives, for better and for worse," Spencer says. "I think you do need to get them while they are young. I think rewiring the neurons of someone over 50 is effectively impossible." Recruiting on college campuses has long been a goal for "academic racists" such as Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow, a white nationalist whom Spencer helped bring to Duke University for an event in 2007, when Spencer was a student there. In May, Spencer and other white nationalists set up a "safe space" on the University of California-Berkeley's Sproul Plaza to discuss "how race affects people of European heritage." He claims that he will be giving two more speeches about the alt-right at universities in California. "The left just owns academia through and through," Spencer says, "so I think it is important to go to the belly of the beast and not let them own it." In recent months, Breitbart News pundit Milo Yiannopoulos' "Dangerous Faggot Tour" drew crowds at college campuses around the country. Several colleges canceled scheduled talks by Yiannopoulos because of "security concerns." Yiannopoulos does not label himself "alt-right" but has characterized the movement as a legitimate response to political correctness. He often describes white males as victims of "reverse discrimination" and speaks euphemistically of defending "Western values." A talk that he gave on the alt-right at the University of Houston in September drew cheers and a chant invoking the name of the alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog. "That was a revelation for me," Spencer said about Yiannopoulos' talk. "What we are doing is known to people, it's edgy and dangerous, it's cool and hip. It's that thing our parents don't want us to do. So that was definitely a huge inspiration." University campuses historically have incubated a range of social movements, from Marxism to multiculturalism on the left to right-wing movements such as neoliberalism and fascism, including Nazism in Germany (and in the United States). More recently, several groups sympathetic to the alt-right have cropped up on some college campuses: Identity Evropa Identity Evropa describes itself as "a generation of awakened Europeans who have discovered we are part of the great peoples, history, and civilization that flowed from the European continent" and who "oppose those who would defame our history and rich cultural heritage." Founded in February by 30-year-old ex-Marine Nathan Damigo, a junior social science major at California State University-Stanislaus, the group has been active on several California campuses. Its supporters have plastered campuses and downtown areas with posters featuring slogans such as "Let's Become Great Again" and "Serve Your People" superimposed over images or European Renaissance art. Most college professors who teach classes about race and identity "haven't done their homework," says Damigo, who, like Spencer, promotes pseudoscientific theories about cognitive differences between the races. Most of his members, he says, are recent college graduates who discovered racialist ideas on their own and now aim to "mentor" younger students while "waging a culture war" on the ivory tower: "We want to have a constant presence there," he says. "We want to normalize our ideas and get to the point where we can push faculty into incorporating this literature into the lectures and into the educational program." In November, Damigo and more than two dozen Identity Evropa members attended Spencer's conference.
Ignoring these ideologies have allowed them to become normalized into mainstream discourse—it’s here whether we like it or not
Roberts 16 (Stephen, writer @ political storm, “The Alt-Right: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly,” December 2, 2016, http://www.politicalstorm.com/alt-right-good-bad-ugly///LADI)
The ugly. There is also a virulent strain of white supremacism at work within the alt-right. Nationalism, when coupled with ethnicity, becomes downright racism. We must display caution here (in a way that many in the alt-right do not): not all of the alt-right are white supremacists.  It would be supremely unfair to loop President-elect Trump in with this group simply because they supported him. Even Steve Bannon—former Breitbart editor and current Trump advisor—should not be called a white supremacist for expressing sympathy toward some of alt-rights aims, like nationalism. At the same time, we cannot entirely decouple Bannon and others from the more virulent strains. When popular pundits like Ann Coulter can peddle in the language of the alt-right—using terms like “cuckservative,” for example—she is peddling those virulent views into the mainstream. By providing outlets for elements of this movement that are far beyond the paleoconservative pale, figures like Coulter are generating greater publicity and acceptance for it. The GOP, in particular, must be especially concerned about this movement. It lends itself to the outdated stereotype of the GOP as the racist, misogynistic party. There is nothing wrong with being a nationalist—in fact, renewed patriotism and concern for our national well-being should be strongly encouraged. One can be an anti-PC iconoclast, however, without engaging in the same level of mockery that one would typically expect of the elites. The GOP should carefully distinguish between the populist movement, which swept Trump into power, and the alt-right—and then excise the latter.
There’s a direct trade-off—dialogue and first amendment limits are zero sum—even if theoretically they can coexist, the way this materially plays out always chills speech.
Lipson 16 (Charles, real clear politics writer, “Social Justice Warriors Against Free Speech,” August 29, 2016, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/08/29/social_justice_warriors_against_free_speech_131628.html//LADI)
Well, that didn't take long. The Social Justice Warriors have emerged from their safe spaces and begun attacking the University of Chicago's statement supporting free speech and opposing trigger warnings and safe spaces. They are complaining for a good reason: They don’t want free speech to spread to other campuses. What are the main arguments against the Chicago letter? One of my former graduate students sent me this report from a group website for her liberal arts college (a very fine school). What do her fellow alums say? Well, for one, they are surprised they even need to make arguments for their side. For years, they haven't had to. Administrators, like those at the University of Missouri, simply rolled over and played dead rather than confront them. But that was political cowardice, not real intellectual engagement. Now that the Social Justice Warriors must defend their position, what do they say? The arguments against Chicago's free-speech letter They object to "no trigger warnings" because it is insensitive to people who have experienced trauma and might need a "heads-up" if they are going to encounter triggering content in class. They object to "no safe spaces" because those are the only places where marginalized groups will feel completely free to voice their opinions. They say safe spaces are not about banning dissenting viewpoints but about banning hateful, bigoted speech that is truly harmful. They reject the idea that colleges should be places where ideas are freely exchanged because “not all ideas are equal and some are too offensive to have a place in the community.” The common theme is "we must all be more sensitive. Otherwise people will be harmed psychologically." What's right with those arguments, and what's wrong? First, let's consider trigger warnings. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a professor or teaching assistant saying, "We are going to discuss Greek myths and some of you might find them troubling." But it’s also perfectly fine if, all of a sudden in a class on Greek myths, the professor discusses one. The students at Columbia University actually wanted warnings before all myths. Their demand was not about helping one or two students in a large class. It was simply bullying under the cloak of "sensitivity." Anyway, universities are all about discussing sensitive subjects and raising troubling questions. If a university is really vigorous, then the whole place should be wrapped in a gigantic trigger warning. Finally, as a teacher, how can I possibly anticipate all the things that might trigger students in my class on "Big Wars From Ancient Greece to Early Modern Europe" (a lecture course I am teaching next year)? When I mention the Roman war with German tribes on the Rhine, how can I know that your grandfather died fighting on the Rhine in World War II? Of course, if your grandfather did die fighting on the Rhine, or if your mother was named Jocasta and you accidentally slept with her, you might be triggered by the class discussions. What then? Well, that is why universities have mental-health professionals to help you deal with your anxieties, fears, and depression. Again, it is fine if professors want to give students a heads-up, but it is a mistake to demand it of everyone. It is a much bigger mistake to stifle class discussion for fear of offending. That's not hypothetical. That is exactly what happens in classrooms now. (So does ideologically rigid teaching that demands students repeat the professor's views. But that's another topic for another day.) Safe spaces are another ruse. Are they really the only places where marginalized groups will feel completely free to voice their opinions, as these fashionable liberal-arts students say? We need to distinguish among three kinds of places on campus: classrooms, public spaces, and private (or semi-private) places like sororities or campus houses for co-religionists. If classrooms do not invite free expression, then something is badly wrong with the university. Actually, some classrooms do not. They are almost always the classrooms run by the ideological comrades of the students demanding safe spaces. If you think diverse viewpoints are welcome in classes for race and gender studies, you are living in a dream world. In public spaces, like dining halls, people do sometimes group themselves voluntarily by race, sports, or dormitories. Nothing wrong with that, although persistent segregation by race, ethnicity, or religion would be a setback for the students' college experience. Finally, it is perfectly fine for people to find their cozy spaces privately, at Hillel House (for Jewish students) or Calvert House (for Catholics) or a fraternity, sorority, or club. Who invades those private spaces? Normally, it's the Social Justice Warriors from the Dean's Office who object to students wearing sombreros to a party featuring Mexican food. What about the argument that "safe spaces aren't about banning dissenting viewpoints but about banning hateful, bigoted speech that is truly harmful"? The obvious problem is this: Who decides? You think your march is to support women's reproductive rights. Your roommate thinks it is about killing unborn babies. Which position is hateful or bigoted? Again, who decides? Which of these is so hateful that it has no place in an academic community? But let's take the clear-cut example of racial epithets, which are hate speech and add nothing to academic debate or learning. They do cause emotional harm, or at least they can. The difficulty here is "Where do we draw the line?" and, again, "Who draws it?" Is it hate speech to say, "He hates to spend money. What a Jew"? Most Jews would say yes, that's hateful. What if I said, "He hates to spend money. What a Scotsman"? Most Scots would say that recognizes their financial prudence. It is precisely because drawing these distinctions is so hard that our First Amendment, as interpreted by the courts, gives very wide latitude to speech and draws the line at specific threats to individuals and other palpable dangers. Canada, by contrast, has laws barring insults to minorities. (So do most European countries.) That's why a book arguing that Canadian Muslims were not assimilating and some were becoming radicals was prohibited and its authors harshly fined. The author and publisher spent years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, trying to reverse that ruling. In the U.S., the book sold well, though you probably never heard about it. Muslim-Americans seemed to survive it. There is real hate speech, of course, but you and I might not agree on what it is. And we might not agree on who gets to decide. I don't want some mid-level bureaucrat in the campus housing-and-dining office telling me what I cannot say or wear to a party. Get over it. By the way, the Yale professors who told students exactly that -- try not to be bothered by Halloween costumes you don't like -- were vilified, screamed at, taunted, and ultimately run out of their jobs in the housing system. Irony alert: They were brutally harassed by the sensitivity police.
The impact is mass violence and a re-creation of violent hegemonic systems of the status quo—only an unflinching agonistic stance can solve.
Wingenbach 11 (Ed, Notre Dame Government and international studies PhD, “Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy,” pg 190-198, https://books.google.com/books?id=7-8JrC64UgwCandprintsec=frontcover//LADI)
Third, because Knops ignores the situated source of antagonism and the persistence of hegemony in the construction of meaning he misconceives the problem of subordination and oppression. The objective of agonistic democracy is not to eliminate all relations of domination and oppression; this sort of utopian aspiration leads precisely to the rationalist exclusions they are at pains to expose. Rather, the goal is to craft conditions under which these relations can be made visible, and thus contested. The common values that make agonism possible, and their dominant institutional interpretations, inevitably and explicitly favor some identities, interests, or other articulations of subjectivity over others. In fact, these values and their dominant interpretations act to shape subjectivity so that they are seen not as constructions but simply "the way things are." Because Knops assumes the project of agonism is to eliminate these hegemonic relations of domination, he also assumes that Mouffe needs to establish an unbiased and objective set of criteria by which to identify and ameliorate these injustices. Hence his claim that her theory ultimately must rely on rationalist arguments. But agonism does not share this aspiration. Instead pluralist agonism accepts that the inevitability of injustice is the price of democratic plurality, and endeavors to identify practices that render these injustices amenable to contestation. Agonism hopes to set interpretation against interpretation, identity against identity, hegemonic claim against hegemonic claim, so that in the perpetual conflict between citizens the burden of domination shifts and moves. Where Knops sees unbiased consensus on rational principles eliminating domination, Mouffe sees an elaboration of hegemonic power so thorough as to make the injustices it produces not merely invisible but unthinkable. When Knops concludes that Mouffe's agonism should be seen as an adjunct to deliberation, one that calls attention to "the erroneous projection of one party's understandings onto another, constraining their meanings - it is fraught with the possibility of hegemony" (2007, 125), he is mistakenly subsuming agonism into deliberation by eliding the ontological distinctions between the two accounts. Deliberative democracy has faith that careful scrutiny of arguments, rational evaluation of principles, and deliberation oriented toward understanding will produce an unforced consensus shorn of power, domination, and manipulation. Its reconstruction of democratic principles is one that aspires to transcend the ambiguity of the everyday in order to resolve injustice. It takes this possibility as a real one, because its ontology is fundamentaily committed to the universality of human nature. Agonistic democrats refuse any such commitments, asserting instead that the premises of social life are themselves products of humanity, and that the ontology within which our politics emerges is itself a product of political assertions. No standard can be found or created that can extract us from this process of meaning creation, and thus all political standards should be understood as both historically constraining (we cannot start anew) and subject to collective reconstruction (we can act upon our situation by rendering it visible). Nonetheless, Knops's confusion is understandable-how is one to know what this process of contestation and reinterpretation looks like, absent some institutional suggestions consistent with the particularity of the history that makes agonism attractive? Political liberalism, modified as I suggested in the last chapter, helps clarify this question. Pluralist agonism requires some shared commitments without which the unavoidably contentious process of disputing hegemonic interpretations will descend into antagonism. Precisely because the clashes of politics are not oriented toward consensus, and precisely because democratic engagement always involves challenges with the potential to become explicitly violent (as all challenges are, at some level, hegemonic contestations), some institutional norms are needed to confine or limit the range of these battles. Agonism proposes that our situated context may provide governing norms that permit the procedures of contestation to occur, without those same norms becoming idealized or acquiring pseudo¬transcendent status. We begin from "our" norms, which contain within them some commitment to fundamental values (liberty/equality), but make the contest over the meaning and implementation of these norms a central aspect of institutional and political debate. Schmittian violence emerges when contestants cannot perceive a commonality sufficient to justify limitations of the tactics employed. But the commonality that permits these shared limits need not hold extra-political status. Put differently, the concern of critics of agonism seems to be that the barrier to violence can only be effective if it is itself uncontaminated by the conflicts it is meant to mediate, or can be sufficiently abstracted from these conflicts as to play a semi-transcendental role. If the boundaries of engagement are recognized as being themselves in play, then they will lack sufficient purchase to restrain politics. Thus the proposed dichotomy: either agonism will collapse into warfare, or agonism presupposes a hidden extra-political claim. Emphasizing the post-foundational elements from which agonism derives helps illustrate why this dichotomy can be plausibly refused. This is why the tum to Rawls (and, to a lesser extent, Habermas) is useful for agonistic democracy. Political liberalism details the way institutional and cultural structures shape and constrain political engagement without demanding an external anchor. Political liberalism is a situated reconstruction of the emergence of the values of liberal democracy and the operation of those values upon citizens. It is only the Rawlsian insistence upon a well-ordered society that makes political liberalism appear as a moralized account of democratic politics rather than a situated and contingent one. As I show in the previous chapter, the effectiveness of the situated norms of liberalism does not, ultimately, depend upon the semi-transcendental status Rawls evokes. That these values are ours historically, and that they shape our identities and aspirations contingently, provides sufficient status to guide political action. Highlighting this contingency and inviting citizen engagement in conflicts over the interpretation and application of these values need not weaken their pragmatic significance. It is only dangerous to expose the contingency of our deeply shared ontopolitical premises if one of those premises suggests that legitimacy must be derived from criteria not subject to human agency. It is on this point that agonism captures better than many theories the central insights of democratic theory. To the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective autonomy from imposed authority, to the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective agency over the terms of social cooperation, and to the extent democracy is identified with the rights of individuals and collectives to challenge these authorities and those terms, an agonistic account of democracy as situated historically while engaged in ongoing reconstruction of the contingent but deeply shared values of liberal democracy represents a powerful vision. It shares with other post-metaphysical theorists, like Habermas and Rawls, an emphasis on the reconstructive aspects of democratic theory, designed to adduce from extant practices and necessary assumptions the best possible description of legitimate democratic politics. But it pushes these reconstructive projects further by demanding that the practices and institutions of democracy itself be engaged in this reconstruction rather than merely governed by it. Agonistic democracy emerged reactively, offered as an alternative vision of liberalism, deliberation, and democratic engagement. The emphasis of this work on critique, practices of identity, contestation of power, exposure of hegemonic interpretations, and so on depict a vision of democracy that is primarily procedural: democracy reflects practices that take place within the existing realm of the political. Agonism thus explicitly situates itself within existing institutional forms, not outside them. Unlike radical democracy, agonistic thinkers propose not a revolution but a reformation, urging that extant democratic resources be strengthened, democratic values reinterpreted, and hegemonic structures exposed and contested. To the extent agonism is transformative, it is transformative from within the horizon of politics from which it emerges. Agonism does not evoke sudden and rapid change in the character of social order. Over time agonism might lead, directly and indirectly, to dramatic reforms to, and even revolutionary redesign of, democratic institutions, but that change is inevitably slow. This makes agonism appear conservative when compared to radical democracy, as radical democracy takes as its goal the near term transformation and elimination of social and economic injustice. Agonism aspires to create a democratic social order that will lead to the amelioration or destruction of injustice, but recognizes that such injustices are embedded in the context of politics within which such work occurs and against which organization, mobilization, and resistance must take place. Agonism does not represent transformation, but it creates democratic conditions out of which real transformation might arise. To claim that liberalism in its Rawlsian variant represents the best path for agonism is not a capitulation to the narratives of liberalism and its inevitable injustices, nor an endorsement of chastened conservatism about social change. It is to recognize that transformative politics begins within existing politics, and that an effective strategy must identify the structures most amenable to that project. Agonism as a political practice demands both the common ontopolitical framework within which conflict can take place and an institutional framework open to this practice. Political liberalism offers both, without also requiring agonism to shed its skepticism about foundational or teleological claims. Agonism presupposes active engagement with the situated character of social life in order to grasp our own circumstances without demanding to be liberated from them. Political liberalism takes these circumstances as the frame from which a governing interpretation of justice emerges; as long as this conception remains open to further reinterpretation (as it can be once severed from the insistence on stability) political liberalism supports agonistic politics. The objections of Mouffe and others can be attributed to Rawls's insistence that the governing interpretation of the political embody an overlapping consensus with deep roots in comprehensive moral doctrines, and which can be invoked to resolve contentious questions of democratic life. But as I demonstrated in the previous chapter, the political conception can also be understood as a relatively contingent modus vivendi, subject itself to debate when invoked to resolve conflict. For Rawls an overlapping consensus is necessary to forestall the sort of deeper public debate and passionate engagement that agonistic democrats hope to foster. Understanding the political conception as the negotiated but revisable shared interpretation of liberal democratic principles permits both the channeling of passionate conflict into agonistic engagement and the possibility that the governing interpretation can be itself an object of engagement. In fact, Mouffe makes the same distinction as Rawls between a political conception ("commitment to principles") and substantive moral doctrines, as does Connolly when he describes the practices of contemporary democratic citizenship: They embrace their faith at one level, and recoil back upon it at another to come to terms with the obdurate fact that it does not convince millions of others. Sometimes their own commitment is punctuated with a residual element of uncertainty. That seems noble to me, but perhaps not necessary to deep pluralism. What is needed is pursuit of a bicameral orientation to citizenship and being, in which you embrace your creed as you bring it into the public realm; and then recoil back without deep resentment on its contestability to open up negotiating space with others (Schoolman 2008: 316). The agonistic practice so envisioned is strikingly similar to that proposed by Rawls: citizens hold their own moral doctrines as true and complete, while recognizing that the entrance of this doctrine into the public realm will expose your absolute in its partiality. The bicameralism Connolly describes mirrors the distinction between comprehensive doctrines and the political conception, with the difference that Connolly does not think that faith is incompatible with democratic negotiation. Rawls excludes the metaphysical because it undermines the overlapping consensus, which must be minimal in order to be consensual. An agonistic political liberalism maintains this model without the demand that the passions, ideals, and beliefs of citizens be confined to the private realm. Since the political conception is recognizably partial, understood as hegemonic, and an explicit subject of political engagement, the line between metaphysical and political need not be policed. What the political conception does, once generated, is provide a guiding framework within which democratic conflicts can be engaged openly, where a real possible result of that engagement is a revision of the negotiated interpretation that is the condition of agonistic encounters. Mouffe asserts that "a difficult balance has to be struck between, on the one hand, democracy understood as a set of procedures required to cope with plurality, and, on the other, democracy as the adherence to values which inform a particular mode of coexistence" (1993: 131 ). Political liberalism shorn of the imperative to consensus capture this balance by offering the framework through which democratic societies can manage plurality by articulating a shared understanding of liberal values, while also permitting this articulation to be contested and revised. Agonism thus forestalls the idea that any democratic institution can claim substantive legitimacy for its use of power-any act of government is an act of a particular identity or interest acting upon (not implementing) the collective. There are collectively binding decisions but no collective decisions; the institutional conditions of democratic agonism are much like those described by Dahl's vision of polyarchy, where minorities rule and liberty is preserved by ensuring that no minority comes to dominate in the name of a fictionalized popular identity. Similarly, Connolly envisages a society "made up of intersecting and independent minorities of numerous types and sorts who occupy the same territorial space and who negotiate an ethos of engagement between themselves" (2000: 92). This is the structural argument for an agonistic liberalism-a competitive environment of plural identities and interests will tend to undercut any and all claims to overcome contingency, thus cultivating practices that make visible and contest hegemonic interpretations. If this can happen within an agonistic cultural order, within a shared symbolic framework (liberty/equality), exercised by citizens informed by an ethos of reciprocity and presumptive gratitude (which will, of course, require some material conditions to be maintained), it is likely to maximize inclusion and minimize domination. Under such circumstances the range of emancipatory visions and contested democratic norms is likely to be vast. Since the shared interpretation of common principles that permits agonistic participation is itself subject to the same regular challenge and renegotiation, the mechanism for significant democratic change resides at the heart of agonistic liberalism. And to the extent the experience of living in a society in which peaceful but passionate negotiation and renegotiation of the inherited values that bind people collectively is likely to shape subjectivity, as post-foundational thinkers and Rawlsian liberals all suggest, the possibilities for dramatic transformation to the ontopolitical grounds of that social order increase as citizens come to see both conflict and reciprocity as living norms of political life. There is room in this modus vivendi for radical visions of the future, and room for these visions to transform the temporary hegemony of the political conception of justice. While no political order, liberal or otherwise, can ever attain full transparency, consensus, or inclusion, an institutional commitment to negotiate and renegotiate terms of agreement that are themselves both the condition of further conflict and themselves subjects of this same conflict offers a vision of political life sufficiently capacious to render transformative change conceivable. I began this book with a discussion of post-foundationalism and its implications for politics. Agonistic democracy, I claimed, offers the account of democratic politics best suited to post-foundational circumstances in which claims to have achieved a stable consensus to guide political action, whether rooted in truth, nature, identity, morality, rationality, or any other extra-contextual criteria, cannot be sustained. I also argued that the justification for democracy, agonistic or otherwise, does not derive from the recognition of post-foundational conditions; like any other hegemonic ideal democracy is a situated product of the history within which its dominant position emerged. That is not to say that convergence on some sort of democratic norms is unlikely, as absent massive coercion or uncommon homogeneity the radical pluralism post-foundationalism tends to provoke is also likely to undermine claims to authority based upon claims of truth. In the case of western societies with liberal democratic histories, however, the convergence of post-foundational pluralism and an historical framework that privileges the values of equality and liberty produces circumstances in which democratic institutions are the unavoidable default for politics. A commitment to liberalism also shapes these historical conditions, so attempts to articulate an appropriate vision of democratic politics that expresses these situated values and embraces a post-foundational account of meaning must also grapple with the powerful role liberalism plays in the interpretation of democratic values in western democracies. These constraints are neither optional nor binding. We find ourselves always already inhabiting a history of meaning, practice, and identity, and these elements of our being are not infinitely malleable. They may be transformed, reinterpreted, and eventually even overcome, but such work begins with recognition of our limitations. Marx, despite his otherwise universalistic commitments, captured these circumstances as clearly anything in Heidegger's work, writing in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that "men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted." The inherited circumstances of western democratic theory include the powerful presence of liberalism, and a viable theory aspiring to deepen democratic possibilities must grapple with this fact. This commitment to dealing with the world as we find it helps explain the recurrent frustration with agonism expressed by more radical critics. Because pluralist agonists focus on the situated possibilities inherent to the hegemonic interpretations and norms already in place and then try to expand these possibilities, they appear to those committed to the complete transformation of contemporary liberalism to be defending the status quo. Tally makes this argument in his review of Mouffe: The most damning critique of On the Political may be that it winds up reinforcing the status quo ... Indeed, Mouffe's agonistic politics does not seem very radical at all. Whenever Mouffe addresses practical matters, she uses the language of adversarial or agonistic politics, but evokes tame and familiar scenes. Mouffe argues for a pluralism that recognizes real differences, but that also ensures that everyone plays by the same rules. "Partisans" who really want to change the political landscape may not be allowed to participate (2007: 7-8). Vazquez-Arroyo (2004) develops a similar critique of Connolly. There are two problems with this critique, and addressing each will help clarify why an agonistic pluralism is best cultivated within liberal institutional bounds. First, the critique underestimates the democratic capacities of liberalism, associating all liberal accounts with a broader indictment of capitalist rationality. Second, the critique fails to account for the situated character of politics, asserting a transformative radicalism that agonism rejects. Often the objection to liberalism offered by radical theorists represents an objection to an idea of liberalism imbricated with existing structures of inequality, a rationalistic account of individual interests, and the problems of global capitalism. Liberalism thus represents a constellation of problems against which democratic advocates position themselves. Dietz identifies this view of liberalism as an abstracted enemy of democracy: "The polemic that afflicts so many current studies of democracy and citizenship is most evident at the level of discourse on liberal ism, where this complex and multifaceted historical phenomenon has become little more than an ideational enemy, or a suspect to be processed and called forth for 'rebuke'" (1998: 116). But liberalism is as complex and pluralistic as any other major account of contemporary politics, and both its theoretical and historical specificity should not be elided. Some aspects of liberal politics contribute to visions of subjectivity that will generate resentment and oppression, but elements within these same theories might also be used to mitigate such pressures. Some versions of liberalism identify closely with capitalism and neo-liberal aspirations, but others endeavor to identify an economic order consistent with liberal values without offering any such privilege to markets or competition. Some versions of liberalism presuppose strong forms of rationality while others are attentive to the variety of ways different identities organize and prioritize their values and actions. There is no single liberalism, and-democratic theory would do well to be attentive to the range of possibilities available within this plurality. Instead, liberalism "in much contemporary democratic theory, particularly post-structural and post¬foundational work, is taken to embody the flaws of modernity generally and thus becomes the flaw that democratic theorizing is intended to overcome" (Dietz 1998: 117). But a theory of democracy that takes historicity seriously cannot reduce liberalism to polemic and the dominant mode of democratic institution to that which is to be overcome. That liberal democracy is in practice and theory flawed is beyond dispute, but if it also lacks any potential to nurture a more democratic and less flawed practice then there is little hope for post-foundational democratic theory. If only a rupture and overcoming can achieve democratic outcomes and democracy will ever be over the horizon of history, a democratic theory of institutions and engagement rather than resistance and aspiration is impossible. I hope to have shown by looking carefully at Rawlsian liberalism as a singular and situated example of a particular and historically viable form of liberalism that the more radical aspirations of democratic theory need not begin and end with the rejection of the dominant interpretation of democracy within and against which political action must engage. Agonistic theory can offer an account of democracy mindful of both the danger and the potential of the liberal hegemony. Agonism does not envision contestation extending "all the way" down, as it were. The ontopolitical foundations of agonistic democracy are contingent and revisable, but they cannot be the constant object of debate. If, as I have tried to argue, a post-foundational politics demands the recognition both of the contingency of foundations and the situated limits to the range of possible meanings found in any particular grounds of the political, then an agonistic politics must also be a bounded politics. Agonism works within historicity in order to expand the constellation of conceivable conflicts, without rejecting the tragic reality that limits to inclusion are endemic to politics. Hegemony can be productive or destructive, democratic or authoritarian, contested or univocal, but hegemony cannot be universal. Post-foundational politics embraces the inevitability of boundaries and limits, and then works to make those boundaries as wide as possible without turning debates into ontological conflicts, conflicts that cannot but be violent as they take place outside the grounds of shared ontopolitical premises. Calling perspectives that accept the contingent liberal principles of democratic politics legitimate may seem dangerous, as it implies that perspectives beyond this consensus are illicit and excluded. And it does so imply. But the language of legitimacy is unavoidable for post-foundational politics. "Contrary to the dialogic approach, the democratic debate is conceived as a real confrontation. Adversaries do fight - even fiercely - but according to a shared set of rules, and their positions, despite being ultimately irreconcilable, are accepted as legitimate perspectives" (Mouffe 2005a: 52). The condition of peaceful democratic agonism is a willingness to accept some set of principles, interpretations, or procedures as legitimate, even if that legitimacy is understood as subject to legitimate conflict itself. Pluralist agonism endeavors not to utterly transform the political in order to bring about a new democratic dawn. Instead, it aspires to deepen, extend, and intensify the democratic capacity for contestation and questioning already latent within the situated norms and hegemonic articulations of the political. At some point the confrontation between principles is so vast that the contest must be antagonistic, and enemies simply cannot recognize one another as legitimate. Political liberalism offers a set of principles and practices compatible with the type of "conflictual consensus" agonistic democrats advocate, while also highlighting the historically contingent yet also ontologically powerful status of these same principles. Post-foundationalism dictates democratic theorizing both pay close attention to the ontopolitical grounds of any proposed politics and propose ways to preserve the pluralism that inevitably follows from the recognition of contingency. A theory of agonistic democracy embedded within a modified version of political liberalism can support institutions capable of addressing both imperatives, and the institutions it supports are not remarkably different from those envisioned by liberal theory. The resources necessary for agonistic transformation are present in the political institutions, political culture, and political theory of contemporary democracy. The modified political liberalism proposed in this book is probably not the only institutional possibility for agonistic democracy, but its plausibility demonstrates that institutionalization is neither incompatible with agonistic principles nor impossible to develop within existing social norms. By situating liberalism explicitly within a post-foundational ontology, liberalism is transformed in significant ways and its practices opened up to greater contestation, generosity, and active re-constitution.
Only through formative education can students act on civic commitments but that requires a change in how they currently engage in dialogue—try or die for the aff
Giroux 13 (Henry, American scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, “Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University,” 29 October 2013, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university)// LADI
In a dystopian society, utopian thought becomes sterile, and paraphrasing Theodor Adorno, thinking becomes an act of utter stupidity.  Anti-public intellectuals now define the larger cultural landscape, all too willing to flaunt co-option and reap the rewards of venting insults at their assigned opponents while being reduced to the status of paid servants of powerful economic interests. But the problem is not simply with the rise of a right-wing cultural apparatus dedicated to preserving the power and wealth of the rich and corporate elite. As Stuart Hall recently remarked, the state of progressive thought is also in jeopardy in that, as he puts it, "The left is in trouble. It's not got any ideas, it's not got any independent analysis of its own, and therefore, it's got no vision. It just takes the temperature . . . It has no sense of politics being educative, of politics changing the way people see things."28 Of course, Hall is not suggesting the left has no ideas to speak of. He is suggesting that such ideas are removed from the larger issue of what it means to address education and the production and reception of meaningful ideas as a mode of pedagogy that is central to politics itself. The issue of politics being educative, of recognizing that matters of pedagogy, subjectivity and consciousness are at the heart of political and moral concerns, should not be lost on academics. Nor should the relevance of education being at the heart of politics be lost on those of us concerned about inviting the public back into higher education and rethinking the purpose and meaning of higher education itself. Democracy places civic demands upon its citizens, and such demands point to the necessity of an education that is broad-based, critical and supportive of meaningful civic values, participation in self-governance and democratic leadership. Only through such a formative and critical educational culture can students learn how to become individual and social agents, rather than disengaged spectators or uncritical consumers,  able both to think otherwise and  to act upon civic commitments that "necessitate a reordering of basic power arrangements" fundamental to promoting the common good and producing a strong democracy. This is not a matter of imposing values on education and in our classrooms.  The university and the classroom are already defined through power-laden discourses and a myriad of values that are often part of the hidden curriculum of educational politics and pedagogy. A more accurate position would be, as Toni Morrison points out, to take up our responsibility "as citizen/scholars in the university and to accept the consequences of our own value-redolent roles." She continues: "Like it or not, we are paradigms of our own values, advertisements of our own ethics - especially noticeable when we presume to foster ethics-free, value-lite education."29

Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: Alex Bauman | Judge: Amanda Drummond
Route 1 (Maybe)
Moral agents have to be responsible for all rights.
(Motilal, Sashi. "Human Rights: Moral Authority and Philosophical Doubts."Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability (n.d.): n. pag. Web.) (http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/v/dagg/termine/shashi-motilal_human-rights1.pdf)  (Department of philosophy)  (2013)
Motilal 13
It is widely held that social justice can be achieved when people in society actually enjoy human rights, i.e., can actually make claims that are moral and may be legal claims against other individuals/institutions for what morally belongs to them by virtue of being human. This “individualistic” conception of human rights with its roots in the largely western political system of liberal democracy has come in for criticism from various quarters, amongst which the cultural relativist critique is perhaps the strongest. The main contention of the cultural relativist is that such a conception of a human right is not universally present in all cultures e.g., some pre-modern Western cultures and Non-Western
Thus my standard is upholding equality
Upholding Equality is the best way to ensure that all people get these innate values.
Burke 13 – Anthony, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales, 2013 (“Security cosmopolitanism,” Critical Studies on Security (Vol. 1, No. 1, 13–28) Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Tandfonline)
The historical ontology outlined above – one based on the factual immanence of insecurity to modernity – has profound implications for the kind of ethics that underpins security cosmopolitanism. Its three basic principles would be as follows.
First, the responsibility of all states and security actors 2 is to create deep and enduring security for all human beings in a form that harmonises human social, economic, cultural and political activity with the integrity of global ecosystems. The fundamental end must be the creation of a global security system that enables human security universally in similar terms to those set out by the United Nations’ Commission on Human Security: ‘to protect the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment’ by ‘creating political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural systems that together give people the building blocks of survival, livelihood and dignity’ (Commission on Human Security 2003, 4). While what these systems are and how they function opens up great complexity and must be permanently contestable, all states, all actors, and all organizations, must share this basic, foundational common end.
This principle is also aimed at ensuring that deployments of the human security concept and practice be fully cosmopolitan; that they serve, empower, and involve people, rather than be paternalistic slogans to cover national or organizational agendas that fail to achieve systemic change which enables communities to sustain their own security over the long-term (Turner, Cooper, and Pugh 2011; McCormack 2011). This I take to be the original intent of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP 1994) and the Commission on Human Security, whose 2003 report speaks of ‘including the excluded’ and places the empowerment of people and communities – what Sadako Ogata terms ‘developing the capability of individuals and communities to make informed choices and to act on their own behalf’ – at the centre of its agenda (2003: 5). There are affinities here with Oliver Richmond's (2011, 53) call for a ‘post-liberal’ and ‘post-colonial’ form of human security, ‘contextually driven and negotiated’, which now needs to be incorporated within a cosmopolitan framework that ensures that no community's security is privileged over any others’.
Second, all states and security actors have fundamental responsibilities to future generations and the long-term survival of global ecosystems: to consider the impact of their decisions, choices and commitments through time. This reflects the rule that Iris Marion Young places at the core of her global political theory 3 : ‘the meaning of political responsibility is forward-looking. One has the responsibility always now, in relation to current events and their future consequences’ (Young 2011, 92). Actions today, and the norms that are immanent to them, will inspire others in potentially unknown ways through decades and centuries to come. Those actions, and the commitments, institutions, and human possibilities they create or at least make tenable, will open space for potential futures and close off others. When Osama Bin Laden used the examples of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Vietnam to justify a norm that would allow the targeting and slaughter of civilians, such a temporal stretching of consequences was being put into effect, in ways that the original architects of those decisions could not have predicted (Burke 2008, 32–41).
Just as the insecurities we face today are the complex product of myriad choices and interactions dating back decades and sometimes centuries, our collective choices shape the potential of security for future generations: nuclear weapons and climate change are just two examples of such futuristic temporal reverberations. In such cases the potential for security and insecurity endures through indefinite time, if we consider the almost geological ‘half-lives’ of high-level radioactive waste, which extend from hundreds to millions of years, or the scientific projection of anthropogenic climate change though hundreds of years (IPCC 2007, 46), leaving an enduring legacy of past decisions that future generations must cope with. Hannah Arendt's warning is apposite here: ‘It is the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past…the unprecedented, once it has appeared, may become a precedent for the future’ (Arendt 2005, 98–99). To extend Arendt's argument: acts, processes, and their material effects, endure, and cannot be wished away. Just as a cliché of nuclear discourse states that ‘the Bomb cannot be uninvented’, neither can an idea be uninvented nor an action entirely unmade. Our concern should not just be about the proliferation of destructive norms or the repetition of international crimes, but about the long-range implications of individual and collective actions whose effects will eventually escape our direct control and persevere long after they have begun.
It might be argued that having to peer long into an uncertain future through the prism of one's choices is an impossible burden. I disagree. Uncertainty is also potentiality; it opens up the potential for more just and secure paths, and the possible effects of particular technological, policy, and strategic choices can often be reasonably predicted through a combination of critical history, social science, public dialogue, and scenario-based planning. A consistent aim must be to create legal and structural frameworks that work to build security and ward off disastrous outcomes in a systemic fashion. This process will be assisted by a third ethical principle: a principle that can responsibly guide security actions in the face of their future impacts, some of them potentially unknowable. This, in a modification of Kant, one could call a global categorical imperative. Recall that Kant's categorical imperative of morality stated that one ‘must act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it be a universal law…act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature’ (Kant 2004, 31). The global categorical imperative refines Kant's categorical imperative in two ways. First, its address expands from the individual to collectivities and organizations – governments, NGOs, international organizations, militaries, defence ministries, diplomats, insurgents, and more – to any actor or agency whose activities will affect the security of others (a principle that modifies the criteria for institutional moral responsibility developed in Erskine 2003, 6–8). Second, its scope moves beyond the moral individual wrestling with their duties to take in the world as a whole: actors must consider the systemic context and impact of their actions, work to understand their potential collective consequences, and act collectively to manage those impacts and resolve global insecurities. The global categorical imperative would thus state: act as if both the principles and consequences of your action will become global, across space and through time, and act only in ways that will bring a more secure life for all human beings closer.
We must act as if the principles and consequences of our actions will become global because they are likely to: because norms, ideas, and effects spread, or they lie dormant until they appear at other times and in other places, and because the complex security processes that actions feed into reverberate widely through space and time; they take on momentum that is difficult to arrest. The global categorical imperative tests norms and actions against their global consequences and the complex causal chains they feed into. What is the impact on global security if bad norms become commonplace-torture, the violation of human rights, military aggression, proxy warfare, targeted killings, terrorism, corruption, gender or racial discrimination, colonialism, and other great injustices? Can the world really bear them, and judge itself secure? The global categorical imperative demands that security actors look into a distant and open future, and take responsibility for it, in the face of the particularly challenging quality that Arendt attributed to action: ‘action has no end. The process of a single deed can quite literally endure through time until mankind itself has come to an end’ (Arendt 1998, 233). The global categorical imperative asks us to consider what violence, conflict, and insecurity put into the world – grief, radicalization, impoverishment, resentment, pain, trauma, and fear – and then of the myriad ways that the insecurity that manifests them can multiply and mutate. The long-standing security concern with ‘proliferation’ here widens to take in its systemic potentials: proliferation of weapons, doctrines, tactics, norms, ideas, feelings, dilemmas, and consequences. The ethical principles of security cosmopolitanism, then, are not merely normative preferences: they are strategic necessities.

Plan text:
The government of Japan ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power.

Links
Pre-FD evidence shows that people faced inequality in the past because of Nuclear Power.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)

One of the first clues about pre-FD-accident EI is that Japanese economic inequality ‘‘is now higher than the OECD average; the ratio of people with incomes below the poverty line.ranks in the highest group’’ among OECD countries.’’4,5 In fact, economic inequality appears worse in Japan than the US—long considered the most economically unequal developed nation.6 Moreover, because Japanese ‘‘social stratification.is quite rigid,’’ its middle class is smaller than in the US and much smaller than in western Europe.7 Yet, the Japanese government neither acknowledges nor measures poverty,8 which contributes to prima facie evidence for pre-FD-accident EI.3 (Following ethicists John Rawls and W.D. Ross, prima-facie evidence is preliminary evidence that—in the absence of available, specific data—establishes a presumptive claim. Ultima-facie evidence is final-analysis (not merely presumptive) evidence based on specific, complete data.9 Because of incomplete FD radiation-risk and demographic data, this article surveys only prima-facie evidence for FD EI.)

Pre-FD evidence shows that poor people are more likely to live near nuclear facilities.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)

At least four reasons suggest prima-facie evidence that Japanese poor near FD have faced DREI. One prima-facie reason is that because poor people tend to live near dangerous facilities, like reactors, they face the worst accident risks. Within weeks after the FD accident began, long-lived cesium-134 and other radioactive isotopes had poisoned soils at 7.5 million times the regulatory limit; radiation outside plant boundaries was equivalent to getting about seven chest X-rays per hour.47 Roughly 19 miles Northwest of FD, air-radiation readings were 0.8 mSv per hour; after 10 days of this exposure, IARC dose- response curves predict 1 in 5 fatal cancers of those exposed would be attributable to FD; two-months exposure would mean most fatal cancers were caused by FD. Such exposures are likely because many near-Fukushima residents were too poor to evacuate.20

Poor people also experience Disaster Related Environmental Injustice.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)

A second prima-facie reason for Fukushima DREI is that poor people, living near reactors, have higher probabilities of being hurt by both normal and disaster-related radiation releases. Reactors normally cause prima facie EI because they release allowable radiation that increases local cancers and mortality, especially among infants/ children.51–55 Because zero is the only safe dose of ionizing radiation (as the US National Academy of Sciences warns), its cumulative LNT (Linear, No Threshold for increased risk) effects are worst closer to reactors, where poor people live. The US EPA says even normal US radiation releases, between 1970–2020, could cause up to 24,000 additional US deaths.56,57

Buraku workers are EI and DREi victims.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)

w shows buraku nuclear workers are both EI and DREI victims. Internationally, nuclear workers are prominent EI victims because even without accidents, they are allowed to receive ionizingradiation doses (50 mSv annually) 50 times higher than those received by the public. Yet, only low socioeconomic-status people—like buraku—tend to take such risks. This double standard is obviously ethically questionable, given that many developed nations (e.g., Germany, Scandinavian countries) prohibit it because it encourages EI—workers’ trading health for paid work, and innocent worker-descendants’ (future generations’) dying from radiation-induced genomic instability. Thus, both buraku children and their distant descendents face EI—higher radiation-induced death/disease.17,61,62

Buraku workers face many environmental issues due to nuclear power.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)

Prima-facie evidence shows, second, that FD-burakunuclear workers also are EI and DREI victims because they likely consented to neither normal-, nor accidentlevel, radiation exposures. Why not? Under normal conditions, 90 percent of all 83,000 Japanese nuclear workers are temporary-contract workers who receive about 16 times more radiation than the already-50-times-higherthan-public doses received by normal radiation workers. For non-accident exposures, buraku receive $350–$1,000 per day, for several days of high-radiation work. They have neither full-time employment, nor adequate compensation, nor union representation, nor health benefits, nor full dose disclosure, yet receive the highest workplace-radiation risks. Why? Industry is not required to ‘‘count’’ temporary workers’ radiation exposures when it calculates workers’ average-radiation doses for regulators. However, even if buraku were told their nonaccident doses/risks, they could not genuinely consent. They are unskilled, socially shunned, temporary laborers who are forced by economic necessity to accept even deadly jobs. This two-tier nuclear-worker system—where buraku bear most (unreported) risks, while highly-paid employees bear little (reported) risk—’’ ‘is the hidden world of nuclear power’ said.a former Tokyo University physics professor.’’ In 2010, 89 percent of FD nuclear workers were temporary-contract employees, ‘‘hired from construction sites,’’ local farms, or ‘‘local gangsters.’’ With a ‘‘constant fear of getting fired,’’ they hid their injuries/ doses—to keep their jobs.61–65

Children get lets medical care than adults near nuclear reactors, leading to EI
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)
Japanese children’s weakened FD-radiation protections and resulting prima-facie DREI are problematic because FD children receive less protection than adults, despite their higher sensitivity. Yet all other things being equal, greater vulnerability ethically demands greater government protection. The weakened FD-radiation protections also are problematic because Japanese-governmentradiation-dose standards take account only of external/ airborne-radiation, not internal exposures from food and water—although government and IAEA admit internal exposures are crucial to total FD doses. Only three months after the FD disaster began, Fukushima children tested positive for internal-radiation contamination—that Japanese standards ignored. Even worse, because isotopes such as cesium-134/137 have half-lives greater than 30 years, this contamination will continue for decades, continually causing problems like cancer. Yet PSR says government continues to cover up risks, by ‘‘not adequately monitoring radiation contamination of soil, food, water and air and.not providing.parents with sufficient information to protect their children.’’ Likewise, warning that government-allowed-FD-risks to children are ‘‘unconscionable,’’ government-scientific advisor Toshiso Kosako tearfully resigned. Cover-up of serious risks— which negates risk disclosure and consent—thus provides evidence of prima-facie DREI to Japanese children.22,32,68,70,71

Harms
Japan’s nuclear program came out of a desire for economic securitization against their resource scarcity, which makes them proliferate

Valentine and Sovacool 10 Scott Victor Valentine, Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo, Benjamin K. Sovacool, b Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, “The socio-political economy of nuclear power development in Japan and South Korea,” Energy Policy Vol 38, December 2010 Premier
Following World War II defeat, Japan was in ruins. More than 30 percent of the Japanese population was homeless, communication and transport networks were in shambles and industrial capacity had been bombed into insignificance (Hall, 1990). With the support of Occupation funding, Japan embarked on a modernization program that would achieve unprecedented economic success. By the 1960s, Japan boasted the second largest radio and television manufacturing industries in the world and its automotive industry had grown to become the third-largest in the world (Hall, 1990). Accordingly, when the government turned to development of the nuclear power program, most Japanese were already sold on the merits of technological progress. Japan’s nuclear energy program is an offspring of aspirations for enhanced national energy security. The nuclear power program accelerated in the 1970s, when the oil embargoes in 1973 and 1974 convinced many of the political elite that nuclear power was needed to buffer the Japanese economy from energy shocks. National planners also saw nuclear technology as an important export product, a tool to not only free the nation from energy dependence, but to also extend its economic reach into the Pacific and the world at large (Kim and Byrne, 1996). The sheer lack of indigenous energy resources justified a massive expansion of the nuclear program, including commitment to plutonium fueled fast breeder reactors (Byrne and Hoffman, 1996). The Japanese government’s support for nuclear technology was and is based on the tenet that a greater national risk is posed by dependence on imported energy than by a network of nuclear power plants. Japan imports more than 95 percent of its energy feed-stocks, and other than Italy (which is inter-connected to the European Union electricity grid) no other country in the OECD exhibits such precarious dependence on imported energy (FEPC, 2008). Japanese policymakers believe this places the economic well-being of the country at the mercy of a highly unstable global energy market (ANRE, 2006). For decades in Japan, expansion of the nuclear power program has been perceived as a strategic necessity for enhancing domestic energy security while preserving low energy costs. Recently, the challenge of reducing carbon emissions to fulfill Japan’s Kyoto Protocol commitments has bolstered the allure of nuclear power. Accordingly, if there is any lesson to be derived from Japan’s ongoing experiment with nuclear power, it is that dominant economic priorities can nullify conditions that may otherwise prevent nuclear power development. Not only was Japan in ruins following World War II, the nation’s dearth of natural resources placed industry in a precarious position for recovery. The only resource that Japan had in sufficient quantity was labor. Accordingly, the key tenets of Japan’s modernization strategy lay in supporting technologies that could help industries utilize labor more effectively or add-value to the production process (Inkster and Satofuka, 2000). Such technocratic ideology sired a host of now famous systems for enhancing productivity such as total quality management, just-intime inventory control and kanban production control (Chase and Aquilano, 1995). In the 1960s, the promise of generating cheap energy through applied nuclear technology meshed perfectly with government aspirations to enhance the international competitiveness of industry. For resource-poor Japan, developing the most technologically advanced energy infrastructure was akin to developing a new type of resource—a technological resource.
It overwhelms barriers for expertise
Ackland 9 - Len Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism., (“Weapons proliferation a big risk with nuclear power” February 10, 2009, http://www.cejournal.net/?p=903) RMT
As Tom Yulsman points out in his Feb. 5 posting, the tight connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is seriously underplayed and often ignored in discussions about the so-called “need” for nuclear power to help meet energy demand while addressing global warming concerns.  (Issues including accidents, terrorism, high-level nuclear waste disposal and economic costs are also important, but I won’t deal with them in this brief commentary.)    While Tom mentions the concern over plutonium, which I’ll return to momentarily in responding to the questions from the commenter on the Feb. 5 post, remember that the convergence between nuclear power and weapons occurs at two points in the nuclear “fuel cycle” — the cradle-to-grave process beginning with uranium mining and ending with nuclear waste or incredible explosions.

The first power-weapons crossover comes during uranium “enrichment,” after uranium ore is milled to extract uranium in the form called “yellow cake” that is then converted to uranium hexafluoride gas.  Enrichment of the gas means increasing the amount of the fissile uranium-235 isotope, which comprises 0.7 percent of natural uranium, to the 3-6 percent needed to make fuel rods for commercial nuclear reactors.  The same centrifuges (the modern technology of choice) that separate the U-235 from the U-238 can be kept running until the percentage of U-235 reaches about 90 percent and can be used for the kind of nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.  Enrichment — low for nuclear power plants and high for bombs — is at the heart of the current controversy over Iran’s plans and capabilities.

The second power-weapons crossover comes when low-enriched uranium fuel is burned in nuclear reactors, whether military, civilian, or dual use.  Neutrons produced in the chain reaction are captured by the U-238 to form U-239 then neptunium-239 which decays into plutonium-239, the key fissile isotope for nuclear weapons.  Other plutonium isotopes, such as Pu-240, Pu-241, and Pu-242 are also produced.  The extent to which the uranium fuel elements are irradiated is called “fuel burnup.”  Basically, military reactors designed specifically to produce Pu-239 burn the fuel for shorter periods, a few weeks, before the fuel rods are removed from the reactors in order to minimize the buildup of Pu-240 and other elements.  Commercial reactors, aimed at maximizing the energy output in order to produce electricity, burn the fuel for a year or so before the fuel rod assemblies are changed out.  The used or “spent” fuel contains higher percentages of the undesirable (for bomb builders) plutonium isotopes.  Dual-use reactors, such as the one that caused the Chernobyl accident in 1986, tend toward the shorter fuel burnup times.

The plutonium in the spent fuel is the 20,000 kilograms that the Federation of American Scientists estimates is produced each year by the world’s currently operating 438 reactors.  Other sources estimate the amount of plutonium in spent fuel as much higher.  For a good description of these issues, see David Albright, et. al., “Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies,” SIPRI, Oxford U. Press, 1997.

Finally, before the plutonium-239 created in nuclear reactors can be used in weapons, it must first be separated from the uranium, transuranics and other fission products.  This is done in “reprocessing” plants and is often benignly referred to as plutonium recycling.  Currently there are only a handful of commercial reprocessing facilities, the one in France and the one in the United Kingdom having operated the longest.  Much of the plutonium extracted by these plants is mixed with uranium and reused for nuclear fuel in commercial reactors.    But reprocessing plants also exist in countries using plutonium for nuclear weapons.   Thus, North Korea, the most recent country to join the nine-member nuclear weapons “club,” made weapons through its reprocessing facility. 

The fact that a country like North Korea could accomplish the manufacture of nuclear weapons should give pause to those who advocate nuclear power plants as an answer to global warming.  A plutonium economy and/or the presence of uranium enrichment facilities in many nations around the world are dangerous prospects.  Even accepting the arguments that life-cycle analysis of nuclear plants — which takes into account the emissions from mining, construction and so forth — puts them on a par with renewable energy sources in terms of greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t overcome their disadvantages.  And the assurance from nuclear advocates that the next generation of plants (Generation IV, still under development) will be more “proliferation resistant,” isn’t comforting given the technologists’ track record.  And that still would be a long way from proliferation proof.
Turns the environment DA – proliferation overwhelms incentives for civilian use of nuclear reactors
Li and Yim 13- Mang-Sung Yim is in the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Jun Li works at UNC Chapel Hill (“Examining relationship between nuclear proliferation and civilian nuclear power development” Progress in Nuclear Energy Volume 66, July 2013, Pages 108–114http:www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149197013000504) RMT
This paper attempts to examine the relationship between nuclear weapons proliferation and civilian nuclear power development based on the history of Atoms for Peace Initiative. To investigate the relationship, a database was established by compiling information on a country's civilian nuclear power development and various national capabilities and situational factors. The results of correlation analysis indicated that the initial motivation to develop civilian nuclear power could be mostly dual purpose. However, for a civilian nuclear power program to be ultimately successful, the study finds the role of nuclear nonproliferation very important. The analysis indicated that the presence of nuclear weapons in a country and serious interest in nuclear weapons have a negative effect on the civilian nuclear power program. The study showed the importance of state level commitment to nuclear nonproliferation for the success of civilian nuclear power development. NPT ratification and IAEA safeguards were very important factors in the success of civilian nuclear power development. In addition, for a country's civilian nuclear power development to be successful, the country needs to possess strong economic capability and be well connected to the world economic market through international trade. Mature level of democracy and presence of nuclear technological capabilities were also found to be important for the success of civilian nuclear power program.
Prolif in new states causes nuclear conflict.
Kroenig 14 – Matthew, Associate Professor and International Relations Field Chair at Georgetown University, and Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at The Atlantic Council (“The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future?”, April 2014, http://www.matthewkroenig.com/The20History20of20Proliferation20Optimism_Feb2014.pdf)
The spread of nuclear weapons poses a number of severe threats to international peace and security including: nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, global and regional instability, constrained freedom of action, weakened alliances, and further nuclear proliferation. Each of these threats has received extensive treatment elsewhere and this review is not intended to replicate or even necessarily to improve upon these previous efforts. Rather the goals of this section are more modest: to usefully bring together and recap the many reasons why we should be pessimistic about the likely consequences of nuclear proliferation. Many of these threats will be illuminated with a discussion of a case of much contemporary concern: Iran’s advanced nuclear program. Nuclear War. The greatest threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons is nuclear war. The more states in possession of nuclear weapons, the greater the probability that somewhere, someday, there will be a catastrophic nuclear war. To date, nuclear weapons have only been used in warfare once. In 1945, the United States used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing World War II to a close. Many analysts point to the sixty-five-plus-year tradition of nuclear non-use as evidence that nuclear weapons are unusable, but it would be naïve to think that nuclear weapons will never be used again simply because they have not been used for some time. After all, analysts in the 1990s argued that worldwide economic downturns like the great depression were a thing of the past, only to be surprised by the dot-com bubble bursting later in the decade and the Great Recession of the late Naughts.49 This author, for one, would be surprised if nuclear weapons are not used again sometime in his lifetime. Before reaching a state of MAD, new nuclear states go through a transition period in which they lack a secure second-strike capability. In this context, one or both states might believe that it has an incentive to use nuclear weapons first. For example, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, neither Iran, nor its nuclear-armed rival, Israel, will have a secure, second-strike capability. Even though it is believed to have a large arsenal, given its small size and lack of strategic depth, Israel might not be confident that it could absorb a nuclear strike and respond with a devastating counterstrike. Similarly, Iran might eventually be able to build a large and survivable nuclear arsenal, but, when it first crosses the nuclear threshold, Tehran will have a small and vulnerable nuclear force. In these pre-MAD situations, there are at least three ways that nuclear war could occur. First, the state with the nuclear advantage might believe it has a splendid first strike capability. In a crisis, Israel might, therefore, decide to launch a preventive nuclear strike to disarm Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Indeed, this incentive might be further increased by Israel’s aggressive strategic culture that emphasizes preemptive action. Second, the state with a small and vulnerable nuclear arsenal, in this case Iran, might feel use ‘em or loose ‘em pressures. That is, in a crisis, Iran might decide to strike first rather than risk having its entire nuclear arsenal destroyed. Third, as Thomas Schelling has argued, nuclear war could result due to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack.50 If there are advantages to striking first, one state might start a nuclear war in the belief that war is inevitable and that it would be better to go first than to go second. Fortunately, there is no historic evidence of this dynamic occurring in a nuclear context, but it is still possible. In an Israeli-Iranian crisis, for example, Israel and Iran might both prefer to avoid a nuclear war, but decide to strike first rather than suffer a devastating first attack from an opponent. Even in a world of MAD, however, when both sides have secure, second-strike capabilities, there is still a risk of nuclear war. Rational deterrence theory assumes nuclear-armed states are governed by rational leaders who would not intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war. This assumption appears to have applied to past and current nuclear powers, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to hold in the future. Iran’s theocratic government, despite its inflammatory rhetoric, has followed a fairly pragmatic foreign policy since 1979, but it contains leaders who hold millenarian religious worldviews and could one day ascend to power. We cannot rule out the possibility that, as nuclear weapons continue to spread, some leader somewhere will choose to launch a nuclear war, knowing full well that it could result in self-destruction. One does not need to resort to irrationality, however, to imagine nuclear war under MAD. Nuclear weapons may deter leaders from intentionally launching full-scale wars, but they do not mean the end of international politics. As was discussed above, nuclear-armed states still have conflicts of interest and leaders still seek to coerce nuclear-armed adversaries. Leaders might, therefore, choose to launch a limited nuclear war.51 This strategy might be especially attractive to states in a position of conventional inferiority that might have an incentive to escalate a crisis quickly. During the Cold War, the United States planned to use nuclear weapons first to stop a Soviet invasion of Western Europe given NATO’s conventional inferiority.52 As Russia’s conventional power has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War, Moscow has come to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons in its military doctrine. Indeed, Russian strategy calls for the use of nuclear weapons early in a conflict (something that most Western strategists would consider to be escalatory) as a way to de-escalate a crisis. Similarly, Pakistan’s military plans for nuclear use in the event of an invasion from conventionally stronger India. And finally, Chinese generals openly talk about the possibility of nuclear use against a U.S. superpower in a possible East Asia contingency. Second, as was also discussed above, leaders can make a “threat that leaves something to chance.”53 They can initiate a nuclear crisis. By playing these risky games of nuclear brinkmanship, states can increases the risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. Historical crises have not resulted in nuclear war, but many of them, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, have come close. And scholars have documented historical incidents when accidents nearly led to war.54 When we think about future nuclear crisis dyads, such as Iran and Israel, with fewer sources of stability than existed during the Cold War, we can see that there is a real risk that a future crisis could result in a devastating nuclear exchange. Nuclear Terrorism. The spread of nuclear weapons also increases the risk of nuclear terrorism.55 While September 11th was one of the greatest tragedies in American history, it would have been much worse had Osama Bin Laden possessed nuclear weapons. Bin Laden declared it a “religious duty” for Al Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons and radical clerics have issued fatwas declaring it permissible to use nuclear weapons in Jihad against the West.56 Unlike states, which can be more easily deterred, there is little doubt that if terrorists acquired nuclear weapons, they would use them. Indeed, in recent years, many U.S. politicians and security analysts have argued that nuclear terrorism poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security.57 Analysts have pointed out the tremendous hurdles that terrorists would have to overcome in order to acquire nuclear weapons.58 Nevertheless, as nuclear weapons spread, the possibility that they will eventually fall into terrorist hands increases. States could intentionally transfer nuclear weapons, or the fissile material required to build them, to terrorist groups. There are good reasons why a state might be reluctant to transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists, but, as nuclear weapons spread, the probability that a leader might someday purposely arm a terrorist group increases. Some fear, for example, that Iran, with its close ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, might be at a heightened risk of transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists. Moreover, even if no state would ever intentionally transfer nuclear capabilities to terrorists, a new nuclear state, with underdeveloped security procedures, might be vulnerable to theft, allowing terrorist groups or corrupt or ideologically-motivated insiders to transfer dangerous material to terrorists. There is evidence, for example, that representatives from Pakistan’s atomic energy establishment met with Al Qaeda members to discuss a possible nuclear deal.59 Finally, a nuclear-armed state could collapse, resulting in a breakdown of law and order and a loose nukes problem. U.S. officials are currently very concerned about what would happen to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if the government were to fall. As nuclear weapons spread, this problem is only further amplified. Iran is a country with a history of revolutions and a government with a tenuous hold on power. The regime change that Washington has long dreamed about in Tehran could actually become a nightmare if a nuclear-armed Iran suffered a break down in authority, forcing us to worry about the fate of Iran’s nuclear arsenal. Regional Instability: The spread of nuclear weapons also emboldens nuclear powers, contributing to regional instability. States that lack nuclear weapons need to fear direct military attack from other states, but states with nuclear weapons can be confident that they can deter an intentional military attack, giving them an incentive to be more aggressive in the conduct of their foreign policy. In this way, nuclear weapons provide a shield under which states can feel free to engage in lower-level aggression. Indeed, international relations theories about the “stability-instability paradox” maintain that stability at the nuclear level contributes to conventional instability.60 Historically, we have seen that the spread of nuclear weapons has emboldened their possessors and contributed to regional instability. Recent scholarly analyses have demonstrated that, after controlling for other relevant factors, nuclear-weapon states are more likely to engage in conflict than nonnuclear-weapon states and that this aggressiveness is more pronounced in new nuclear states that have less experience with nuclear diplomacy.61 Similarly, research on internal decision-making in Pakistan reveals that Pakistani foreign policymakers may have been emboldened by the acquisition of nuclear weapons, which encouraged them to initiate militarized disputes against India.62
And, it increases conventional wars.
Kahl 7/9 — associate professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University (Colin Kahl, “How worried should U.S. policymakers be about nuclear blackmail?” Washington Post 7.09.14) RMT
But here’s the problem from a policy-making perspective: regardless of whether nuclear weapons actually provide nuclear-armed states with greater capabilities and opportunities to engage in effective coercion, new nuclear states appear to believe they do, at least for some period of time, and act accordingly. At least some nuclear-weapons states appear to think a nuclear deterrent shields them from large-scale conventional retaliation from targets of coercion, tempting them to engage in more assertive military behavior below the nuclear threshold, including conventional aggression, low-level violence, proxy attacks, terrorism and the initiation of crises. And this pattern appears to hold even against stronger adversaries that enjoy nuclear superiority. During the Cold War, for example, nuclear deterrence discouraged large-scale conventional or nuclear war, but the superpowers engaged in several direct crises, as well as proxy wars throughout the so-called Third World. Scholars posited that this was the result of a “stability-instability paradox”in which the very “stability” created by mutually assured destruction (MAD) generated greater “instability” by making superpower provocations, disputes and conflict below the nuclear threshold seem “safe.” More recently, nuclear weapons have similarly made the Indian-Pakistani rivalry more crisis-prone even as they discouraged large-scale war or a nuclear exchange. The historical record also strongly suggests that states with “revisionist” aims become more aggressive — both directly and through the use of proxies — after acquiring nuclear weapons, at least for some period of time. Less than six months passed between the August 1949 testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb and Stalin’s green light to North Korean plans to invade South Korea. And, shortly thereafter, Moscow encouraged Ho Chi Minh to intensify his offensive against the French in Indochina. And, as Gavin’s research suggests, the development of thermonuclear weapons in 1955 and intercontinental ballistic missiles in 1958 also appear to have made Khrushchev more assertive, culminating in the 1958-1961 Berlin crisis. Similarly, five years after China became a nuclear power, Mao Zedong authorized Chinese troops to attack Soviet border forces in 1969. Archival evidence also suggests that Iraq’s quest for nuclear weapons was in part driven by Saddam Hussein’s desire to use them as a cover for conventional aggression against Israel. And, more recently, Pakistan’s emboldened support of anti-Indian terrorism and militancy and North Korea’s escalating provocations provide additional illustrations of the possible incentives and opportunities nuclear weapons create to advance a revisionist agenda. Large-n quantitative studies on the emboldening effects of nuclear weapons have produced mixed results. On average, nuclear weapon states appear no more (or less) likely to become involved in international militarized disputes, or to initiate these disputes. But, with regard to interactions between nuclear states, Robert Rauchhaus finds that nuclear status increases the likelihood of low-level militarized disputes, including threats and the limited use of force, even as it reduces the chances of large-scale war. Time and learning may also play a key role. Michael Horowitz finds that the longer a state possesses nuclear weapons, the less likely it is to become involved in disputes. But new nuclear powers appear to be more prone to involvement in militarized disputes in the initial period of time after developing nuclear weapons against all types of states (including nuclear ones). In short, regardless of whether nuclear weapons are objectively useful — or not — in coercion, at least some nuclear states — especially those with revisionist ambitions — seem to believe they are and act accordingly, even toward more nuclear-armed powerful adversaries. And, in many cases, it is precisely this type of adventurism by adversaries that so worries U.S. policymakers. This was my experience observing the Obama administration’s deliberations on the potential dangers of Iranian nuclearization. U.S. officials believe Iranian nuclear acquisition would embolden Tehran — a state with both defensive and ideologically revisionist motivations — to be even more assertive in supporting terrorism, militancy and making coercive threats against its neighbors. They also fear that Iranian nuclearization would spark conventional and nuclear arms racing by other regional powers. Together, these dynamics would make an already volatile Middle East even more difficult to police and manage, requiring costly and complex U.S. deterrence and reassurance strategies and increasing the risk of irregular and conventional war.

Overview: Environmental Injustice is bad
Buraku workers are the ones cleaning up the Fukashima disaster in dangerous conditions and for below minimum wage
McCurdy 15 Claire McCurdy, writer @ International Policy Digest, “Japan’s Nuclear Gypsies: The Homeless, Jobless and Fukushima,” International Policy Digest, August 21, 2015, http://intpolicydigest.org/2015/08/21/japan-s-nuclear-gypsies-the-homeless-jobless-and-fukushima/Premier
The cleanup efforts in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in northern Japan have revealed the plight of the Japanese unemployed, marginally employed day laborers and the homeless. They are called the “precariat,” Japan’s proletariat, living precariously on the knife-edge of the work world, without full employment or job security. They are derided as “glow in the dark boys,” “jumpers” (one job to another) and “nuclear gypsies.” They have even been dubbed “burakumin,” a hostile term for Japan’s untouchables, members of the lowest rung on the ladder in Japanese society. They are unskilled and virtually untrained and are the nuclear decontamination workers recruited by Japanese gangsters, Yakuza, to make Fukushima in northern Japan livable again. These jobs are some of the most dangerous and undesirable jobs in the industrialized world, a $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong. Reuters and the L.A. Times have both described the project as an unprecedented effort. Reuters made a direct comparison between Fukushima and the Chernobyl “incident.” Unlike Ukraine and the 1986 nuclear “accident” at Chernobyl, where authorities declared a 1,000 square-mile no-habitation zone, resettled 350,000 people and allowed radiation to take care of itself, Japan is attempting to make the Fukushima region livable again. The army of itinerant decontamination workers has been hired at well below the minimum wage to clean up the radioactive debris and build tanks to store the contaminated water generated to keep the reactor core cool. They work in unregulated environments, without adequate supervision, training or monitoring or the protection of health insurance. Most of the workers are subcontractors, drifters, unskilled and poorly paid. In an article for Al Jazeera’s “America Tonight,” David McNeill, a blogger about nuclear gypsies, commented: “They move from job to job. They’re unqualified, of course, in most cases.” Jeff Kingston, Dept. of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan, noted in October 2014 that the numbers of these nuclear gypsies or members of the “precariat” have increased from 15 percent of the Japanese workforce in the late 1980s to 38 percent to date and the numbers are expected to continue to rise.
Workers are exposing themselves to harmful radiation
CCNE 13 Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy, Organization Aiming at Fundamental Reform of Nuclear Energy Policy, “Our path to a nuclear-free Japan: an interim report Executive Summary,” October 2013 Premier
On-site at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants, approximately 3,000 workers per day continue to engage in demanding operations, exposing themselves to high radiation doses. Over 80 of those workers are subcontractor workers. In the two and a half years since the accident, approximately 30,000 workers have worked at the Fukushima Daiichi. Their collective dose during this period already amounts to as much as 10 of the total collective dose of all workers at all nuclear power plants in Japan over the 40 years prior to the accident. This calculation does not include the doses of people who were most likely exposed to a very high level of radiation during emergency operations in March 2011 – such as fire-fighters, rescue workers, and SDF personnel. There are multiple problems concerning radiation protection and working environment (safety, health, and employment conditions) of the workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and fundamental improvements are necessary in all aspects. On top of all these, it seems that a serious shortage of manpower is currently being experienced and is expected to continue in future, due to the amount of work that is and will be required to bring the situation under control and to decommission the plants. This labour shortage is serious and we demand immediate solutions.

Many children can die by environmental injustices.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)
Local FD children likewise comprise one of the most troubling groups of prima-facie DREI victims. Postaccident, government has allowed FD children to annually receive radiation of 2000 mrem(20mSv)/year—20 times higher than normally allowed for adults, although children are up to 40 times more sensitive than adults to radiation.56,69 Thus, PSR says the FD ‘‘impact on the health of Japanese children is being glossed over’’—that about 350,000 children under age 18 are living in Fukushima and, after four years, FD exposures could cause 5,000 of them to die prematurely from cancer. After eight years exposure, 10,000 of them would die prematurely.
Buraku workers get higher doses because of EI
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)
Still another factor thwarting FD-buraku consent—and indicating prima-facie DREI—is that FD workers likely FUKUSHIMA AND DISASTER-RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE 135 received higher doses than government admitted. ‘‘The company refused to say how many FD contract workers had been exposed to post-disaster radiation’’; moreover, nuclear-worker-protective clothing and respirators, whether in the US or Japan, protect them only from skin/lung contamination; no gear can stop gamma irradiation of their entire bodies.56,63,66 Neither TECO, nor Japanese regulators, nor IAEA has released statistics on post-FDradiation exposures, especially to buraku inside the plant. IAEA says merely: ‘‘requirements for occupational exposure of remediation workers can be fulfilled’’ at FD, not that they have been or will be fulfilled—a fact also suggesting prima-facie DREI toward buraku.67,68

Environmental injustice causes more poor people by economic hardships.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette
(O’Neill Family Endowed Professor Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy/ http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-ej-2012-fukushima.pdf/ Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. "Nuclear Catastrophe, Disaster-Related Environmental Injustice, and Fukushima, Japan: Prima-Facie Evidence for a Japanese “Katrina”." Environmental Justice 5.3 (2012): 133-39. Web.)

A fourth prima-facie reason for DREI burdens on FD poor is that their poverty/powerlessness arguably forced them into EI and accepting reactor siting. Companies hoping to site nuclear facilities target economically depressed areas, both in Japan and elsewhere.17,58 Thus, although FD-owner Tokyo Electric Company (TECO) has long-term safety and ‘‘cover-up scandals,’’ Fukushima residents agreed to accept TECO reactors in exchange for cash. With Fukushima $121 million in debt, in 2007 it approved two new reactors in exchange for ‘‘$45 million from the government.60 percent’’ of total town revenue.17,59 Yet if economic hardship forced poor towns to accept reactors in exchange for basic-services monies, they likely gave no informed consent. Their choice was not voluntary, but coerced by their poverty. Massive Japanese-nuclear-industry PR and media ads also have thwarted risk-disclosure, thus consent, by minimizing nuclear risks.17,53,60–62 Scientists say neither industry nor government disclosed its failure to (1) test reactor-safety equipment; (2) thwart many natural-event disasters; (3) withstand seismic events worse than those that already had occurred; (4) withstand Fukushima-type disasters; (5) admit that new passive-safety reactors require electricity to cool cores and avoid catastrophe; or (6) base reactorsafety on anything but cost-benefit tests.17,53,60–62 Thus, because prima facie evidence suggests Fukushima poor people never consented to FD siting, they are EI victims whose reactor proximity caused them also to become DREI victims.

Tournament: CPS | Round: 4 | Opponent: LOOK ON TAB | Judge: LOOK ON TAB
AC 2
The Nazis are back and Trump’s cabinet is whiter than Pence’s hair—welcome to Trump’s dystopian America where the script has been flipped and liberals live and die by their self-righteousness. Within spaces of education liberals have insulated themselves from the conservative voices around them, which allows for the rise of Trump—only engagement in constructive dialogue can solve.
Dahlen 12/5 (Nathan, reporter @ the Heights, “Political Correctness in the Age of Trump,” December 5, 2016, http://bcheights.com/opinions/op-ed/2016/political-correctness-age-trump///LADI)
“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.” By invoking PC culture to excuse his callous language and behavior throughout his campaign, Trump distracted from the way in which the phenomenon has actually become a problem. In these instances, and so many more, Trump isn’t voicing a reasoned view—he is being mean and vindictive. If our politically correct culture stops Trump and people like him from calling women “dogs”, that is, if it upholds commonly accepted norms of treating other people with respect, I hope we can all agree that it is actually a good thing. On college campuses, which pundits often point to as the worst examples of excessive political correctness, we may actually need an even stronger PC culture, if we define it as the suppression of hateful insults. Earlier this semester, on our own campus, someone rearranged the letters of a parking lot sign to spell an anti-gay slur. After the election, several instances of hateful and discriminatory acts toward minorities were documented on other college campuses. But we cannot let Trump distort the term. PC culture is actually beneficial insofar as it suppresses the use of hateful language. The real problem is that it prevents people from expressing their views, which inhibits constructive discourse. It empowers people to ignore other arguments or instinctively condemn them, or worse, their author, as some sort of “ism” without considering the view on its own. In this sense, political correctness does reign tyrannically on college campuses, where the demand for ideological conformity limits intellectual diversity. When people do share dissenting social and political views, some simply refuse to listen, or worse. Innumerable examples have been criticized in the media over and over: Speakers disinvited from campuses, professors and administrators forced to step down, student op-ed columnists attacked and disavowed. It seems to me that these examples, which draw ire from all corners, are the clearest manifestations of a much more subtle and insidious culture that represses thought and expression. Campus debate about Trump and everything he represents, or lack thereof (debate, after all, implies disagreement), is a perfect, though regrettable example. Political correctness, if I can use the term to describe this phenomenon, is definitely a problem when students on campus, and indeed people across the country, feel unable to express their views, their instincts—like their support for Donald Trump—for fear of being labeled and attacked. I was utterly shocked and upset the night Trump won. In the following days, I felt angry and despondent. I had no desire to speak with anyone who voted for him, even though I have very little personally on the line with a Trump presidency. I realize, then, that this is easier for me to say than for others, but I would not be making this point about our culture if I did not feel strongly that decent and respectful conversation is the only way forward. Not only is freedom of thought and expression critical to the preservation of civilization, but without conversation, hearts and minds cannot change. People can only be persuaded if they are engaged in dialogue. People can only be engaged in dialogue if they feel comfortable enough to express their views. The more we realize how much we share in common with each other simply by virtue of being human, and that our political views do not define us, the more comfortable we’ll be talking with one another. Let’s forge a culture that both condemns hateful language and supports respectful, intellectually diverse discussion.
The role of the ballot is to vote for the debater that best critically empowers students—Debate should focus on creating a new generation of citizens that are critical thinkers educated about social problems—that’s key to equality
Giroux 15 (Henry, American scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, “Higher Education and the Promise of Insurgent Public Memory,” March 3, 2015, http://truth-out.org/news/item/29396-higher-education-and-the-promise-of-insurgent-public-memory)// LADI
The current call to cleanse history in the name of a false patriotism that celebrates a new illiteracy as a way of loving the United States is a discourse of anti-memory, a willful attempt at forgetting the past in the manufactured fog of historical amnesia. This is particularly true when it comes to erasing the work of a number of critical intellectuals who have written about higher education as the practice of freedom, including John Dewey, George S. Counts, W.E.B. Du Bois, the Social Reconstructionists, and others, all of whom viewed higher education as integral to the development of both engaged critical citizens and the university as a democratic public sphere. (19) Under the reign of neoliberalism, with few exceptions, higher education appears to be increasingly decoupling itself from its historical legacy as a crucial public sphere, responsible for both educating students for the workplace and providing them with the modes of critical discourse, interpretation, judgment, imagination, and experiences that deepen and expand democracy. As universities adopt the ideology of the transnational corporation and become subordinated to the needs of capital, the war industries and the Pentagon, they are less concerned about how they might educate students about the ideology and civic practices of democratic governance and the necessity of using knowledge to address the challenges of public life. (20) Instead, as part of the post-9/11 military-industrial-academic complex, higher education increasingly conjoins military interests and market values, identities and social relations while the role of the university as a public good, a site of critical dialogue and a place that calls students to think, question, learn how to take risks, and act with compassion and conviction is dismissed as impractical or subversive. (21) The corporatization, militarization and dumbing down of rigorous scholarship, and the devaluing of the critical capacities of young people mark a sharp break from a once influential educational tradition in the United States. The corporatization, militarization and dumbing down of rigorous scholarship, and the devaluing of the critical capacities of young people mark a sharp break from a once influential educational tradition in the United States, extending from Thomas Jefferson to John Dewey to Maxine Greene, who held that freedom flourishes in the worldly space of the public realm only through the work of educated, critical citizens. Within this democratic tradition, education was not confused with training; instead, its critical function was propelled by the need to provide students with the knowledge and skills that enable a "politically interested and mobilized citizenry, one that has certain solidarities, is capable of acting on its own behalf, and anticipates a future of ever greater social equality across lines of race, gender, and class." (22) Other prominent educators and theorists such as Hannah Arendt, James B. Conant and Cornelius Castoriadis have long believed and rightly argued that we should not allow education to be modeled after the business world. Dewey, in particular, warned about the growing influence of the "corporate mentality" and the threat that the business model posed to public spaces, higher education and democracy. He argued:¶ The business mind, having its own conversation and language, its own interests, its own intimate groupings in which men of this mind, in their collective capacity, determine the tone of society at large as well as the government of industrial society.... We now have, although without formal or legal status, a mental and moral corporateness for which history affords no parallel. (23) Dewey and the other public intellectuals mentioned above shared a common vision and project of rethinking what role education might play in providing students with the habits of mind and ways of acting that would enable them to "identify and probe the most serious threats and dangers that democracy faces in a global world dominated by instrumental and technological thinking." (24) Conant, a former president of Harvard University, argued that higher education should create a class of "American radicals," who could fight for equality, favor public education, elevate human needs over property rights and challenge "groups which have attained too much power." (25) Conant's views seem so radical today that it is hard to imagine him being hired as a university president at Harvard or any other institution of higher learning.
Ethical focuses locks in a grammar of suffering – only a turn towards critical thought can create a new vocabulary for these discussions
Giroux 13 (Henry, American scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, “Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University,” 29 October 2013, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university) LADI
In a market-driven system in which economic and political decisions are removed from social costs, the flight of critical thought and social responsibility is further accentuated by what Zygmunt Bauman calls "ethical tranquillization."6  One result is a form of depoliticization that works its way through the social order, removing social relations from the configurations of power that shape them,  substituting what Wendy Brown calls "emotional and personal vocabularies for political ones in formulating solutions to political problems."6 Consequently, it becomes difficult for young people too often bereft of a critical education to translate private troubles into public concerns. As private interests trump the public good, public spaces are corroded, and short-term personal advantage replaces any larger notion of civic engagement and social responsibility. Under such circumstances, to cite C. W. Mills, we are witnessing the breakdown of democracy, the disappearance of critical intellectuals and "the collapse of those public spheres which offer a sense of critical agency and social imagination."8 Mill's prescient comments amplify what has become a tragic reality. Missing from neoliberal market societies are those public spheres - from public and higher education to the mainstream media and digital screen culture - where people can develop what might be called the civic imagination. For example, in the last few decades, we have seen market mentalities attempt to strip education of its public values, critical content and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships and the disappearance of the social state in the name of individual, expanded choice.  Tied largely to instrumental ideologies and measurable paradigms, many institutions of higher education are now committed almost exclusively to economic goals, such as preparing students for the workforce - all done as part of an appeal to rationality, one that eschews matters of inequality, power and the ethical grammars of suffering.9  Many universities have not only strayed from their democratic mission, they also seem immune to the plight of students who face a harsh new world of high unemployment, the prospect of downward mobility and debilitating debt.
The alt right is being energized in the status quo—this should control the uniqueness frame—students are already engaging in harmful dialogue in the status quo it’s just a question of engagement from the other side—limits on free speech are just being used to sustain white supremacy
Harkinson 12/6 (Josh, reporter @ mother jones, “The Push to Enlist "Alt-Right" Recruits on College Campuses,” December 6, 2016, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/richard-spencer-alt-right-college-activism//LADI)
How much support is there for the loose-knit coalition of white nationalists and other far-right extremists known as the "alt-right"? Despite a spike in media coverage for the movement in the wake of Donald Trump's victory, a recent conference hosted by white nationalist Richard Spencer, who coined the term "alt-right," drew only about 275 attendees in Washington, DC. And after a video from the event went viral, showing audience members giving Nazi salutes to Spencer's cry of "hail Trump," the movement faced a fierce backlash. Although Trump named alt-right hero Stephen Bannon as his chief White House strategist, the president-elect went on to disavow the alt-right—in general terms, at least—in an interview with the New York Times. The movement gained momentum online in 2016 but is no longer just about social media, says Spencer; he sees a need to prove that the alt-right can attract supporters in the real world. And he says the best place to do that is on college campuses, starting with a speech he plans to deliver on Tuesday on the campus of Texas AandM University. "People in college are at this point in their lives where they are actually open to alternative perspectives, for better and for worse," Spencer says. "I think you do need to get them while they are young. I think rewiring the neurons of someone over 50 is effectively impossible." Recruiting on college campuses has long been a goal for "academic racists" such as Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow, a white nationalist whom Spencer helped bring to Duke University for an event in 2007, when Spencer was a student there. In May, Spencer and other white nationalists set up a "safe space" on the University of California-Berkeley's Sproul Plaza to discuss "how race affects people of European heritage." He claims that he will be giving two more speeches about the alt-right at universities in California. "The left just owns academia through and through," Spencer says, "so I think it is important to go to the belly of the beast and not let them own it." In recent months, Breitbart News pundit Milo Yiannopoulos' "Dangerous Faggot Tour" drew crowds at college campuses around the country. Several colleges canceled scheduled talks by Yiannopoulos because of "security concerns." Yiannopoulos does not label himself "alt-right" but has characterized the movement as a legitimate response to political correctness. He often describes white males as victims of "reverse discrimination" and speaks euphemistically of defending "Western values." A talk that he gave on the alt-right at the University of Houston in September drew cheers and a chant invoking the name of the alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog. "That was a revelation for me," Spencer said about Yiannopoulos' talk. "What we are doing is known to people, it's edgy and dangerous, it's cool and hip. It's that thing our parents don't want us to do. So that was definitely a huge inspiration." University campuses historically have incubated a range of social movements, from Marxism to multiculturalism on the left to right-wing movements such as neoliberalism and fascism, including Nazism in Germany (and in the United States). More recently, several groups sympathetic to the alt-right have cropped up on some college campuses: Identity Evropa Identity Evropa describes itself as "a generation of awakened Europeans who have discovered we are part of the great peoples, history, and civilization that flowed from the European continent" and who "oppose those who would defame our history and rich cultural heritage." Founded in February by 30-year-old ex-Marine Nathan Damigo, a junior social science major at California State University-Stanislaus, the group has been active on several California campuses. Its supporters have plastered campuses and downtown areas with posters featuring slogans such as "Let's Become Great Again" and "Serve Your People" superimposed over images or European Renaissance art. Most college professors who teach classes about race and identity "haven't done their homework," says Damigo, who, like Spencer, promotes pseudoscientific theories about cognitive differences between the races. Most of his members, he says, are recent college graduates who discovered racialist ideas on their own and now aim to "mentor" younger students while "waging a culture war" on the ivory tower: "We want to have a constant presence there," he says. "We want to normalize our ideas and get to the point where we can push faculty into incorporating this literature into the lectures and into the educational program." In November, Damigo and more than two dozen Identity Evropa members attended Spencer's conference.
Ignoring these ideologies have allowed them to become normalized into mainstream discourse—it’s here whether we like it or not
Roberts 16 (Stephen, writer @ political storm, “The Alt-Right: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly,” December 2, 2016, http://www.politicalstorm.com/alt-right-good-bad-ugly///LADI)
The ugly. There is also a virulent strain of white supremacism at work within the alt-right. Nationalism, when coupled with ethnicity, becomes downright racism. We must display caution here (in a way that many in the alt-right do not): not all of the alt-right are white supremacists.  It would be supremely unfair to loop President-elect Trump in with this group simply because they supported him. Even Steve Bannon—former Breitbart editor and current Trump advisor—should not be called a white supremacist for expressing sympathy toward some of alt-rights aims, like nationalism. At the same time, we cannot entirely decouple Bannon and others from the more virulent strains. When popular pundits like Ann Coulter can peddle in the language of the alt-right—using terms like “cuckservative,” for example—she is peddling those virulent views into the mainstream. By providing outlets for elements of this movement that are far beyond the paleoconservative pale, figures like Coulter are generating greater publicity and acceptance for it. The GOP, in particular, must be especially concerned about this movement. It lends itself to the outdated stereotype of the GOP as the racist, misogynistic party. There is nothing wrong with being a nationalist—in fact, renewed patriotism and concern for our national well-being should be strongly encouraged. One can be an anti-PC iconoclast, however, without engaging in the same level of mockery that one would typically expect of the elites. The GOP should carefully distinguish between the populist movement, which swept Trump into power, and the alt-right—and then excise the latter.
There’s a direct trade-off—dialogue and first amendment limits are zero sum—even if theoretically they can coexist, the way this materially plays out always chills speech.
Lipson 16 (Charles, real clear politics writer, “Social Justice Warriors Against Free Speech,” August 29, 2016, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/08/29/social_justice_warriors_against_free_speech_131628.html//LADI)
Well, that didn't take long. The Social Justice Warriors have emerged from their safe spaces and begun attacking the University of Chicago's statement supporting free speech and opposing trigger warnings and safe spaces. They are complaining for a good reason: They don’t want free speech to spread to other campuses. What are the main arguments against the Chicago letter? One of my former graduate students sent me this report from a group website for her liberal arts college (a very fine school). What do her fellow alums say? Well, for one, they are surprised they even need to make arguments for their side. For years, they haven't had to. Administrators, like those at the University of Missouri, simply rolled over and played dead rather than confront them. But that was political cowardice, not real intellectual engagement. Now that the Social Justice Warriors must defend their position, what do they say? The arguments against Chicago's free-speech letter They object to "no trigger warnings" because it is insensitive to people who have experienced trauma and might need a "heads-up" if they are going to encounter triggering content in class. They object to "no safe spaces" because those are the only places where marginalized groups will feel completely free to voice their opinions. They say safe spaces are not about banning dissenting viewpoints but about banning hateful, bigoted speech that is truly harmful. They reject the idea that colleges should be places where ideas are freely exchanged because “not all ideas are equal and some are too offensive to have a place in the community.” The common theme is "we must all be more sensitive. Otherwise people will be harmed psychologically." What's right with those arguments, and what's wrong? First, let's consider trigger warnings. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a professor or teaching assistant saying, "We are going to discuss Greek myths and some of you might find them troubling." But it’s also perfectly fine if, all of a sudden in a class on Greek myths, the professor discusses one. The students at Columbia University actually wanted warnings before all myths. Their demand was not about helping one or two students in a large class. It was simply bullying under the cloak of "sensitivity." Anyway, universities are all about discussing sensitive subjects and raising troubling questions. If a university is really vigorous, then the whole place should be wrapped in a gigantic trigger warning. Finally, as a teacher, how can I possibly anticipate all the things that might trigger students in my class on "Big Wars From Ancient Greece to Early Modern Europe" (a lecture course I am teaching next year)? When I mention the Roman war with German tribes on the Rhine, how can I know that your grandfather died fighting on the Rhine in World War II? Of course, if your grandfather did die fighting on the Rhine, or if your mother was named Jocasta and you accidentally slept with her, you might be triggered by the class discussions. What then? Well, that is why universities have mental-health professionals to help you deal with your anxieties, fears, and depression. Again, it is fine if professors want to give students a heads-up, but it is a mistake to demand it of everyone. It is a much bigger mistake to stifle class discussion for fear of offending. That's not hypothetical. That is exactly what happens in classrooms now. (So does ideologically rigid teaching that demands students repeat the professor's views. But that's another topic for another day.) Safe spaces are another ruse. Are they really the only places where marginalized groups will feel completely free to voice their opinions, as these fashionable liberal-arts students say? We need to distinguish among three kinds of places on campus: classrooms, public spaces, and private (or semi-private) places like sororities or campus houses for co-religionists. If classrooms do not invite free expression, then something is badly wrong with the university. Actually, some classrooms do not. They are almost always the classrooms run by the ideological comrades of the students demanding safe spaces. If you think diverse viewpoints are welcome in classes for race and gender studies, you are living in a dream world. In public spaces, like dining halls, people do sometimes group themselves voluntarily by race, sports, or dormitories. Nothing wrong with that, although persistent segregation by race, ethnicity, or religion would be a setback for the students' college experience. Finally, it is perfectly fine for people to find their cozy spaces privately, at Hillel House (for Jewish students) or Calvert House (for Catholics) or a fraternity, sorority, or club. Who invades those private spaces? Normally, it's the Social Justice Warriors from the Dean's Office who object to students wearing sombreros to a party featuring Mexican food. What about the argument that "safe spaces aren't about banning dissenting viewpoints but about banning hateful, bigoted speech that is truly harmful"? The obvious problem is this: Who decides? You think your march is to support women's reproductive rights. Your roommate thinks it is about killing unborn babies. Which position is hateful or bigoted? Again, who decides? Which of these is so hateful that it has no place in an academic community? But let's take the clear-cut example of racial epithets, which are hate speech and add nothing to academic debate or learning. They do cause emotional harm, or at least they can. The difficulty here is "Where do we draw the line?" and, again, "Who draws it?" Is it hate speech to say, "He hates to spend money. What a Jew"? Most Jews would say yes, that's hateful. What if I said, "He hates to spend money. What a Scotsman"? Most Scots would say that recognizes their financial prudence. It is precisely because drawing these distinctions is so hard that our First Amendment, as interpreted by the courts, gives very wide latitude to speech and draws the line at specific threats to individuals and other palpable dangers. Canada, by contrast, has laws barring insults to minorities. (So do most European countries.) That's why a book arguing that Canadian Muslims were not assimilating and some were becoming radicals was prohibited and its authors harshly fined. The author and publisher spent years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, trying to reverse that ruling. In the U.S., the book sold well, though you probably never heard about it. Muslim-Americans seemed to survive it. There is real hate speech, of course, but you and I might not agree on what it is. And we might not agree on who gets to decide. I don't want some mid-level bureaucrat in the campus housing-and-dining office telling me what I cannot say or wear to a party. Get over it. By the way, the Yale professors who told students exactly that -- try not to be bothered by Halloween costumes you don't like -- were vilified, screamed at, taunted, and ultimately run out of their jobs in the housing system. Irony alert: They were brutally harassed by the sensitivity police.
The impact is mass violence and a re-creation of violent hegemonic systems of the status quo—only an unflinching agonistic stance can solve.
Wingenbach 11 (Ed, Notre Dame Government and international studies PhD, “Institutionalizing Agonistic Democracy,” pg 190-198, https://books.google.com/books?id=7-8JrC64UgwCandprintsec=frontcover//LADI)
Third, because Knops ignores the situated source of antagonism and the persistence of hegemony in the construction of meaning he misconceives the problem of subordination and oppression. The objective of agonistic democracy is not to eliminate all relations of domination and oppression; this sort of utopian aspiration leads precisely to the rationalist exclusions they are at pains to expose. Rather, the goal is to craft conditions under which these relations can be made visible, and thus contested. The common values that make agonism possible, and their dominant institutional interpretations, inevitably and explicitly favor some identities, interests, or other articulations of subjectivity over others. In fact, these values and their dominant interpretations act to shape subjectivity so that they are seen not as constructions but simply "the way things are." Because Knops assumes the project of agonism is to eliminate these hegemonic relations of domination, he also assumes that Mouffe needs to establish an unbiased and objective set of criteria by which to identify and ameliorate these injustices. Hence his claim that her theory ultimately must rely on rationalist arguments. But agonism does not share this aspiration. Instead pluralist agonism accepts that the inevitability of injustice is the price of democratic plurality, and endeavors to identify practices that render these injustices amenable to contestation. Agonism hopes to set interpretation against interpretation, identity against identity, hegemonic claim against hegemonic claim, so that in the perpetual conflict between citizens the burden of domination shifts and moves. Where Knops sees unbiased consensus on rational principles eliminating domination, Mouffe sees an elaboration of hegemonic power so thorough as to make the injustices it produces not merely invisible but unthinkable. When Knops concludes that Mouffe's agonism should be seen as an adjunct to deliberation, one that calls attention to "the erroneous projection of one party's understandings onto another, constraining their meanings - it is fraught with the possibility of hegemony" (2007, 125), he is mistakenly subsuming agonism into deliberation by eliding the ontological distinctions between the two accounts. Deliberative democracy has faith that careful scrutiny of arguments, rational evaluation of principles, and deliberation oriented toward understanding will produce an unforced consensus shorn of power, domination, and manipulation. Its reconstruction of democratic principles is one that aspires to transcend the ambiguity of the everyday in order to resolve injustice. It takes this possibility as a real one, because its ontology is fundamentaily committed to the universality of human nature. Agonistic democrats refuse any such commitments, asserting instead that the premises of social life are themselves products of humanity, and that the ontology within which our politics emerges is itself a product of political assertions. No standard can be found or created that can extract us from this process of meaning creation, and thus all political standards should be understood as both historically constraining (we cannot start anew) and subject to collective reconstruction (we can act upon our situation by rendering it visible). Nonetheless, Knops's confusion is understandable-how is one to know what this process of contestation and reinterpretation looks like, absent some institutional suggestions consistent with the particularity of the history that makes agonism attractive? Political liberalism, modified as I suggested in the last chapter, helps clarify this question. Pluralist agonism requires some shared commitments without which the unavoidably contentious process of disputing hegemonic interpretations will descend into antagonism. Precisely because the clashes of politics are not oriented toward consensus, and precisely because democratic engagement always involves challenges with the potential to become explicitly violent (as all challenges are, at some level, hegemonic contestations), some institutional norms are needed to confine or limit the range of these battles. Agonism proposes that our situated context may provide governing norms that permit the procedures of contestation to occur, without those same norms becoming idealized or acquiring pseudo¬transcendent status. We begin from "our" norms, which contain within them some commitment to fundamental values (liberty/equality), but make the contest over the meaning and implementation of these norms a central aspect of institutional and political debate. Schmittian violence emerges when contestants cannot perceive a commonality sufficient to justify limitations of the tactics employed. But the commonality that permits these shared limits need not hold extra-political status. Put differently, the concern of critics of agonism seems to be that the barrier to violence can only be effective if it is itself uncontaminated by the conflicts it is meant to mediate, or can be sufficiently abstracted from these conflicts as to play a semi-transcendental role. If the boundaries of engagement are recognized as being themselves in play, then they will lack sufficient purchase to restrain politics. Thus the proposed dichotomy: either agonism will collapse into warfare, or agonism presupposes a hidden extra-political claim. Emphasizing the post-foundational elements from which agonism derives helps illustrate why this dichotomy can be plausibly refused. This is why the tum to Rawls (and, to a lesser extent, Habermas) is useful for agonistic democracy. Political liberalism details the way institutional and cultural structures shape and constrain political engagement without demanding an external anchor. Political liberalism is a situated reconstruction of the emergence of the values of liberal democracy and the operation of those values upon citizens. It is only the Rawlsian insistence upon a well-ordered society that makes political liberalism appear as a moralized account of democratic politics rather than a situated and contingent one. As I show in the previous chapter, the effectiveness of the situated norms of liberalism does not, ultimately, depend upon the semi-transcendental status Rawls evokes. That these values are ours historically, and that they shape our identities and aspirations contingently, provides sufficient status to guide political action. Highlighting this contingency and inviting citizen engagement in conflicts over the interpretation and application of these values need not weaken their pragmatic significance. It is only dangerous to expose the contingency of our deeply shared ontopolitical premises if one of those premises suggests that legitimacy must be derived from criteria not subject to human agency. It is on this point that agonism captures better than many theories the central insights of democratic theory. To the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective autonomy from imposed authority, to the extent democracy is identified with individual and collective agency over the terms of social cooperation, and to the extent democracy is identified with the rights of individuals and collectives to challenge these authorities and those terms, an agonistic account of democracy as situated historically while engaged in ongoing reconstruction of the contingent but deeply shared values of liberal democracy represents a powerful vision. It shares with other post-metaphysical theorists, like Habermas and Rawls, an emphasis on the reconstructive aspects of democratic theory, designed to adduce from extant practices and necessary assumptions the best possible description of legitimate democratic politics. But it pushes these reconstructive projects further by demanding that the practices and institutions of democracy itself be engaged in this reconstruction rather than merely governed by it. Agonistic democracy emerged reactively, offered as an alternative vision of liberalism, deliberation, and democratic engagement. The emphasis of this work on critique, practices of identity, contestation of power, exposure of hegemonic interpretations, and so on depict a vision of democracy that is primarily procedural: democracy reflects practices that take place within the existing realm of the political. Agonism thus explicitly situates itself within existing institutional forms, not outside them. Unlike radical democracy, agonistic thinkers propose not a revolution but a reformation, urging that extant democratic resources be strengthened, democratic values reinterpreted, and hegemonic structures exposed and contested. To the extent agonism is transformative, it is transformative from within the horizon of politics from which it emerges. Agonism does not evoke sudden and rapid change in the character of social order. Over time agonism might lead, directly and indirectly, to dramatic reforms to, and even revolutionary redesign of, democratic institutions, but that change is inevitably slow. This makes agonism appear conservative when compared to radical democracy, as radical democracy takes as its goal the near term transformation and elimination of social and economic injustice. Agonism aspires to create a democratic social order that will lead to the amelioration or destruction of injustice, but recognizes that such injustices are embedded in the context of politics within which such work occurs and against which organization, mobilization, and resistance must take place. Agonism does not represent transformation, but it creates democratic conditions out of which real transformation might arise. To claim that liberalism in its Rawlsian variant represents the best path for agonism is not a capitulation to the narratives of liberalism and its inevitable injustices, nor an endorsement of chastened conservatism about social change. It is to recognize that transformative politics begins within existing politics, and that an effective strategy must identify the structures most amenable to that project. Agonism as a political practice demands both the common ontopolitical framework within which conflict can take place and an institutional framework open to this practice. Political liberalism offers both, without also requiring agonism to shed its skepticism about foundational or teleological claims. Agonism presupposes active engagement with the situated character of social life in order to grasp our own circumstances without demanding to be liberated from them. Political liberalism takes these circumstances as the frame from which a governing interpretation of justice emerges; as long as this conception remains open to further reinterpretation (as it can be once severed from the insistence on stability) political liberalism supports agonistic politics. The objections of Mouffe and others can be attributed to Rawls's insistence that the governing interpretation of the political embody an overlapping consensus with deep roots in comprehensive moral doctrines, and which can be invoked to resolve contentious questions of democratic life. But as I demonstrated in the previous chapter, the political conception can also be understood as a relatively contingent modus vivendi, subject itself to debate when invoked to resolve conflict. For Rawls an overlapping consensus is necessary to forestall the sort of deeper public debate and passionate engagement that agonistic democrats hope to foster. Understanding the political conception as the negotiated but revisable shared interpretation of liberal democratic principles permits both the channeling of passionate conflict into agonistic engagement and the possibility that the governing interpretation can be itself an object of engagement. In fact, Mouffe makes the same distinction as Rawls between a political conception ("commitment to principles") and substantive moral doctrines, as does Connolly when he describes the practices of contemporary democratic citizenship: They embrace their faith at one level, and recoil back upon it at another to come to terms with the obdurate fact that it does not convince millions of others. Sometimes their own commitment is punctuated with a residual element of uncertainty. That seems noble to me, but perhaps not necessary to deep pluralism. What is needed is pursuit of a bicameral orientation to citizenship and being, in which you embrace your creed as you bring it into the public realm; and then recoil back without deep resentment on its contestability to open up negotiating space with others (Schoolman 2008: 316). The agonistic practice so envisioned is strikingly similar to that proposed by Rawls: citizens hold their own moral doctrines as true and complete, while recognizing that the entrance of this doctrine into the public realm will expose your absolute in its partiality. The bicameralism Connolly describes mirrors the distinction between comprehensive doctrines and the political conception, with the difference that Connolly does not think that faith is incompatible with democratic negotiation. Rawls excludes the metaphysical because it undermines the overlapping consensus, which must be minimal in order to be consensual. An agonistic political liberalism maintains this model without the demand that the passions, ideals, and beliefs of citizens be confined to the private realm. Since the political conception is recognizably partial, understood as hegemonic, and an explicit subject of political engagement, the line between metaphysical and political need not be policed. What the political conception does, once generated, is provide a guiding framework within which democratic conflicts can be engaged openly, where a real possible result of that engagement is a revision of the negotiated interpretation that is the condition of agonistic encounters. Mouffe asserts that "a difficult balance has to be struck between, on the one hand, democracy understood as a set of procedures required to cope with plurality, and, on the other, democracy as the adherence to values which inform a particular mode of coexistence" (1993: 131 ). Political liberalism shorn of the imperative to consensus capture this balance by offering the framework through which democratic societies can manage plurality by articulating a shared understanding of liberal values, while also permitting this articulation to be contested and revised. Agonism thus forestalls the idea that any democratic institution can claim substantive legitimacy for its use of power-any act of government is an act of a particular identity or interest acting upon (not implementing) the collective. There are collectively binding decisions but no collective decisions; the institutional conditions of democratic agonism are much like those described by Dahl's vision of polyarchy, where minorities rule and liberty is preserved by ensuring that no minority comes to dominate in the name of a fictionalized popular identity. Similarly, Connolly envisages a society "made up of intersecting and independent minorities of numerous types and sorts who occupy the same territorial space and who negotiate an ethos of engagement between themselves" (2000: 92). This is the structural argument for an agonistic liberalism-a competitive environment of plural identities and interests will tend to undercut any and all claims to overcome contingency, thus cultivating practices that make visible and contest hegemonic interpretations. If this can happen within an agonistic cultural order, within a shared symbolic framework (liberty/equality), exercised by citizens informed by an ethos of reciprocity and presumptive gratitude (which will, of course, require some material conditions to be maintained), it is likely to maximize inclusion and minimize domination. Under such circumstances the range of emancipatory visions and contested democratic norms is likely to be vast. Since the shared interpretation of common principles that permits agonistic participation is itself subject to the same regular challenge and renegotiation, the mechanism for significant democratic change resides at the heart of agonistic liberalism. And to the extent the experience of living in a society in which peaceful but passionate negotiation and renegotiation of the inherited values that bind people collectively is likely to shape subjectivity, as post-foundational thinkers and Rawlsian liberals all suggest, the possibilities for dramatic transformation to the ontopolitical grounds of that social order increase as citizens come to see both conflict and reciprocity as living norms of political life. There is room in this modus vivendi for radical visions of the future, and room for these visions to transform the temporary hegemony of the political conception of justice. While no political order, liberal or otherwise, can ever attain full transparency, consensus, or inclusion, an institutional commitment to negotiate and renegotiate terms of agreement that are themselves both the condition of further conflict and themselves subjects of this same conflict offers a vision of political life sufficiently capacious to render transformative change conceivable. I began this book with a discussion of post-foundationalism and its implications for politics. Agonistic democracy, I claimed, offers the account of democratic politics best suited to post-foundational circumstances in which claims to have achieved a stable consensus to guide political action, whether rooted in truth, nature, identity, morality, rationality, or any other extra-contextual criteria, cannot be sustained. I also argued that the justification for democracy, agonistic or otherwise, does not derive from the recognition of post-foundational conditions; like any other hegemonic ideal democracy is a situated product of the history within which its dominant position emerged. That is not to say that convergence on some sort of democratic norms is unlikely, as absent massive coercion or uncommon homogeneity the radical pluralism post-foundationalism tends to provoke is also likely to undermine claims to authority based upon claims of truth. In the case of western societies with liberal democratic histories, however, the convergence of post-foundational pluralism and an historical framework that privileges the values of equality and liberty produces circumstances in which democratic institutions are the unavoidable default for politics. A commitment to liberalism also shapes these historical conditions, so attempts to articulate an appropriate vision of democratic politics that expresses these situated values and embraces a post-foundational account of meaning must also grapple with the powerful role liberalism plays in the interpretation of democratic values in western democracies. These constraints are neither optional nor binding. We find ourselves always already inhabiting a history of meaning, practice, and identity, and these elements of our being are not infinitely malleable. They may be transformed, reinterpreted, and eventually even overcome, but such work begins with recognition of our limitations. Marx, despite his otherwise universalistic commitments, captured these circumstances as clearly anything in Heidegger's work, writing in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that "men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted." The inherited circumstances of western democratic theory include the powerful presence of liberalism, and a viable theory aspiring to deepen democratic possibilities must grapple with this fact. This commitment to dealing with the world as we find it helps explain the recurrent frustration with agonism expressed by more radical critics. Because pluralist agonists focus on the situated possibilities inherent to the hegemonic interpretations and norms already in place and then try to expand these possibilities, they appear to those committed to the complete transformation of contemporary liberalism to be defending the status quo. Tally makes this argument in his review of Mouffe: The most damning critique of On the Political may be that it winds up reinforcing the status quo ... Indeed, Mouffe's agonistic politics does not seem very radical at all. Whenever Mouffe addresses practical matters, she uses the language of adversarial or agonistic politics, but evokes tame and familiar scenes. Mouffe argues for a pluralism that recognizes real differences, but that also ensures that everyone plays by the same rules. "Partisans" who really want to change the political landscape may not be allowed to participate (2007: 7-8). Vazquez-Arroyo (2004) develops a similar critique of Connolly. There are two problems with this critique, and addressing each will help clarify why an agonistic pluralism is best cultivated within liberal institutional bounds. First, the critique underestimates the democratic capacities of liberalism, associating all liberal accounts with a broader indictment of capitalist rationality. Second, the critique fails to account for the situated character of politics, asserting a transformative radicalism that agonism rejects. Often the objection to liberalism offered by radical theorists represents an objection to an idea of liberalism imbricated with existing structures of inequality, a rationalistic account of individual interests, and the problems of global capitalism. Liberalism thus represents a constellation of problems against which democratic advocates position themselves. Dietz identifies this view of liberalism as an abstracted enemy of democracy: "The polemic that afflicts so many current studies of democracy and citizenship is most evident at the level of discourse on liberal ism, where this complex and multifaceted historical phenomenon has become little more than an ideational enemy, or a suspect to be processed and called forth for 'rebuke'" (1998: 116). But liberalism is as complex and pluralistic as any other major account of contemporary politics, and both its theoretical and historical specificity should not be elided. Some aspects of liberal politics contribute to visions of subjectivity that will generate resentment and oppression, but elements within these same theories might also be used to mitigate such pressures. Some versions of liberalism identify closely with capitalism and neo-liberal aspirations, but others endeavor to identify an economic order consistent with liberal values without offering any such privilege to markets or competition. Some versions of liberalism presuppose strong forms of rationality while others are attentive to the variety of ways different identities organize and prioritize their values and actions. There is no single liberalism, and-democratic theory would do well to be attentive to the range of possibilities available within this plurality. Instead, liberalism "in much contemporary democratic theory, particularly post-structural and post¬foundational work, is taken to embody the flaws of modernity generally and thus becomes the flaw that democratic theorizing is intended to overcome" (Dietz 1998: 117). But a theory of democracy that takes historicity seriously cannot reduce liberalism to polemic and the dominant mode of democratic institution to that which is to be overcome. That liberal democracy is in practice and theory flawed is beyond dispute, but if it also lacks any potential to nurture a more democratic and less flawed practice then there is little hope for post-foundational democratic theory. If only a rupture and overcoming can achieve democratic outcomes and democracy will ever be over the horizon of history, a democratic theory of institutions and engagement rather than resistance and aspiration is impossible. I hope to have shown by looking carefully at Rawlsian liberalism as a singular and situated example of a particular and historically viable form of liberalism that the more radical aspirations of democratic theory need not begin and end with the rejection of the dominant interpretation of democracy within and against which political action must engage. Agonistic theory can offer an account of democracy mindful of both the danger and the potential of the liberal hegemony. Agonism does not envision contestation extending "all the way" down, as it were. The ontopolitical foundations of agonistic democracy are contingent and revisable, but they cannot be the constant object of debate. If, as I have tried to argue, a post-foundational politics demands the recognition both of the contingency of foundations and the situated limits to the range of possible meanings found in any particular grounds of the political, then an agonistic politics must also be a bounded politics. Agonism works within historicity in order to expand the constellation of conceivable conflicts, without rejecting the tragic reality that limits to inclusion are endemic to politics. Hegemony can be productive or destructive, democratic or authoritarian, contested or univocal, but hegemony cannot be universal. Post-foundational politics embraces the inevitability of boundaries and limits, and then works to make those boundaries as wide as possible without turning debates into ontological conflicts, conflicts that cannot but be violent as they take place outside the grounds of shared ontopolitical premises. Calling perspectives that accept the contingent liberal principles of democratic politics legitimate may seem dangerous, as it implies that perspectives beyond this consensus are illicit and excluded. And it does so imply. But the language of legitimacy is unavoidable for post-foundational politics. "Contrary to the dialogic approach, the democratic debate is conceived as a real confrontation. Adversaries do fight - even fiercely - but according to a shared set of rules, and their positions, despite being ultimately irreconcilable, are accepted as legitimate perspectives" (Mouffe 2005a: 52). The condition of peaceful democratic agonism is a willingness to accept some set of principles, interpretations, or procedures as legitimate, even if that legitimacy is understood as subject to legitimate conflict itself. Pluralist agonism endeavors not to utterly transform the political in order to bring about a new democratic dawn. Instead, it aspires to deepen, extend, and intensify the democratic capacity for contestation and questioning already latent within the situated norms and hegemonic articulations of the political. At some point the confrontation between principles is so vast that the contest must be antagonistic, and enemies simply cannot recognize one another as legitimate. Political liberalism offers a set of principles and practices compatible with the type of "conflictual consensus" agonistic democrats advocate, while also highlighting the historically contingent yet also ontologically powerful status of these same principles. Post-foundationalism dictates democratic theorizing both pay close attention to the ontopolitical grounds of any proposed politics and propose ways to preserve the pluralism that inevitably follows from the recognition of contingency. A theory of agonistic democracy embedded within a modified version of political liberalism can support institutions capable of addressing both imperatives, and the institutions it supports are not remarkably different from those envisioned by liberal theory. The resources necessary for agonistic transformation are present in the political institutions, political culture, and political theory of contemporary democracy. The modified political liberalism proposed in this book is probably not the only institutional possibility for agonistic democracy, but its plausibility demonstrates that institutionalization is neither incompatible with agonistic principles nor impossible to develop within existing social norms. By situating liberalism explicitly within a post-foundational ontology, liberalism is transformed in significant ways and its practices opened up to greater contestation, generosity, and active re-constitution.
Only through formative education can students act on civic commitments but that requires a change in how they currently engage in dialogue—try or die for the aff
Giroux 13 (Henry, American scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, “Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University,” 29 October 2013, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university)// LADI
In a dystopian society, utopian thought becomes sterile, and paraphrasing Theodor Adorno, thinking becomes an act of utter stupidity.  Anti-public intellectuals now define the larger cultural landscape, all too willing to flaunt co-option and reap the rewards of venting insults at their assigned opponents while being reduced to the status of paid servants of powerful economic interests. But the problem is not simply with the rise of a right-wing cultural apparatus dedicated to preserving the power and wealth of the rich and corporate elite. As Stuart Hall recently remarked, the state of progressive thought is also in jeopardy in that, as he puts it, "The left is in trouble. It's not got any ideas, it's not got any independent analysis of its own, and therefore, it's got no vision. It just takes the temperature . . . It has no sense of politics being educative, of politics changing the way people see things."28 Of course, Hall is not suggesting the left has no ideas to speak of. He is suggesting that such ideas are removed from the larger issue of what it means to address education and the production and reception of meaningful ideas as a mode of pedagogy that is central to politics itself. The issue of politics being educative, of recognizing that matters of pedagogy, subjectivity and consciousness are at the heart of political and moral concerns, should not be lost on academics. Nor should the relevance of education being at the heart of politics be lost on those of us concerned about inviting the public back into higher education and rethinking the purpose and meaning of higher education itself. Democracy places civic demands upon its citizens, and such demands point to the necessity of an education that is broad-based, critical and supportive of meaningful civic values, participation in self-governance and democratic leadership. Only through such a formative and critical educational culture can students learn how to become individual and social agents, rather than disengaged spectators or uncritical consumers,  able both to think otherwise and  to act upon civic commitments that "necessitate a reordering of basic power arrangements" fundamental to promoting the common good and producing a strong democracy. This is not a matter of imposing values on education and in our classrooms.  The university and the classroom are already defined through power-laden discourses and a myriad of values that are often part of the hidden curriculum of educational politics and pedagogy. A more accurate position would be, as Toni Morrison points out, to take up our responsibility "as citizen/scholars in the university and to accept the consequences of our own value-redolent roles." She continues: "Like it or not, we are paradigms of our own values, advertisements of our own ethics - especially noticeable when we presume to foster ethics-free, value-lite education."29

Tournament: Voices | Round: 2 | Opponent: William Harvard Westlake | Judge: Ariel Shin
Evaluation of energy policy requires a social context. This requires situating nuclear power in the broader context of society and the economy to understand that traditional cost benefit assessment relies on flawed technological optimism. Glover et al 06
(Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Directs the Urban Studies and Wheaton in Chicago programs, selected to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leaders Program for 2011-2013, *2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Distinguished Professor of Energy and Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Head of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (Leigh Glover, Noah Toly, John Byrne, “Energy as a Social Project: Recovering a Discourse”, in “Transforming Power: Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict”, p. 1-32, http://www.ceep.udel.edu/energy/publications/2006_es_energy_as_a_social_project.pdf)

From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury ¶ pollution, and biodiversity loss,¶ 2¶ the origins of many of our least tractable¶ environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy¶ system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also ¶ accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric ¶ light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human¶ beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light¶ by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has ¶ left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects¶ promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the ¶ disturbing link between modern energy and war.¶ 3¶ Whether as a mineral whose ¶ control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil,¶ see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of ¶ extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the¶ significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance ¶ of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One¶ might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, ¶ including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of¶ modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing:¶ instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of ¶ euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that ¶ imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.4 One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, ¶ perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power ¶ who, early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg, 1972) capable¶ of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner “too cheap¶ to meter” (Lewis Strauss, cited in the New York Times 1954, 1955). In reply to¶ those who fear catastrophic accidents from the “magical fire” or the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe¶ reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel enthusiasts who, likewise, project¶ more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin¶ and Stoppard, 2003). Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in¶ “sustainable energy alternatives” that constitute a second euphoric stream.¶ Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and supposedly more democratic,¶ options, “green” energy advocates conceive devices and systems that prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a¶ commitment to ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe¶ that greening the energy system embodies universal social ideals and, as a¶ result, can overcome current conflicts between energy “haves” and “havenots.”¶ 5¶ In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests¶ (2003: 327, 291), “today’s nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power¶ to the people” as “micropower meets village power.” Hermann Scheer echoes¶ the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a¶ “solar global economy... can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and¶ grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and¶ to safeguard the world’s cultural diversity” (Scheer, 2002: 34).¶ 6 The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity¶ (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry¶ and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued¶ without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and¶ ecological record of the regime’s operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the¶ Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key¶ source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the¶ most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the¶ multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and¶ the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its¶ natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the¶ irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals. By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had retrogressed into a lifeharming dead end (1961: 263, 248): ...an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations... The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity—here are the enemies. The living organism demands a life-sustaining environment. Modernity’s formula for two centuries had been to increase energy in order¶ to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s¶ supporters would seek to derail present-tense¶ 7¶ evaluations of the era’s social¶ and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which,¶ finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to¶ traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed that the¶ modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the “democratic-authoritarian bargain” (1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime¶ and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce “every material¶ advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus one may desire, in¶ quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority” on the¶ condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing¶ to offer. An authoritarian energy order thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption¶ from non-economic social values. The premises of the current energy paradigms are in need of critical study¶ in the manner of Mumford’s work if a world measurably different from the¶ present order is to be organized. Interrogating modern energy assumptions,¶ this chapter examines the social projects of both conventional and sustainable energy as a beginning effort in this direction. The critique explores the¶ neglected issue of the political economy of energy, underscores the pattern of¶ democratic failure in the evolution of modern energy, and considers the discursive continuities between the premises of conventional and sustainable¶ energy futures. The Abundant Energy Machine8 Proposals by its stakeholders to fix the modern energy system abound.¶ Advocates envision bigger, more expensive, and more complex machines to¶ spur and sate an endlessly increasing world energy demand. From clean coal¶ to a revived nuclear energy strategy, such developments promise a worldwide¶ movement to a cleaner and more socially benign energy regime that retains¶ its modern ambitions of bigger, more, and better. Proponents even suggest¶ that we might have our cake and eat it too, promoting patterns of energy¶ production, distribution, and consumption consistent with an unconstrained¶ ideology of quantification while also banishing environmental threats and¶ taming social risks that energy critics cite in their challenges to the mainstream. Consistent with a program of ecological modernization, the conventional energy regime’s architects are now exploring new technologies and¶ strategies that offer what are regarded as permanent solutions to our energy¶ troubles without harming our ecological future or disturbing the goal of¶ endless economic growth and its attendant social relations.

Part 2 is The Nuclear Renaissance +Settler Colonialism
Politics is dominated by the idea of security which combines unprecedented economic liberalism with equally absolute police and state control
Agamben 14 (Giorgio – Ph.D., Baruch Spinoza Chair at the European Graduate School, Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Verona, Italy, Professor of Philosophy at Collège International de Philosophie in Paris, and at the University of Macerata in Italy, “From the State of Control to a Praxis of Destituent Power,” transcript of lecture delivered by Agamben in Athens, 11-16-13, published on Roarmag, 2-4-14, http://roarmag.org/2014/02/agamben-destituent-power-democracy/)
A reflection on the destiny of democracy today here in Athens is in some way disturbing, because it obliges us to think the end of democracy in the very place where it was born. As a matter of fact, the hypothesis I would like to suggest is that the prevailing governmental paradigm in Europe today is not only non-democratic, but that it cannot either be considered as political. I will try therefore to show that European society today is no longer a political society; it is something entirely new, for which we lack a proper terminology and we have therefore to invent a new strategy. Let me begin with a concept which seems, starting from September 2001, to have replaced any other political notion: security. As you know, the formula “for security reasons” functions today in any domain, from everyday life to international conflicts, as a codeword in order to impose measures that the people have no reason to accept. I will try to show that the real purpose of the security measures is not, as it is currently assumed, to prevent dangers, troubles or even catastrophes. I will be consequently obliged to make a short genealogy of the concept of “security”. A Permanent State of Exception One possible way to sketch such a genealogy would be to inscribe its origin and history in the paradigm of the state of exception. In this perspective, we could trace it back to the Roman principle Salus publica suprema lex – public safety is the highest law — and connect it with Roman dictatorship, with the canonistic principle that necessity does not acknowledge any law, with the comités de salut publique during French revolution and finally with article 48 of the Weimar republic, which was the juridical ground for the Nazi regime. Such a genealogy is certainly correct, but I do not think that it could really explain the functioning of the security apparatuses and measures which are familiar to us. While the state of exception was originally conceived as a provisional measure, which was meant to cope with an immediate danger in order to restore the normal situation, the security reasons constitute today a permanent technology of government. When in 2003 I published a book in which I tried to show precisely how the state of exception was becoming in Western democracies a normal system of government, I could not imagine that my diagnosis would prove so accurate. The only clear precedent was the Nazi regime. When Hitler took power in February 1933, he immediately proclaimed a decree suspending the articles of the Weimar constitution concerning personal liberties. The decree was never revoked, so that the entire Third Reich can be considered as a state of exception which lasted twelve years. What is happening today is still different. A formal state of exception is not declared and we see instead that vague non-juridical notions — like the security reasons — are used to install a stable state of creeping and fictitious emergency without any clearly identifiable danger. An example of such non-juridical notions which are used as emergency producing factors is the concept of crisis. Besides the juridical meaning of judgment in a trial, two semantic traditions converge in the history of this term which, as is evident for you, comes from the Greek verb crino; a medical and a theological one. In the medical tradition, crisis means the moment in which the doctor has to judge, to decide if the patient will die or survive. The day or the days in which this decision is taken are called crisimoi, the decisive days. In theology, crisis is the Last Judgment pronounced by Christ in the end of times. As you can see, what is essential in both traditions is the connection with a certain moment in time. In the present usage of the term, it is precisely this connection which is abolished. The crisis, the judgement, is split from its temporal index and coincides now with the chronological course of time, so that — not only in economics and politics — but in every aspect of social life, the crisis coincides with normality and becomes, in this way, just a tool of government. Consequently, the capability to decide once for all disappears and the continuous decision-making process decides nothing. To state it in paradoxical terms, we could say that, having to face a continuous state of exception, the government tends to take the form of a perpetual coup d’état. By the way, this paradox would be an accurate description of what happens here in Greece as well as in Italy, where to govern means to make a continuous series of small coups d’état. Governing the Effects This is why I think that, in order to understand the peculiar governmentality under which we live, the paradigm of the state of exception is not entirely adequate. I will therefore follow Michel Foucault’s suggestion and investigate the origin of the concept of security in the beginning of modern economy, by François Quesnais and the Physiocrates, whose influence on modern governmentality could not be overestimated. Starting with Westphalia treaty, the great absolutist European states begin to introduce in their political discourse the idea that the sovereign has to take care of its subjects’ security. But Quesnay is the first to establish security (sureté) as the central notion in the theory of government — and this in a very peculiar way. One of the main problems governments had to cope with at the time was the problem of famines. Before Quesnay, the usual methodology was trying to prevent famines through the creation of public granaries and forbidding the exportation of cereals. Both these measures had negative effects on production. Quesnay’s idea was to reverse the process: instead of trying to prevent famines, he decided to let them happen and to be able to govern them once they occurred, liberalizing both internal and foreign exchanges. “To govern” retains here its etymological cybernetic meaning: a good kybernes, a good pilot can’t avoid tempests, but if a tempest occures he must be able to govern his boat, using the force of waves and winds for navigation. This is the meaning of the famous motto laisser faire, laissez passer: it is not only the catchword of economic liberalism; it is a paradigm of government, which conceives of security (sureté, in Quesnay’s words) not as the prevention of troubles, but rather as the ability to govern and guide them in the right direction once they take place. We should not neglect the philosophical implications of this reversal. It means an epochal transformation in the very idea of government, which overturns the traditional hierarchical relation between causes and effects. Since governing the causes is difficult and expensive, it is safer and more useful to try to govern the effects. I would suggest that this theorem by Quesnay is the axiom of modern governmentality. The ancien regime aimed to rule the causes; modernity pretends to control the effects. And this axiom applies to every domain, from economy to ecology, from foreign and military politics to the internal measures of police. We must realize that European governments today gave up any attempt to rule the causes, they only want to govern the effects. And Quesnay’s theorem makes also understandable a fact which seems otherwise inexplicable: I mean the paradoxical convergence today of an absolutely liberal paradigm in the economy with an unprecedented and equally absolute paradigm of state and police control. If government aims for the effects and not the causes, it will be obliged to extend and multiply control. Causes demand to be known, while effects can only be checked and controlled. 

Welcome to the global nuclear renaissance where corporate propaganda markets nuclear power as the only solution to climate change in order to shut down democratic deliberation about alternative energy futures. Wasserman 16
(Harvey, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/29/ny-times-pushes-nukes-while-claiming-renewables-fail-to-fight-climate-change/ , 7-29)

The idea that nuclear power might fight climate change, and that environmentalists might support it, is a recent concoction, a disgraceful, desperate load of utility hype meant to defend the status quo. Fukushima, unsolved waste problems and the plummeting price of renewables have solidified the environmental community’s opposition to nuke power. These reactors are dirty and dangerous. They are not carbon-free and do emit huge quantities of heated water and steam into the ecosphere. The utility industry can’t get private liability insurance for them, and relies on the1957 Price-Anderson Act to protect them from liability in a major catastrophe. The industry continually complains about subsidies to renewable energy but never mentions this government protection program without which all reactors would close. 7. Not just nuke power but the entire centralized fossil/nuke-based grid system is now being undermined by the massive drops in the price of renewable energy, and massive rises in its efficiency and reliability. The critical missing link is battery technology. Because the sun and wind are intermittent, there needs to be energy storage to smooth out supply. Elon Musk‘s billion-dollar Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada and many other industrial ventures indicate major battery breakthroughs in storage is here today. 8. Porter’s NY Times piece correctly says that the massive amounts of cheap, clean renewables flooding the grid in Europe and parts of the U.S. are driving nuclear power plants into bankruptcy. At least a dozen reactor shut downs have been announced in the U.S. since 2012 and many more are on their way. In Japan 52 of the 54 reactors online before the Fukushima disaster are now closed. And, Germany has pledged to shut all its reactors by 2022. But Porter attacks this by complaining that those nukes were supplying base load power that must be otherwise—according to him—shored up with fossil burners. Here’s his key line: “Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power.” But as all serious environmentalists understand, the choice has never been between nukes versus fossil fuels. It’s between centralized fossil/nukes versus decentralized renewables. Porter’s article never mentions the word “battery” or the term “rooftop solar.” But these are the two key parts in the green transition already very much in progress. So here is what the Times obviously can’t bring itself to say: “Cheap solar panels on rooftops are now making the grid obsolete.” The key bridging element of battery back-up capability is on its way. Meanwhile there is absolutely no need for nuclear power plants, which at any rate have long since become far too expensive to operate. Spending billions to prop up dying nuke reactors for “base load” generation is pure corporate theft at the public expense, both in straight financial terms and in the risk of running badly deteriorated reactors deep into the future until they inevitably melt down or blow up. Those billions instead should go to accelerating battery production and distribution, and making it easier, rather than harder, to gain energy independence using the wind and the sun. All this has serious real-world impacts. In Ohio, for example, a well-organized shift to wind and solar was derailed by the Koch-run legislature. Some $2 billion in wind-power investments and a $500 million solar farm were derailed. There are also serious legal barriers now in place to stop homeowners from putting solar shingles and panels on their rooftops. Meanwhile, FirstEnergy strong-armed the Ohio Public Utilities Commission into approving a huge bailout to keep the seriously deteriorated Davis-Besse nuke operating, even though it cannot compete and is losing huge sums of money. Federal regulators have since put that bailout on hold. Arizona and other Koch-owned legislatures have moved to tax solar panels, ban solar shingles and make it illegal to leave the grid without still paying tribute to the utilities who own it. Indeed, throughout the U.S. and much of the western world, corporate-owned governments are doing their best to slow the ability of people to use renewables to rid themselves of the corporate grid. For an environmental movement serious about saving the Earth from climate change, this is a temporary barrier. The Times and its pro-nuke allies in the corporate media will continue to twist reality. But the Solartopian revolution is proceeding ahead of schedule and under budget. A renewable, decentralized energy system is very much in sight. The only question is how long corporate nonsense like this latest NY Times screed can delay this vital transition. Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming the peace movement for causing wars. The centralized King CONG grid and its obsolete owners are at the core of the problem. So are the corporate media outlets like the New York Times that try to hide that obvious reality.

At the heart of this renaissance is a drive to colonize other countries to sustain our nuclear addiction - Wittman 11

Wittman, Nora “The Scramble for Africa's Nuclear Resources” New African No.507 June 2011

THE CURRENT NUCLEAR POLLUTION in Japan and the reactions of politicians and governments throughout Europe, the USA and Asia, even in the eye of disaster, indicate that they will never stop using nuclear power for military means and domestic energy generation and supply.¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ As Japan was battling to control pollution from its Fukushima nuclear plant, destroyed by the massive earthquake that hit the region on II March, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was firmly pronouncing that a withdrawal from nuclear energy was totally out of question for France and will not happen--80 of domestic energy in France comes from nuclear plants.¶ A few hours later, EU ministers deemed it sufficient to submit European nuclear power reactors to a so-called "stress test", and even then only on a voluntary basis. Apparently, the nuclear industry and their party allies throughout the political spectrum have been for a long time in a tight marriage that is far too beneficial for them to split.¶ Africa is currently the continent where nuclear power plants are least present. Only one such plant is present in South Africa, imposed by the apartheid regime in the 1970s. It is located in Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, yet surrounded by the city's ever-spreading suburbs, and was built by a French company. Like most nuclear power plants, it has experienced serious problems and its reactors have had to be shut down several times, especially since 2005.¶ Of course, the idea is not totally unconceivable that there could have been more severe incidents before, and that in apartheid times the white supremacist regime would not have made it a top priority to inform and protect the surrounding African people. In 2010, 91 members of staff were contaminated with Cobalt-58 dust in an incident that was said to be confined to the plant only.¶ In view of these facts and the recent developments, it should be clearer than ever that Africa must not follow the path to ultimate and lasting nuclear destruction that European, North American and Asian leaders seem to be determined to continue to take. Indeed, Africa may not only have the responsibility to save itself from this fate, but may also ultimately have the power to save the world from some of this otherwise pre-programmed nuclear disaster. How? By refusing to let its vast nuclear resources be exploited.¶ South Africa's only nuclear power plant, In Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, was imposed by the apartheid regime in the 70s¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ The nuclear powers are increasingly experiencing and preparing for problems of supply with the necessary crude nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium. Even though it is said that countries such as the USA, Russia and China have or rather had vast uranium resources themselves, all of these countries are now very eager to identify, secure and exploit mines for nuclear materials throughout Africa.¶ Africa, the continent endowed with the richest natural resources, has vast nuclear materials in its soil. Almost every African country is currently being mined or examined and prepared for nuclear exploitation.¶ According to a recent report updated in February 2011 by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), an environmental activist amalgamation based in Amsterdam, China National Nuclear Group, being that country's biggest nuclear power plant builder, signed a deal with the China-Africa Development Fund, a Chinese state-run institution, in 2010 to examine and exploit uranium resources throughout Africa.¶ French, Canadian, British, Swiss, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Australian and other companies are mining uranium, or have signed contracts to do so very soon with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DRCongo, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Chad, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and other African countries. …

  
Part 3 is the Advocacy

Plan Text: All countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power. Countries that currently produce power from nuclear reactors will immediately begin phasing out all nuclear power. Lucas 12
Caroline Lucas an British politician, and since 2 September 2016, Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, 2-17-2012, "Why we must phase out nuclear power," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power MG
The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have disastrous consequences. The only certain way to eliminate this potentially devastating risk is to phase out nuclear power altogether. Some countries appear to have learnt this lesson. In Germany, the government changed course in the aftermath of Fukushima and decided to go ahead with a previously agreed phase out of nuclear power. Many scenarios now foresee Germany sourcing 100 of its power needs from renewables by 2030. Meanwhile Italian citizens voted against plans to go nuclear with a 90 majority. The same is not yet true in Japan. Although only three out of its 54 nuclear reactors are online and generating power, while the Japanese authorities conduct "stress tests", the government hopes to reopen almost all of these and prolong the working life of a number of its ageing reactors by to up to 60 years. The Japanese public have made their opposition clear however. Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of the population is now against nuclear power. Local grassroots movements opposing nuclear power have been springing up across Japan. Mayors and governors in fear of losing their power tend to follow the majority of their citizens. 

Voting affirmative endorses a social critique of nuclear power. Only instrumental reform to the energy system can effectively spill over to broader systemic problems without being coopted. Martin et. Al, 84
(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)

What is a strategy anyway? A strategy links the analysis of an issue with goals and objectives. Having chosen a strategy, it is implemented through appropriate actions. An action is a 'once-off' event such as a rally, march, blockade or lobbying a particular politician. A method, such as lobbying in general, refers to all actions of a certain type. Actions are coordinated together into a campaign. The campaign gives direction to a series of events. Given our analysis in section 1 of the structural forces responsible for the nuclear fuel cycle, the goal of stopping uranium mining must be closely linked to the goal of basic structural change in the state, capitalism, patriarchy and the division of labour. As such it must involve challenges to the structures which underlie nuclear concerns. The broader objectives for an anti-nuclear movement must include encouraging mass participation in decision making rather than elite control, decentralising the distribution of political power into smaller, local groups, and bringing about self-reliance based on environmentally sound technologies. These objectives involve fundamental changes to the way our society is organised at present. In effect, an anti-nuclear strategy must involve both actions aimed at stopping nuclear power and activities which challenge existing structures and help construct viable alternatives. In this context, the success or failure of an individual campaign must be viewed from the perspective of working towards these overall goals and objectives. The actions used by the anti-uranium movement fall into two main categories. Firstly there are actions which aim at convincing or influencing elites, such as lobbying or writing letters to politicians. Secondly are the actions such as rallies and blockades which usually involve more participation from the community. While such actions may be aimed at elites they are also important in educating or giving support to those who are involved. Lobbying. Lobbying is a direct attempt to convince or pressure elite decision-makers. It does nothing to challenge the state, patriarchy or other structures underlying nuclear power, but rather hopes to oppose nuclear power by 'working through the proper channels'. This leaves elite structures unchallenged and intact. Indeed lobbying is a form of political action most suited to powerful interest groups such as corporations and professional bodies. The state is the forum of the powerful, so for these kinds of groups lobbying often is an effective strategy. For small activist groups lobbying is useful only if it appears to be backed up by politically visible mass concern or mass action. In 1983, after the election of a Labor Government, the anti-uranium movement turned strongly to lobbying in an attempt to induce the Labor Caucus to implement the Labor Party platform. This effort was unsuccessful. Participating in environmental inquiries. In making submissions to the Ranger Inquiry, environmental groups made a concerted attempt to ensure that the issue of the Ranger mine was not divorced from the general issue of uranium mining and nuclear power, and that ultimate decisions were determined by the public rather than 'experts'. The Inquiry did in fact analyse the overall dangers of the nuclear industry and concluded that no decision on uranium mining should occur without public debate. These results helped fuel the ensuing widespread public debate on uranium mining in Australia. One reason for involvement in environmental inquiries is to challenge the role of experts in service to vested interests. The Ranger Inquiry commented on the bias of distinguished scientists who testified in favour of uranium mining. The Ranger Inquiry was unusual in making full use of broad terms of reference. Many environmental inquiries have institutional constraints which can make it questionable whether activists should spend much energy in that area. Many government inquiries with severely limited terms of reference offer few opportunities for activists to intervene effectively. There is not only the danger of being 'co-opted' if activists take part, but also the prospect that any structural challenges may be deflected by superficial concessions. Often such inquiries are not genuine and are only set up as window-dressing. For example, the Australian Science and Technology Council inquiry set up in November 1983 to investigate Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle has terms of reference which assume the continuation of uranium mining. Working through the trade union movement. In 1976 anti-uranium groups began a major effort to persuade trade unions and their Congress delegates to adopt and support anti-uranium policies. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress adopted an anti-uranium policy in mid-1977. Following the re-election of the Liberal-National Government in December 1977, anti-uranium groups focussed on persuading unions to implement the ACTU policy. However, the members of a number of unions - including some with anti-uranium policies - continued to work in the uranium industry. Some union leaders chose not to attempt to convince members to avoid or leave the industry, while other leaders supportive of the policies could not persuade members working in the industry or transporting its products. The efforts within the trade union movement have been strong to the extent that they have mobilised rank-and-file action. One of the most valiant efforts to stop uranium mining was by the Waterside Workers Federation - supported by the Seamen's Union and the Transport Workers Union - in refusing to load yellowcake for export from Darwin in late 1981. This direct action - an obvious challenge to the power of corporations and the state - was only called off when deregistration threats from the Liberal-National Government induced the ACTU to back down. Efforts through the trade unions have been least effective when they have depended on action only by union elites. An ACTU policy against uranium mining is not enough: it does not in itself challenge any of the driving forces behind nuclear power. When Bob Hawke was President of the ACTU, the executive showed itself disinclined to mount even a strong publicity campaign against the uranium mining industry. Working through the parliamentary system. Since 1976 a major focus of the anti-nuclear power movement has been the ALP. A massive campaign of publicising and discussing the issue at the party branch level resulted in an anti-uranium platform being adopted in mid-1977. Since that time there has been strong anti-uranium feeling within the party. In late 1977 the focus of the anti-uranium movement became the federal election campaign. During this campaign the anti-uranium movement used the resources of local anti-uranium groups to help the ALP in marginal House of Representatives electorates and for the Australian Democrats in the Senate. Many anti-uranium activists pinned their hopes on a Labor victory. But the Liberal-National coalition won the election, and the anti-uranium campaign appeared to have little impact in marginal electorates. After this defeat, many activists left the movement while a number of local groups effectively ceased to exist. The danger in relying too much on anti-uranium action by a Labor Government was demonstrated in mid-1982 when the Labor anti-uranium platform was watered down on the initiative of party power brokers in spite of continuing support for the platform at the party branch level. The danger was further demonstrated in November 1983 when Labor Caucus, at the initiative of Cabinet, gave the go-ahead for Roxby Downs, potentially the largest uranium mine in the world. In each case the impetus to maintain the anti-uranium policy came from the grassroots of the party, while it was labour elites who pushed pro-mining stances. Any Australian government, whether Labor or not, is strongly tied to the established state apparatus and to the support of capitalism. It is futile to expect the government on its own - whatever its platform may be - to readily oppose aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. This will occur only when there is strong and continual pressure from the grassroots of the party and from the community at large. Grassroots mobilisation. The anti-uranium movement has used a wide variety of methods to inform and involve the community. Commonly used methods include leaflet distribution, articles, talks, discussions, films, petitions, rallies, marches, vigils and street theatre. Major anti-uranium rallies and marches were held each year in most large cities, especially in the peak years of the uranium debate, 1976-1979 and again since 1983. A typical grassroots activity has been the creation of nuclear-free zones, which is mainly a symbolic action which helps raise awareness and encourage local groups to openly oppose nuclear power. This activity has worked closely with the dissemination of information through the media, local groups, the alternative press and schools. In 1983 the people in the Bega Valley Shire voted to declare their area a nuclear-free zone. To counter this popular sentiment, the Shire Council called in nuclear experts in order to argue the case against the nuclear-free zone. In this case the nuclear-free zone campaign provided a channel for exposing and challenging the role of nuclear expertise and elites in promoting nuclear power. Civil disobedience has also been used by the anti-nuclear movement. In the late 1970s, nonviolent direct action was used on several occasions at ports where uranium was being loaded for export. At the Roxby Downs blockade in August 1983, several hundred people gathered to express their opposition and hinder mining operations. Two distinctive features of this protest were the use of nonviolent action and the way in which participants formed themselves into affinity groups. These are a form of political organising which is consciously anti-elitist and aims to democratise all group interactions. Education, rallies, marches, petitions and civil disobedience sometimes do little to challenge the structures underlying nuclear power. For example, the rally outside Parliament House in October 1983 was primarily aimed at putting pressure on the Labor Party at a time when it was considering its uranium policy. Similarly, the 'tent embassy' located on Parliament House lawns aimed to prick the conscience of the ALP. One of the aims of the Roxby Downs blockade was to mobilise pressure to influence the ALP. On the other hand, grassroots mobilisation often provides a potent challenge to nuclear power and the forces behind it. All the lasting successes of Australian anti-uranium campaigns have depended ultimately on grassroots mobilisation, which provides a reservoir of commitment and concern which elite-oriented activities do not. In 1975, the virtue of mining uranium was largely unquestioned among the general public and the labour movement. It was simply unthinkable that a mineral which could be profitably sold would be left in the ground. Yet by 1977 the anti-uranium view had become widely understood and strongly supported. This change in opinion happened largely through the educational and organising efforts of the local anti-uranium groups and of anti-uranium activists within organisations such as trade unions, schools and churches. The resurgence of anti-uranium activity in 1983 owed much to the framework established in the late 1970s. The anti-uranium platform adopted by the ALP in 1977 was the result of organising and education at the party branch level. ALP stands and action against uranium mining have come consistently from the party grassroots, and this in turn has depended on anti-uranium sentiment in the general community. Support for uranium mining within the ALP has always been strongest on the part of party elites. The anti-uranium stands and actions by Australian trade unions have been stronger than in any other country in the world. Building on a tradition of trade union action on social issues, this has come about from persistent grassroots education and organising at the shop floor level. It has been the rank-and-file unionists who have taken the strongest anti-uranium stands, and the trade union elites who have backed away from opposition. When in late 1981 the Seamen's Union refused to load yellowcake in Darwin, it was the rank-and-file workers who took a stand and made the sacrifices. Does grassroots mobilisation then provide the most fruitful avenue for challenging the structures behind nuclear power? Yes, but the choice of methods is not straightforward or automatic. The problem with many grassroots methods used by the anti-uranium movement is that they have not been systematically organised and focussed as part of an overall long-term strategy. Instead, individual groups - and indeed the national movement - has often just looked ahead to the next rally, the next signature drive, or the next ALP Conference. While this approach does have some merit for example in saving an area from irreversible environmental destruction, it is inadequate as an approach to stopping mining or transforming the structures underlying nuclear power. For example the closing of Roxby mine would prevent the destruction of the surrounding ecosystem including mound springs inhabited by forms of aquatic life found nowhere else in the world. If the environment is altered, these unique creatures will be gone forever. However, the closing of Roxby in isolation would do nothing to prevent mining companies from setting up or increasing production in other places. If, on the other hand, existing power structures were challenged, and the closing of Roxby were carried out in conjunction with the closing of all uranium mines and a disbanding of uranium interests, then the safety of these ecosystems would be assured. What needs to be done is to focus on vulnerable points within the structures promoting nuclear power, and to devote efforts in these areas. What are the vulnerable points, then? Before looking at specific vulnerable points, let's examine the nuclear power issue as a whole. Nuclear power is a large-scale vulnerable point in the structures of the state, capitalism and so forth. In promoting nuclear power, and thereby entrenching centralised political and economic power, other consequences result which mobilise people in opposition: environmental effects (especially radioactive waste), the connection with nuclear weapons, threats to Aboriginal land rights, threats to civil liberties, and many others. In organising to oppose these specific threats, people at the same time can challenge the driving forces behind nuclear power. Here are a few of the specific vulnerable points which have been addressed by the anti-uranium movement. Threats to Aborigines. Nuclear power is alleged to be beneficial, but uranium mining is a severe cultural threat to Aborigines, who are already a strongly oppressed group in Australia. The anti-uranium movement and the Aboriginal land rights movements have been strengthened by joint actions, such as speaking tours. Centralised decision-making. Nuclear power has widespread social effects, but promoters of nuclear power claim the decisions must be taken by political and scientific elites. This runs counter to the rhetoric of Western democracies where ordinary people are meant to have a say in political decision-making. By moving in on this embarrassing contradiction, protests which demand a role for the public in decision-making about energy also challenge political elites and the political use of expertise. Capitalism and workers. Nuclear power is alleged to be good for the economy and for workers, but in practice massive state subsidies to the industry are the rule, and few jobs are produced for the capital invested. In challenging nuclear power as an inappropriate direction for economic investment, a challenge is made to the setting of economic priorities by corporations and the state. Capitalism also directs investments only into profitable areas, irrespective of their social benefits. If activists can undermine the profitability of marginal enterprises by delaying tactics or by jeopardising state subsidies, then capitalist investment can be shunted away from socially destructive areas. For example, direct actions against Roxby Downs could in the long run undermine its profitability and cause its closure. Grassroots mobilisation is usually the most effective way to intervene at vulnerable points such as these. A suitable combination of interventions then forms the basis for a strategy against uranium mining. But how can uranium mining actually be stopped? This is a good question. Grassroots mobilisation does not by itself stop uranium mining. The mobilisation must connect with major forces in society. There are several ways this can occur. Uranium mining could be stopped: (1) by direct decision of the government; (2) by the unions acting directly through strikes or bans to prevent uranium mining, export, or construction of nuclear plants; (3) through cost escalations, for example resulting from requirements to ensure safety or environmental protection, (4) by a referendum whose results were adhered to; (5) by legal action on the part of aborigines or anti-uranium forces; (6) by direct action to physically stop mining from proceeding. A critical element necessary to the success of any of these methods is the mobilisation of a large section of the public against uranium mining. Thus for example government action to stop mining would be likely to take place only if there were mass mobilisation on the issue. Similarly 'direct action' could only succeed if popular support were so great that the government refused to use sufficient force to physically overcome the resisters. To give an idea of how grassroots methods could be coordinated into a strategy to stop uranium mining, consider a hypothetical example. Suppose an analysis of the current political situation suggested that direct action by workers and unions gave the most immediate promise for directly stopping uranium mining, while government decision and cost escalations were also likely avenues for stopping mining. A grassroots strategy might include the following: Systematic community organising and education, to provide a basis in popular sympathy and support for direct action by workers. Points to be emphasised would include the right of workers to take direct action on conscience issues as well as work-related issues, and the importance of questioning decisions made solely on the basis of corporate profitability or state encouragement of large-scale economic investment. Development of alternative plans for investment and jobs based on input from workers and communities, and widespread dissemination of the ideas and rationale for the alternative plans. A series of rallies, marches, vigils and civil disobedience, aimed at both mobilising people and illustrating the strength of anti-uranium feeling. These actions would be coordinated towards major points for possible worker intervention, such as trade union conferences or the start of work for new mines. Through consultation with unions, workers and working-class families, the establishment of support groups and funds for workers and unions penalised for direct action against uranium mining. Plans to make parallel challenges to those by workers, such as simultaneous defiance of the Atomic Energy Act by trade unionists and community activists. Black bans of corporations or state instrumentalities by unionists could be coordinated with boycotts organised by community groups. With such a strategy, it is likely that the workers taking action would come under strong attacks from both corporations and the government. Preparation to oppose such attacks would depend on community mobilisation to demonstrate support for the workers in the media, in the streets, through informal communication channels and to the workers themselves. If direct action by workers began to be sustained through community support, it is quite possible that other channels for stopping uranium mining could come into play: the government - especially a Labor government - might back away from confrontation with unions supported by the community, or corporations might decide investment in this controversial area was too risky. Plans would be required to continue the campaign towards these or other avenues for stopping uranium mining. How does grassroots mobilisation provide a challenge to the structures underlying nuclear power? It challenges the division of labour and the role of elites, especially the role of political elites which have a corner on the exercise of social responsibility, by mobilising in a widespread way the social concern of ordinary people and by demonstrating the direct exercise of this concern for example by groups in the workplace. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the division of labour and the role of scientific elites through a challenge to the prestige and credibility of scientists who advocate nuclear power. As the nuclear power issue has been widely debated, it has become obvious to many people that the expertise of pro-nuclear scientists and engineers is tied to vested interests. The nuclear debate has greatly weakened the belief that 'the experts know best'. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the masculine rationality of dominant structures through calling contemporary values and attitudes to nature and to the future into question. Within the antinuclear movement, patriarchy has been challenged as at least some groups have addressed domination by men and developed egalitarian modes of interaction and decision-making. This sometimes has been fostered by nonviolent action training used to prepare for civil disobedience actions. The anti-nuclear movement has inevitably involved questioning the growth of energy use and development of programmes for a 'soft energy future' involving energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and redesign of communities to reduce energy requirements. The challenge to unending energy growth is a direct challenge to the state and capitalism, whose power is tied to traditional economic expansion. Mass mobilisation against uranium also challenges capitalism by bringing under scrutiny the rationale of pursuing profitability at the expense of social responsibility and by direct economic blows to corporate profitability. More fundamentally, nuclear power represents a potential new stage in the entrenchment of centralised political and economic control and of specialist knowledge in the service of elites. By challenging the political and economic rationale for nuclear power, and by making demands for local control over energy decision-making, a direct challenge is made to the power of the state and corporations. It is important to realise that none of these challenges on their own are likely to bring down these structures however much they may weaken them. Sufficiently many blows however over a sustained period could do so. Thus campaigns on the nuclear issue could begin or be part of a process of sustained challenge which could weaken them irreversibly. A grassroots strategy against nuclear power and uranium mining can be seen as a 'non-reformist reform': namely, it can achieve effective change within the system in a way which weakens rather than strengthens dominant structures, or which helps to prevent the entrenchment of new, more powerful structures. Such a strategy does not simply attempt to bypass the 'macro' level of existing structures in the way that some focusses on alternatives do, such as promoting changes in lifestyles only at the level of the individual. Rather such a strategy aims at interactions with existing structures in a way which goes beyond them.

Nuclear phase out solves immediate harms of nuclear power and enables a culture shift towards renewables – Empirics prove. Klein 14
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Print, 2014 EE

As we have already seen, the latest research on renewable energy, most notably by Mark Jacobson’s team at Stanford, shows that a global transition to 100 percent renewable energy-“wind, water and solar”-is both technically and economically feasible “by as early as 2030.” That means lowering greenhouse emissions in line with science-based targets does not have to involve building a global network of new nuclear plants. In fact that could well slow down the transition, since renewable energy is faster and cheaper to roll out than nuclear, critical factors given the tightness of the timeframe. Moreover, says Jacobson, in the near-term nuclear is “not carbon-free, no matter what the advocates tell you. Vast amounts of fossil fuels must be burned to mine, transport and enrich uranium and to build the nuclear plant. And all that dirty power will be released during the 10 to 19 years that it takes to plan and build a nuclear plant. (A wind farm typically takes two to five years .)” He concludes that “if we invest in nuclear versus true renewables, you can bet that the glaciers and polar ice caps will keep melting while we wait, and wait, for the nuclear age to arrive. We will also guarantee a riskier future for us all.” Indeed, renewable installations present dramatically lower risks than either fossil fuels or nuclear energy to those who live and work next to them. As comedian Bill Maher once observed, “You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash.”II. 32 That said, about 12 percent of the world’s power is currently supplied by nuclear energy, much of it coming from reactors that are old and obsolete.33 From a climate perspective, it would certainly be preferable if governments staggered their transitions away from high-risk energy sources like nuclear, prioritizing fossil fuels for cuts because the next decade is so critical for getting us off our current trajectory toward 4-6 degrees Celsius of warming. That would be compatible with a moratorium on new nuclear facilities, a decommissioning of the oldest plants and then a full nuclear phase-out once renewables had decisively displaced fossil fuels. And yet it must also be acknowledged that it was the power of Germany's antinuclear movement that created the conditions for the renewables revolution in the first place (as was the case in Denmark in the 19805), so there might have been no energy transition to debate without that widespread desire to get off nuclear due to its many hazards. Moreover, many German energy experts are convinced that the speed of the transition so far proves that it is possible to phase out both nuclear and fossil fuels simultaneously. A 2012 report by the German National Center for Aerospace, Energy and Transport Research (DLR), for instance, demonstrated that 67 percent of the electricity in all of the EU could come from renewables by 2030, with that number reaching 96 percent by 2050.34 But, clearly, this will become a reality only if the right policies are in place.
to extend the EU’s jurisdiction in times of real or peraceived threats to energy supplies remained unsuccessful. EU policies seldom went beyond a broad consensus on general objectives (e.g. in the case of energy on competitiveness, environment and external relations) and suffered from a lack of effective implementation. Successive attempts by the European Commission and some member states, supported by the European Parliament, to introduce an energy chapter into the EC Treaty (TEC) have consistently failed due to the general resistance of member states to granting further energy competencies to the EU. Although the Maastricht Treaty introduced a new article (Article 3u), which added “measures in the field of energy as legitimate Community activities”, this by no means constituted an EU competence or authority in the field of energy. A number of member states were reluctant to lose their real or perceived autonomy over energy policy due to the differing interests of producer and non-producer countries as well as the different structures of national energy sectors, best exemplified in the organization of network energy industries.1 For the same reason, the creation of a single energy market was originally neither part of the European Commission’s 1995 White Paper on the internal market nor of the Single European Act (SEA), the treaty revision of 1986 that led to the implementation of the internal market. However, this “anomaly” was already revised in 1988 by including energy in the internal market programme.2