Le Grimm
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Feb 1, 2008, 2:54 PM
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Re: [schwaman] Resolved:Resolved: It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a military threat.
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this is taken from a word doc. so it won't be formatted well.
blocks vs. generic "giving each their due" definition of justice:
My opponent provides no weighing mechanism for determining what each person is due, or how to know when their due is given. They may say that we know each person is due rights, but because they don’t provide a system for knowing this we cannot be sure and we don’t know what leads to them being due these rights or when they are no longer due things. Because the standard is so vague we cannot use it to weigh justice.
What people are due is decided arbitrarily. Somebody working for one store may get paid 8 dollars an hour while another may only make 7 for the same work. Each person is due payment, but how much payment is decidedly arbitrarily. First, this puts the idea and conception of justice into a possibly corrupt agent’s hands to determine what is due. Second, my opponent does not provide an agent who determines what each person is due.
Theory (Even if they have, they haven’t provided justification for why this person is who determines dues, and why their determination is correct or better than anybody else’s. Making this argument now would be unfair to me because I would not have an adequate opportunity to respond to my opponent’s arguments which violates fairness in the round and harms the educational value of debate, which defeats the purpose of the debate and would therefore be an important issue in the round.)
My opponent claims justice is giving each their due, which is essentially giving good things to the good people, and giving harms to the bad people, because that is what they deserve. If you hurt a dog it gets worse at playing fetch. If you harm a bad horse, it gets worse at walking. The purpose of humans is to promote a just society, and it logically follows that if you give a person harms, even a bad person, they will be less able to fulfill their obligations or further justice. My opponent’s arguments therefore imply that justice will lead to injustice or a disability to promote justice, which proves that giving each their due is not the true definition of justice.
If I give somebody something outside of what is due, then they are not being given what they are due but more than they are due. This is true both of punishments and rewards. If I decide to do something nice like give a person a cookie they maybe don’t deserve, it would by this theory be considered unjust because it is giving something other than what they are do. Another example would be the poor and needy in developing countries. The individual people have done nothing to be due my help, but that doesn’t mean me making aid packages to be sent to them is unjust. This means that justice cannot be giving each their due because it does not allow for just actions outside of the strictest idea of proportionality.
If justice is giving each their due then justice can never be achieved. Dues are never ending and constantly changing. Because every little thing changes and adds to a person’s dues you can never give them what they are due, because it is first impossible to know what they are due or to give them all of what they are due. AFF IMPACTS: This prevents an impossible burden for the affirmative, because if justice is not possible there is no way to possibly prove something is just. NEG IMPACTS: This means you vote negative because justice can never be achieved by the affirmative. Even if they prove that their actions are consistent with giving each their due, the actions prescribed by the resolution only allow for a single due to be given, and not all of the dues. Full justice can’t be achieved unless all dues are given according to my opponent, and therefore you negate. (It isn’t just for me to pay somebody 6 dollars an hour when their wage is seven. While they are due the six hours, they are also due other things, in this case the extra dollar per hour, which means giving them only part of what they are due isn’t just.)
This theory of justice does not take into account when dues contradict or there are competing claims. I might say that I deserve the last piece of pie because I did the dishes, and my brother might say he is due the last peace of pie because he mowed the lawn. We are both due reward for our actions, but my opponent provides no way to determine who ought to get the pie. This means we don’t use justice as giving each their due because it does not arbitrate between claims.
impartiality neg:
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I negate the resolution resolved: it is just for the United
States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a military threat.
DEFINITION: Impartiality is a principle of justice holding that decisions should be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons.
I value justice as fairness based on the implications of the resolution because the ultimate goal of justice is always to apply the correct or fair rulings in the situation.
The criterion for justice is impartiality. Impartiality is a necessary principle of justice which when dissolved shows that justice cannot exist. We use impartiality to weight justice for several reasons:
Impartiality is necessary because without it decisions would be made based upon the biased position of the actor, and not the relevant facts of the situation. An impartial agent is better able to act justly because they can see what should or should not be done without being blinded by their own interests.
All theories of justice are predicated upon a conception of impartiality. Giving each their due, international law, utilitarianism, are all based in impartiality; without impartiality they would not function as designed. The agent’s interests would be furthered as opposed to justice.
The United States constitution calls for impartiality when it declares that everyone deserves equal treatment under law. The constitution is at least one way a person might attempt to determine justice, and therefore domestically impartiality is necessary for justice.
When looking at international justice impartiality is a necessary component because it is the only principle on which every nation in our diverse world can agree.
Susan Mendus writes in “Impartiality in Moral and Political Philosophy”:
They are societies in which different people have different conceptions of the good and beliefs about the right way to live, morally speaking. Thus, modern democratic societies contain people of many different religious faiths, and people of no religious faith. They contain feminists, homosexuals, libertarians, greens, anti-abortionists, and merchant bankers, to name a few… Nevertheless, they must live together and find principles of justice on which they can somehow agree.
Mendus tells us that we need impartiality because diverse societies need to be represented equally by something that is agreeable to all. Impartiality is the only thing that fits these qualifications.
The negative does not advocate treating all countries equally all the time. Countries should be treated differently if they merit different treatment based upon objective adjudication. The United States fails to be objective when they weigh the situation where a nation poses a threat to them.
Impartiality works within theories of justice regardless of how they are applied. Domestic and International theories of justice require impartiality, as do both ends and means based theories. In ends based theories you must weigh the outcomes as just or unjust impartially, and not based upon biases. In means based theories impartiality is necessary because the actions we take should be based upon an impartial adjudication.
Since the beginning of time people have gone to impartial adjudicators to rectify conflicting claims. Just as an ancient citizen might go to a wise man, the world’s agents today look to international organizations where interests are balanced out. Historically impartiality is a necessary principle of justice.
Agents that act impartially are left FREE of harm in conflict situations. The Red Cross and other medical institutions are left unharmed during battles as they tend to wounded on both sides. No agent has a desire to harm the impartial, because they are not siding with their opponents. In a war the justness of either side is relative, but the justness of the impartial actors is accepted universally. This means that impartiality is both necessary for justice and indirectly beneficial for that actor.
CONTENTION ONE
Impartiality is destroyed by the action prescribed in the resolution. The United States is known to act in its own interests, based upon the biased positions of its leaders, specifically its president. Entering the Iraq War without the support of any international organizations showed sufficiently that when America is acting, they’re doing so because they want to, and not because it is the correct decision to make from any other given standpoint. This violates impartiality in several ways:
1. It allows the biased position of the president to be the deciding factor in whether we use military force, why we use military force, and who we use military force against. The president acts as our commander-in-chief and can take military action without any other permission, and he is inclined to go to war because historically presidents are more likely to be reelected during times of war or military conflict.
2. It places the desires of the United States ahead of those of other nations, including those that may be directly affected by the United States use of military force. The United States is inclined towards military action because it is considered advantageous to display their hegemony to further their power.
3. It does not allow for the impartial weighing of the views of the nation the military force is being used against. Proliferation may be necessary for this country to protect its citizen’s best interests and safety, regardless of its effects on the United States. To use military force without the consideration of this relevant fact is not impartial or just.
4. It does not take into account the positions of international bodies, who’s job it is to determine what is and isn’t just throughout the world. Bodies like the U.N. were specifically designed to arbitrate the interests of competing nations to prevent the domination of a single world power. Foregoing these international bodies disregards the impartial weighing of relevant facts, and creates a situation where the United States acts unilaterally and based upon their self-interested position.
5. Unilateral action can never be impartial. Individual agents are necessarily self interested. The United States will do what is felt to be in the best interest of the United States, more specifically the president of the United States. When we take action there is always a benefit to the U.S. that causes it, whether it is the increase of diplomatic power abilities or the promotion of democracy over communism.
6. The resolution implies partial action when it specifies that the nations pose a military threat. The United States fails to be objective when they weigh the situation where a nation poses a threat to them, because they are acting in their own interest, with the preservation of their own potential safety in mind as opposed to impartial criteria. It is important to note that impartial decision making may allow for the United States to act in this manner, but that is not reason to affirm because the decision making is not impartial when the U.S. is acting on the possibility of a military threat.
Action taken by the United States is necessarily going to be self-interested, and it is only when the impartial weighing of appropriate international bodies allows the use of military force that such an action can truly be seen as impartial. Because the resolution specifies that it is the United States taking this action, and not an international organization, impartiality is violated, and therefore justice cannot be achieved.
CONTENTION TWO
The phrase “nations that pose a military threat” creates a partial bias that necessarily affects United States actions. A country like Iran experiencing nuclear proliferation is not necessarily a terrible thing for the world. Certainly countries like Syria and Lebanon would benefit, and it is only seen as a terrible thing today because of the potential threat Iran poses to the United States. This threat is only viewed in this manner by the United States, however. It is not the United States sole discretion that determines whether or not something is just, because that would violate the necessary component of impartiality. Keep in mind that if posing a military threat is justification for military action, nearly any country in the world could take military action against America, as we can pose a threat to anyone given our military strength. This is why we must go through systems capable of producing an impartial resolution, so that the interests of the United States are not the only things considered when weighing justice.
(PROBABLY NOT READ) Furthermore, the perception that a nation poses a military threat is not necessarily based upon truth, but what the politicians want us to think. This further advances their destruction of impartiality when they use military force and justify it with the claim that nations pose a military threat. Weller explains:
Christoph Weller
The Dynamics of Global Threat Construction
Presentation at the 19th Conference of the German Peace Psychology Association “Psychological Analyses and Interventions in the Context of Macro-Social Threats, Terrorism, and Intergroup Conflicts” at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, June 9 – 11, 2006
The Framing of Threats
The framing of mass media reporting on international politics is strongly orientated toward the political assessments made by leading politicians (see e. g. Kull et al. 2003; Stolle/Hooghe 2005); their assessments, however, become a part of the public discourse only in combination with the attention given by the media. However this becomes more likely when they talk about threats. This provides politicians, especially governments, with excellent opportunities to shape the threat perceptions of the public.
If some politicians have the ability to control who we believe poses a military threat, it allows their own biases and opinion to control when military force is allowed by the remaining parts of the government. This means that the entire resolution itself is based upon the partial adjudication and trickery over what nations actually do pose a military threat.
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