AT T: Domestic:

We meet - BULLRUN is a surveillance mechanism that

moniters US companies
Center for Democracy and Technology, Internet Freedom
Organization, 14 (November 10th, Center for Democracy and Technology,
Issue Brief: A Backdoor to Encryption for Government Surveillance,
https://cdt.org/insight/issue-brief-a-backdoor-to-encryption-for-governmentsurveillance/, 06/27/15, MM)

Encrypting smartphones and other tech products will help protect against malicious hacking, identity theft,
However, a government mandate requiring companies to
build a backdoor through encryption to facilitate surveillance would put
consumers at grave risk and impose heavy costs on US businesses. The government
can obtain information for investigations from other sources and may be able to
compel an individual to decrypt information with a search warrant.
phone theft, and other crimes.

Counter interp - Patriot Act defines domestic surveillance is

the acquisition of electronic contents in relation to a US

person
Small 08 (Matthew, His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance, Civil
Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis,
http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf, Page
2, MM, 06/27/15)
This papers analysis, in terms of President Bushs policies, focuses on electronic
surveillance; specifically, wiretapping phone lines and obtaining caller information
from phone companies. Section f of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 defines electronic
surveillance as: [T]he acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance
device of the contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be
received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States , if
the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person,
under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and
a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes;

And if Bullrun expands beyond domestic bullrun if you look at our plan text, we
only curtail the domestic components
1.

Standards:
No in round abuse. The negative cannot point to any actual in-round abuse, so
they have not been hurt in the round.

2.
3.

Education: Having a wider range of cases provides better education for students
involved because we learn more about more ideas.

The aff is reasonable: The topic is the subject of the discussion, but does not
control it. The aff is the team that speaks first and alst, not the one who
advacated for the resolution. We are a discussion of that topic
They say they lose circumvention, they run, the are hypocrites, disregard T.

Case

Impact Grids
The grid is venerable to cyber terrorism Old
infrastructure
Gertz, National Security Columnist for the Washington
Times, 14 (Bill Gertz, 4-16-2014, "Inside the Ring: U.S. power grid defenseless
from attacks," Washingtion Times,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/16/inside-the-ring-us-power-griddefenseless-from-att/?page=all //NK)
The U.S. electrical power grid is vulnerable to cyber and physical attacks that could
cause devastating disruptions throughout the country , federal and industry officials told
Congress recently. Gerry Cauley, president of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., said that several if
not all other critical U.S. infrastructures depend on electricity, and that he is
deeply concerned about attacks, extreme weather and equipment failures causing power outages. I
am most concerned about coordinated physical and cyber attacks intended to
disable elements of the power grid or deny electricity to specific targets, such as government or
business centers, military installations, or other infrastructures, Mr. Cauley told the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee last Thursday. Mr. Cauley said the April 2013 attack on a
California electrical power substation by unidentified gunmen did not result in power
outages, but highlighted the vulnerability of the countrys three-sector power grid.
The incident at the Metcalf substation in Northern California demonstrates that attacks are possible and have the
potential to cause significant damage to assets and disrupt customer service, he said. Cheryl A. LaFleur, acting
chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who testified at the Senate hearing, said the Metcalf attack
led federal authorities to conduct a 13-city campaign to warn utilities about the need for better security. Ms. LaFleur
said cyber threats to electrical infrastructure are fast-changing, as she called for better
information-sharing about threats between government and industry. Sue Kelly, head of the American Public Power

of more than 2,000 U.S. electric utilities, testified about the growing danger
of cyberattacks against the power grid. The threat of cyberattack is relatively new compared to
long-known physical threats, but an attack with operational consequences could occur and cause disruptions in
the flow of power if malicious actors are able to hack into the data and control
systems used to operate our electric generation and transmission infrastructure , Ms.
Association

Kelly said. To date, security measures have prevented a successful cyberattack on the bulk electric system, she

the U.S. power grid is vulnerable

to catastrophic disruption by nation states like China and North Korea, terrorist
groups like al Qaeda, and non-state criminals. The 269-page study Electric Sector Failure
said. An Energy Department-sponsored study published last fall said

Scenarios and Impact Analyses was published in September by the National Electric Sector Cybersecurity
Organization Resource, a non-government group of industry and security specialists .

A malicious software
cyberattack on the power grids Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS), which
manages requests and commands for the power system, would damage transformers that are
costly and difficult to replace. Cyberattacks against computers that distribute electrical power over wide
areas could be jammed or disrupted through wireless signals. And cyber attackers could cause
widespread power outages or cascading power failures by gaining access to
distribution systems and equipment via remote hacking . After gaining the required access, the
threat agent manufactures an artificial cascade through sequential tripping of select critical feeders and
components, causing automated tripping of generation sources due to power and voltage fluctuations, the report

According to the report,

nation state threats to the grid include China, North Korea and Cuba. Among the
cyber terrorist threats listed: al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani group
said. A blackout of varying degree and potential equipment damage ensues.

Lashkar-e-Taibi, and the Palestinian group Hamas. Domestic threats include lone
wolf extremists, ecoterrorists among Earth First and Greenpeace, U.S. separatist
groups, and militias and hate groups, the report said.

Nuclear War
Lawson, Associate Professor in the Department of
Communication at the University of Utah, 9 (Sean Lawson, 5-132009, "Cross-Domain Response to Cyber Attacks and the Threat of Conflict
Escalation," Sean Lawson, http://www.seanlawson.net/?p=477 //NK)
At a time when it seems impossible to avoid the seemingly growing hysteria over
the threat of cyber war,[1] network security expert Marcus Ranum delivered a
refreshing talk recently, The Problem with Cyber War, that took a critical look at a
number of the assumptions underlying contemporary cybersecurity discourse in the
United States. He addressed one issue in partiuclar that I would like to riff on here, the issue of conflict
escalationi.e. the possibility that offensive use of cyber attacks could escalate to
the use of physical force. As I will show, his concerns are entirely legitimate as current U.S. military cyber
doctrine assumes the possibility of what I call cross-domain responses to cyberattacks. Backing Your Adversary
(Mentally) into a Corner Based on the premise that completely blinding a potential adversary is a good indicator to
that adversary that an attack is iminent, Ranum has argued that The

best thing that you could

possibly do if you want to start World War III is launch a cyber attack . [] When people
talk about cyber war like its a practical thing, what theyre really doing is messing with the OK button
for starting World War III. We need to get them to sit the f-k down and shut the f-k up. [2] He is making a
point similar to one that I have made in the past: Taking away an adversarys ability to make rational decisions
could backfire. [3] For example, Gregory Witol cautions that attacking the decision to perform rational calculations
may cause more problems than it hopes to resolve. Removing the capacity for rational action may result in
completely unforeseen consequences, including longer and bloodier battles than may otherwise have been. [4] So,
from a theoretical standpoint, I think his concerns are well founded. But the current state of U.S. policy may be
cause for even greater concern. Its not just worrisome that a hypothetical blinding attack via cyberspace could
send a signal of imminent attack and therefore trigger an irrational response from the adversary. What is also cause

U.S. policy indicates that kinetic attacks (i.e. physical use of

force) are seen as potentially legitimate responses to cyber attacks . Most worrisome
is that current U.S. policy implies that a nuclear response is possible, something
that policy makers have not denied in recent press reports. The reason, in part, is that the
U.S. defense community has increasingly come to see cyberspace as a domain of
warfare equivalent to air, land, sea, and space . The definition of cyberspace as its own domain of
for concern is that current

warfare helps in its own right to blur the online/offline, physical-space/cyberspace boundary. But thinking logically
about the potential consequences of this framing leads to some disconcerting conclusions. If cyberspace is a
domain of warfare, then it becomes possible to define cyber attacks (whatever those may be said to entail) as

But what happens if the U.S. is attacked in any of the other domains? It
retaliates. But it usually does not respond only within the domain in which it was
attacked. Rather, responses are typically cross-domain responsesi.e. a massive
bombing on U.S. soil or vital U.S. interests abroad (e.g. think 9/11 or Pearl Harbor)
might lead to air strikes against the attacker. Even more likely given a U.S. military
way of warfare that emphasizes multidimensional, joint operations is a massive
conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) response against the attacker in all domains (air,
land, sea, space), simultaneously. The possibility of kinetic action in response to cyber attack, or as
acts of war.

part of offensive U.S. cyber operations, is part of the current (2006) National Military Strategy for Cyberspace

Of course, the possibility that a cyber attack on the U.S. could lead to a
U.S. nuclear reply constitutes possibly the ultimate in cross-domain response. And
while this may seem far fetched, it has not been ruled out by U.S. defense policy
makers and is, in fact, implied in current U.S. defense policy documents. From the
National Military Strategy of the United States (2004): The term WMD/E relates to a broad
Operations [5]:

range of adversary capabilities that pose potentially devastating impacts. WMD/E includes chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear, and enhanced high explosive weapons as well as other, more asymmetrical weapons. They
may rely more on disruptive impact than destructive kinetic effects. For example, cyber attacks on US commercial
information systems or attacks against transportation networks may have a greater economic or psychological
effect than a relatively small release of a lethal agent. [6] The authors of a 2009 National Academies of Science
report on cyberwarfare respond to this by saying, Coupled

with the declaratory policy on nuclear

weapons described earlier, this statement implies that the United States will regard
certain kinds of cyberattacks against the United States as being in the same
category as nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and thus that a nuclear
response to certain kinds of cyberattacks (namely, cyberattacks with devastating
impacts) may be possible. It also sets a relevant scalea cyberattack that has an impact larger than that
associated with a relatively small release of a lethal agent is regarded with the same or greater seriousness. [7]

AT: Security
States are the key actors who solve violence plan accesses
this best.
Weingast 9 (Barry, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and \Professor in the
Department of Political Science at Stanford U, Why are developing countries so
resistant to the rule of law, February 2009, accessed 7/10/09,
http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/bitstream/1814/11173/1/MWP_LS_2009_02.pdf )
All states must control the fundamental problem of violence. In natural states,
a dominant coalition of the powerful emerges to solve this problem. The coalition
grants members privileges, creates rents through limited access to valuable resources
and organizations, and then uses the rents to sustain order. Because fighting reduces
their rents, coalition members have incentives not to fight so as to maintain their
rents. Natural states necessarily limit access to organizations and restrict competition in
all systems. Failing to do so dissipate rents and therefore reduces the incentives not to
fight. We call this order the natural state because for nearly all of the last 10,000
years of human history indeed, until just the last two centuries the natural state
was the only solution to the problem of violence that produced a hierarchical
society with significant wealth. In comparison with the previous foraging order,
natural states produced impressive economic growth, and even today we can see the
impressive wealth amassed by many of the early civilizations. In contrast to open access
orders, however, natural states have significant, negative consequences for economic
growth.

Perm Do both
And

Perm Do plan, then alt

Even highly critical studies of security are open to articulating
alternative visions of security We can perm do both to
effectuate reconstruction of security.
McDonald & Browning 2011 (Matt, Reader in International Relations, Coeditor, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Christopher, Reader of Politics and
International Studies, The future of critical security studies: Ethics and the politics of
security, pp. 240, http://www.bristol.ac.uk/medialibrary/sites/spais/migrated/documents/cssreading.pdf) WH
While articulating a foundational vision of security and advancing a fundamental
critique of traditional approaches, however, human security is ultimately better
understood (in Coxian terms) as problem-solving in orientation (Christie, 2010;
Newman, 2010). Indeed, critical security scholars have been particularly suspicious
of human security, not least given the compromises its advocates have been
prepared to make with state power and established structures of governance . As
Booth (2007: 324) puts it, human security has taken on the image of the velvet
glove on the iron hand of hard power. In this respect, critics suggest that human
security has been co-opted by Western states as a guise for the continued
promotion of liberal forms of governance around the world. Human security has, in

this sense become part of the ideological trappings which have helped foster the
linking together of security and liberal development policies by many Western
states and which at their most pernicious have become a cover and support for neoimperialist policies of military intervention in the developing world (Christie, 2010;
Duffield, 2007; Newman, 2010). As such, some scholarship which directly articulates
a vision of the good regarding security (such as human security) falls outside
reasonable limits of the critical security studies project, while some approaches
within this project (most notably critical constructivism and post-structuralism)
appear reluctant to articulate even a notion of progress regarding security. Despite
the unwillingness of the latter to articulate an explicit conception of progress , such a
conception is evident in the expressed commitment to opening up space for
communities to articulate alternative visions of security in the case of critical
constructivism, or in the commitment to resist the logic of security altogether in the
case of post-structuralism. The latter also largely applies to the Copenhagen
Schools commitment to desecuritization, a point we will return to later. In these
senses, we can indeed talk about engagement with the ethics of security as a core
component of a critical security studies project, even while such engagement has
oriented towards more pragmatic visions of progress than foundational claims
regarding the constitution of the good.

If the perm cant overcome the single instance of the plans

implementation, then it will not be able to overcome the
entirety of the squo
Participating in acts of surveillance ensures security
Huysmans 2011 (Jef, Department of Politics and International Studies @ OU,
Whats in an act? On security speech acts and little security nothings, in Security
Dialogue 42.4-5, 375-378)
Securitizing in contemporary world politics develops significantly through
unspectacular processes of technologically driven surveillance, risk management
and precautionary governance. These processes are less about declaring a
territorialized enemy and threat of war than about dispersing techniques of
administering uncertainty and mapping dangers. A rich body of work exists that analyses the
nature and implications of surveillance, precautionary and pre-emptive security practice, and
governing through risk.6 One of the peculiar elements that is brought out by some of this literature is that
this securitizing process effaces acts: In the dispersed practices of the
contemporary security apparatus, we may never know if a decision is a decision
or if it has been controlled by previous knowledge and programmed. (Amoore and De Goede, 2008b: 180) The
statement can be read in different ways, but I want to bring out two particular characteristics of this securitizing
process that indicate that acts that is, actualizations of decisions as defined in the speech-act approach are a
problematic category for both analysis and political critique of this process .

The speech act of security

works with a notion of gravitation rather than diffusion and with a distinction
between the everyday and the exceptionality of security acts. A process that erodes
decisions challenges both. The securitizing to which Amoore and De Goede refer is a highly dispersed and

is heavily mediated by surveillance technologies that associate

people, sites, things and time into risk profiles. As a result, the process is strongly
automated, not in the sense of a machine just doing what it is programmed to do, but in the sense of a
dispersing practice. It

process that associates largely without single critical moments of decision.7 Decisions are taken all the time, but
they are dispersed, and it is relatively difficult to assign critically significant actions to particular actors or to
aggregate sets of actions into a limited group of actors who have the capacity to create an assemblage of security .

Securitizing develops through a wide variety of mediators that connect data,

people, sites and times, but in connecting also change the material they are
connecting (Latour, 2005: 39) for example, programming an algorithm that connects data in a way that
differentiates patterns of travelling in terms of degrees of danger. If mediations are numerous, constantly shifting
and dispersed, it becomes very difficult if not impossible to assess which actions are actualizing a decision that
brings into play the limits of a given order and that has gravity. Gravity refers to a capacity for producing cracks and
can be grounded in institutionalized position, mobilization of bodies, unexpected public action, etc. As argued in the

the concept of act politicizes securitizing processes precisely by

identifying particular moments that concentrate developments into actualizations of
a decision that ruptures normal procedures of practice. If instead of moments of
critical decision we have a myriad of decisions in a process that is continuously
made and remade, then what is left of the analytics as well as political critique of
securitizing that is invested in the notion of speech act? Such a process invites moving from
previous section,

speech acts of security to concepts and methodologies that facilitate studying practices and processes of dispersed
associating. From the perspective of speech acts, this associating will mostly look unspectacular, unexceptional,
continuous and repetitive; instead of speech acts, we get the securitizing work of a multiplicity of little security
nothings. To briefly illustrate the shift in perspective that is implied here, let us re-read Daniel Neylands (2009)
example of how letters, as everyday objects, are transformed into an object of danger.8 In his analysis of mundane
terror, Neyland mentions a webpage on letter bombs that the British security service MI5 had temporarily set up.
The website was one device through which MI5 was securitizing letters. In setting out what a letter bomb is, how to
recognize a suspicious letter, how to deal with it, MI5 appropriated a mundane object in a securitizing process. The
letter bomb is not simply appropriated by a security agency, however. It also stands for a whole set of banal, little
connections (e.g. postal delivery, postal sorting, explosive or incendiary substances, posting, unusual place of
origin, couriers, recipients, the place of origin of the sender, police). Interpreting the website as an action by MI5 to
securitize letters by setting out a set of criteria and guidelines would focus attention on the gravitational force of
this moment and somehow disconnect it from the network of connections in which the website operates as a
mediator. Taking the website as a mediating device connecting things and people among whom suspicion of letters
might or might not already circulate would draw attention immediately to the diffuse associating that is taking
place. The website can be the starting point of the analysis, but it remains one particular thing and moment in a set
of connections and mediations that took place simultaneously, before and after. In the end, the analytics places the
website not as a securitizing moment with critical gravity that is, a moment in which one had a non-security
situation before and a security situation after but as one of several relatively small moments and actions that
invest insecurity in everyday objects and relations .

Securitizing then takes the form of a

scatterred process in which the website and letters connect various things and
persons in a network of suspicion. In such an analysis, the website changes from a security speech act
to one of many elements that from the perspective of speech-act analysis appear as little security nothings that

little security nothings are highly

significant, since it is they rather than exceptional speech acts that create the
securitizing process. This associative interpretation of letter bombs also brings out that the diffuse
is, devices, sites, practices without exceptional significance. Yet, these

processes of securitizing challenge the boundary between security practice and daily life. The letters move through
a wide set of banal relations. Many surveillance practices can be read in a similar way. They are often strongly
embedded in everyday actions and relations, thus coming across as routine and banal, a banality that is reinforced
by the strong technological mediation of data and practice. Writing algorithms is central to the functioning of data
mining. Introducing loyalty cards to track consumption patterns, promoting credit-card payments as the obvious
form of payment thus making it possible to profile cash payments as suspicious, and developing many other datagathering devices are central to turning transactional traces into insecurity profiles. Many of these practices come
about in piecemeal fashion, slip into daily life without much ado and, when connected to the rendition and dispersal
of risks, precaution and control of dangers, fade out the distinction between the everyday and security practice.

The governing of sites and lives through risk calculation, for example, often
operates in diverse areas of life, meshing policing with insurance practice, business

with national security,

etc.9 In these securitizing processes, daily life as a realm upon which security

professionals practice protection is folded into the security practice itself .

Risk management,
surveillance and precautionary methods work within daily life, as much as upon it.
Credit cards, CCTV, filling in forms for a myriad of services, monitoring workers, consumer data, advertising that
sustains precautionary dispositions and products associated with risks (e.g. fertilizers) intertwine profiling, control

The issue is therefore not simply a securitization of

everyday life that is, making daily life an object of security practice or everyday
objects and practices carriers of risk and danger (Aas et al., 2009: 2) but the
active involvement of daily activities in the process of securitizing itself.10 Many
little and banal daily activities, meetings, regulations are actively part of the
shaping of securitizing processes. The securitizing to which I am referring here is
less an actualization of a critical decision and more a continuous process of
assembling objects, subjects and practices. The loss of decisional gravitation and of a separation
and national security with daily activities.

between the everyday and the exceptional challenges the notion of exceptionalist rupture that is embedded in the
speech act of security. The concept of rupture draws attention to a fixed frame of reference, a given order that has
been able to aggregate a multiplicity of practices, subjects and objects into a whole, expressing a particular
rationale. The rupture is an event that demonstrates the existence of order and its limits by breaking the habitual.
In exceptionalist readings of rupture, power consists in the capacity and practice of aggregating and fixing
multiplicity into a global practice and in the capacity to disrupt the aggregation so as to make new aggregations
possible.

Yet, decisional speech acts and ruptures lose much of their critical
significance in a securitizing process that creates insecurities mainly through
dispersing, through continuously associating, reassociating, tweaking and
experimenting with materials, procedures, regulations, etc. The scene of securitizing is then
not one of expressing or disrupting a given order but of creating things, meanings, subjects in habitual, everyday
innovation in meetings, discussions, regulations, programming, etc. Power is then to be understood as infinitesimal
mediations, as little nothings, dispersed in a continuously developing security bricolage that takes place in practices
of sketching, trials, meetings, regulations, etc. (Latour, 2005). Exceptional rupture gives way to innovations and
controversies that are worked in dispersed sites and habitual every day, ordinary practices of associating.11 In
relation to such processes, decisional speech acts with gravitas have at best limited analytical relevance and at
worst misconstrue the analysis by assigning excessive significance to actions that have limited power that are
themselves simply another little security nothings.

Dogmatic realism leads us to universal truth- security threats

exist.
Kwan and Tsang 1 (Kai-Man, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong
Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, Eric W. School of Business
Administration, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A, December,
Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 22, No. 12 (Dec., 2001), pp. 1163-1168,
Realism and Constructivism in Strategy Research: A Critical Realist Response to Mir
and Watson,) CH
The problem with Mir and Watson here is again their failure to distinguish different kinds
of real- ism. It is important to distinguish a dogmatic realist from a critical
realist. Both believe that theories can be true or false, and rigorous scientific
research can move us progressively towards a true account of phenomena.
Dogmatic realists further believe that current theories correspond (almost)
exactly to reality, and hence there is not much room for error or critical
scrutiny. This attitude is inspired by (but does not strictly follow from) a primitive
version of positivism which believes in indubitable observations as raw data
and that an infallible scientific method can safely lead us from these data to
universal laws. In contrast, critical realists, though believing in the possibility of progress towards a true
account of phenomena, would not take such progress for granted. Exactly because they believe that reality
exists independently of our minds, our theories, observations and methods are all fallible. Critical realists also

insist that verification and falsification are never conclusive, especially in social sciences. So critical testing of
theories and alleged universal laws need to be carried out continuously. A more detailed description of critical
realism, which is now a growing movement transforming the intellectual scene.

The transition from state structure to global cosmopolitanism

inevitably causes civil backsliding into neo-medievalism and
fails to eliminate power politics
Buzan 4 (Barry , December, Montague Burton Prof. of International Relations @
the London School of Economics and honorary prof. @ the University of
Copenhagen, "Realism vs. Cosmopolitanism" http://www.polity.co.uk/global/realismvs-cosmopolitanism.asp) JC
A.Mc.: Barry, I detected in your argument about globalization and the
democratization of world order that it is not only a question of feasibility, but also
there is a sense in which there are very important normative issues at stake.
Cosmopolitan or global democracy, even if it was feasible, may not be the best way
to proceed in terms of human political organization. Would that be an adequate
representation of your position? B.B.: That is a difficult question. I think that David is
right that posing the counterfactual requires me to sharpen the implications of my
argument. I am not advocating a world of fascists states or totalitarians or whatever
- of course not! I am merely pointing out that democratization should not be seen as
some kind of universal good; it also carries with it a set of problems. I do not claim
to have the answers to these problems, but I would like to comment a little on the
kind of picture that David is painting. It does seem to me (and I am taking my realist
hat off here because at this point I am leaving behind the great bulk of realists) that
there are two things to say. First, as the process of globalization unfolds, deepens
and strengthens - and I don't dispute that this is the world we are living in and
therefore that this is a time of transformation - this is going to raise serious
questions for political structure. I think these questions are going to be answered in
different ways in different parts of the global system. My sense is that in the most
developed and most democratic parts of the system, like western Europe and North
America, there is probably going to be a layering of power so that there will be, if
you like, an unpacking or disaggregation of sovereignty. Political authority will move
upwards and downwards, and will exist simultaneously on several different levels.
Hedley Bull once referred to this as neo-medievalism and that is not a bad
metaphor in some ways. This, however, only accounts for those most developed
parts of the system because what you are looking at here is the interplay between
the political units of the system and the system itself. And what globalization is
telling us is that the system is becoming stronger and stronger in relation to the old
political units within it. Now, the strong political units within the system may survive
by adapting and adopting some kind of neo-medieval framework, but what about
the rest? There are a lot of weak states in the international system and these are
going to have much more difficulty dealing with life in the strong system. Some of
them are already falling to pieces and it would not surprise me, putting on a futurist
hat, if a number of quite substantial unstable zones opened up and became semipermanent features of the system - perhaps one centring on Afghanistan, one in
West Africa, and one in Central Africa. One could imagine there being no effective

state structures, indeed no effective political structures at all in such places except
for some kind of reversion to warlordism, tribalism or gangsterism, or combinations
thereof. In some places this is already the case, and it would not surprise me to see
this phenomenon spread so that one had a part of the world which was very highly
organised, post-modern perhaps, parts of the world which had politically collapsed
and then bits in-between like China, India - the so-called modern developing world.
It is not quite clear to me what is going to happen to these latter states. They have
a really tough game to play. Looking ahead a bit further and trying to wear David's
hat a bit more, I can imagine a world in which there might be no states at all in the
sense that we now understand them. However, one could still wear a realist hat and
say well, all right, we might be in the post-state world, but there will still be plenty
of power politics around. It may be pluralist, it may be democratic, it may be
structured in all kinds of odd ways, but the logic of power politics will go on and to
that extent the realist tradition will remain intact.

Also: Their impact w/ Agamben is quote from the card Nazi

Death Camps. They link just as hard to the k.
Also: Their impact to Security is freaking extinction. Talk about
hypocracy. They link super hard to the k.

Agamben K
Alt fails The structured resistance to biopolitics
recommended by Agamben and his migration studies followers
portray fails to fundamentally alter the structured materiality
of modern liberal juridical order.
Lee 2010 [Charles, Bare Life, Interstices, and the Third Spaces of Citizenship,
Womens Studies Quarterly, 38.1/2]
Agambens transhistorical call notwithstanding, to what extent is the space of camp
(and by implication, the largely suppressed agency of bare life caught within the camp)
an adequate depiction of the social condition of undocumented migrants? Examining
the workspace of private households where female migrants work as domestic workers
and where labor laws and regulations are indefinitely suspended, in this essay I argue
that, while these laboring spaces relate to camp as the undocumented workers are
stripped of juridico-political rights and reduced to a state of exploited bare life, the con
ception of camp lacks a dynamic account of power relations to address the complex
agency of migrant subjects as they negotiate their daily workspace. Significantly, what
begins for Agamben as a space of interstitiality posited in campa zone between life
and death, inside and outsideultimately slides into an immobile binary between the
political beings of citizens and the excluded bodies of bare life. Yet if the space of
camp is interstitial in nature, what preempts the possibility of the abject
manifesting an agency that is also interstitial in character? If the sovereign
power occupies a space that is simultaneously inside and outside the
juridical order, so does the undocumented in navigating a terrain of
resistance/negotiation inside and outside the normative arrangement of
citizenship. As I will argue, this negotiated resistance does not
fundamentally alter the structured materiality of modern liberal juridical
order and the political economy of irregular migration that Agamben and his
migration studies followers so powerfully portray. However, at the point
when Agamben declares the death of citizenship life for the bare subjects ,
he omits a crucial spectrum of ambiguous and interstitial practices mounted
by the abjectmediating between the two extreme ends of political and
nonpoliticalthat actually extends and reanimates the life of citizenship
from the very margins of abjection.

And perm do both

The perm solvesinstitutions already account for the critique
and the idea of sovereign autonomy is a self-serving construct
Chandler, IR professor at the University of Westminster, 10
[David, October 2010, The Uncritical Critique of Liberal Peace, Review of
International Studies, Volume: 36, p. 10-13, YGS]

the assumptions held to be driving liberal peace approaches

are very much in the eye of their critical beholders. The most obvious empirical
It would appear that

difficulty is that international policy regarding intervention and statebuilding seems to have little transformative
aspiration: far from assumptions of liberal universalism, it would appear that, with the failure of post-colonial
development, especially from the 1970s onwards, international policymakers have developed historically low
expectations about what can be achieved through external intervention and assistance. The lack of transformative
belief is highlighted by one of the key concerns of the policy critics of the liberal peace the focus on capacity-

The focus on institutional

solutions (at both the formal and informal levels) to the problems of conict and
transition is indicative of the narrowing down of aspirations from
transforming society to merely regulating or managing it often understood
critically as the securitising of policymaking. This is a long way from the promise of
liberal transformation and the discourse of liberating societies
economically and politically. In fact, it is the consensus of opinion on the
dangers of democracy, which has informed the focus on human rights and
good governance. For the policy and radical critics of liberal peace, liberal rights frameworks are often
building state institutions and intervening to construct civil societies.

considered problematic in terms of the dangers of exclusion and extremism. Todays illiberal peace approaches
do not argue for the export of democracy the freeing up of the political sphere on the basis of support for popular
autonomy. The language of illiberal institutionalist approaches is that of democratisation: the problematisation of
the liberal subject, held to be incapable of moral, rational choices at the ballot box, unless tutored by international
experts concerned to promote civil society and pluralist values. In these frameworks, the holding of elections
serves as an examination of the population and the behaviour of electoral candidates, rather than as a process for
the judgement or construction of policy (which it is assumed needs external or international frameworks for its

The focus on institutionalism does not stem from a critique of

liberal peace programmes; institutionalist approaches developed from the
1970s onwards and were rapidly mainstreamed with the end of the Cold
War.36 From 1989 onwards, Western governments and donors have stressed
that policy interventions cannot just rely on promoting the freedoms of
the market and democracy, but need to put institutional reform and good
governance at the core.37 Even in relation to Central and Eastern Europe
it was regularly stressed that the people and elected representatives
were not ready for freedom and that it would take a number of generations
before it could be said that democracy was consolidated.38 The transitology
literature was based on the critique of liberal assumptions this was why
a transitional period was necessary. Transition implied that markets and
democracy could not work without external institutional intervention to
prevent instability. While markets needed to be carefully managed through government policymaking it
production).

was held that civil society was necessary to ensure that the population learnt civic values to make democracy

It was through the engagement with transition and the

problematic negotiation of EU enlargement that the discursive framework
of liberal institutionalism where human rights, the rule of law, civil
society, and anti-corruption are privileged over democracy was
programmatically cohered. It was also through the discussion of
transition that the concept of sovereign autonomy was increasingly
problematised, initially in relation to the protections for minority rights
and then increasingly expanded to cover other areas of domestic
policymaking.40 It would appear that the key concepts and values of the
liberal peace held to have been promoted with vigour with the victory of
liberalism at the end of the Cold War were never as dominant a framing
viable.39

as their radical and policy critics have claimed.41 Rather than attempting
to transform non-Western societies into the liberal self-image of the
West, it would appear that external interveners have had much more
status quo aspirations, concerned with regulatory stability and regional
and domestic security, rather than transformation. Rather than imposing
or exporting alleged liberal Western models, international policy making
has revolved around the promotion of regulatory and administrative
measures which suggest the problems are not the lack of markets or
democracy but rather the culture of society or the mechanisms of
governance. Rather than promoting democracy and liberal freedoms, the discussion has been
how to keep the lid on or to manage the complexity of non-Western societies,
usually perceived in terms of fixed ethnic and regional divisions. The solution to the complexity
of the non-liberal state and society has been the internationalisation of the
mechanisms of governance, removing substantive autonomy rather than
promoting it. While it is true that the reconstruction or rebuilding of states is at the centre of external
projects of intervention, it would be wrong to see the project of statebuilding as
one which aimed at the construction of a liberal international order.42 This is
not just because external statebuilding would be understood as a
contradiction in liberal terms but, more importantly, because the states
being constructed in these projects of post-conict and failed state
intervention are not liberal states in the sense of having selfdetermination and political autonomy. The state at the centre of
statebuilding is not the Westphalian state of classical International Relations (IR)
theorising. Under the internationalised regulatory mechanisms of intervention and statebuilding the state is
increasingly reduced to an administrative level, in which sovereignty no
longer marks a clear boundary line between the inside and the
outside.43 Whether we consider European Union (EU) statebuilding, explicitly based on a sharing of
sovereignty, or consider other statebuilding interventions, such as those by the international financial institutions

the state is central as a mechanism for external

coordination and regulation rather than as a self-standing actor in socalled Westphalian terms.
in sub-Saharan Africa, it is clear that

If the perm cant overcome the single instance of the plan then
there is not way that it can overcome the entirety of the squo
and cant access impacts

Politics is possible through the law even in the camp,

questions of law and administration are possible
Huysmans, Professor of Security Studies, 8 (Jef Huysmans, The Jargon
of ExceptionOn Schmitt, Agamben and the Absence of Political Society, p. 179
-180 //NK)
Looked at from this perspective, debates about the reconciliation of liberty and
security, for example, are not, as Agamben argues, an ideological practice that

hides the fundamental break down of the dialectic between law and anomie that
has been central to modern politics (Agamben 2003:144148). Rather these
debates insert questions of and challenges to the role of law and generalized normsetting in highly charged biopolitical governance of insecurities. Instead of
collapsing the dialectic between law and anomie, contestation of the protection of
civil liberties, demands for re-negotiating balances between liberties and security
are neither simply to be taken at face value as a matter of the necessity of
balancing and rebalancing nor to be seen as the endgame of the validity of legal
mediations of politics and life. Rather they open up a need to revisit the particular
kind of work that law does and does not do in specific sites (Neocleous 2006), such
as camps, and what the practices possibly tell us about if and how the dialectic
between law and anomie operates in biopolitical governance . Fleur Johnss analysis
of the camp in Guantanamo Bay is one such example (Johns 2005). She argues that
the camp is penetrated by a form of norm setting, thus implying that a dialectic
between norms and anomie, political transgression and law is not absent from the
organization and governing practice in the camp. Unlike some other analyses that
focus on constitutional transgressions and battles in the constitutional courts, Johns
emphasizes the importance for biopolitical governance of the detailed and in a
sense banal regulations that seek to structure the everyday practices of the guards,
the administrators and the prisoners. The norm setting is thus not primarily
constitutional but administrative. The important point for this essay is that analyses
like Fleur Johns unpack the contemporary predicaments and political stakes in a
site like Guantanamo Bay by taking the practices and governmental technologies at
face value and interpret the specific work they do for making camps possible within
democratic polities. The understanding of the camp transfigures from an absolute
limit that defines the fundamental nature of modern politics to a phenomenon that
is constituted and contested by various banal practices and governmental
techniques. The question becomes how these practices and sites we call camps are
rendered within and through modern democratic governance in a biopolitical age.
Such an approach does not read the nature of politics off of its limits but through
the multiple relations that are shaped by means of objectified mediations and the
struggles over them.

Also: Their XO CP works through the sovereign, they link

harder, POTUS is more representative of the soverign than
Congress.
Also: Dont let them fiat their alt. Allowing them to fiat
everyone having whatever being is utopian. It like saying fiat;
everyone will stop being racist.

Executive CP
The executive branch is not fit to oversee the NSA
empirics prove theyll abuse that power
Sugiyama, University of Michigan Law school J.D, Perry,
managing editor of Michigan Journal of Law, 06
(Tara, Maria, Fall 2006, Michigan Journal of Law, THE NSA DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE
PROGRAM: AN ANALYSIS OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT DURING AN ERA OF ONEPARTY RULE, Lexis, 6/26/15, YA)
On December 16, 2005, the New York Times sounded a fire alarm when it revealed
that, in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush had
issued a secret executive order permitting the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct
warrantless surveillance on individuals within the United States to unearth nascent
terrorist activity. The executive order purportedly authorized the NSA to monitor
the telephone and email messages of tens of millions of unsuspecting individuals in
its effort to track down links to Al Qaeda. Almost immediately, [*150] various interest
n1

n2

n3

n4

groups began to question the constitutionality of the NSA domestic surveillance program and to challenge whether
the scope of the program violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). n5

The executive branch cant be trusted with oversight-too

often do they secretly increase surveillance
Sugiyama, University of Michigan Law school J.D, Perry,
managing editor of Michigan Journal of Law, 06
(Tara, Maria, Fall 2006, Michigan Journal of Law, THE NSA DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE
PROGRAM: AN ANALYSIS OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT DURING AN ERA OF ONEPARTY RULE, Lexis, 6/26/15, YA)
When news of the NSA domestic surveillance program broke in the December 16, 2005 New York Times article, n63
the Bush administration rallied the executive branch to present a unified front in support of the program. n64 The
unitary executive theory of the presidency dates back to 1787 when the Constitution vested executive authority in
a single president rather than in a committee. n65 Under this theory, constitutional text and original design grant
the President expansive powers to execute U.S. laws. n66 Since the Constitutional Convention, presidential
assertions of the unitary executive have waxed and waned, but in no situation has a president significantly
acquiesced to congressional interference with his ability to execute U.S. laws. n67 President Bush endorsed the
unitary executive view of the presidency long before the revelation of the NSA domestic surveillance program. n68

In response to the September 11th attacks , President Bush relied on the unitary
executive theory to challenge congressional attempts to limit the scope of his
authority. n69 Vice President Dick Cheney also voiced support for a strong unitary
executive, lamenting that "over the years there had been an erosion of presidential
power and authority." n70 In Cheney's view, "the president of the United States needs
to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of
national security policy." n71 As part of its strategy of presenting a unified front among the executive
branch agencies and departments, the administration used the tactic of framing the debate around the NSA
program in terms of national security. n72 To win public support, President Bush's Chief Political Adviser Karl Rove
used simple language and preyed on fear to garner support for the program: "Let me be as clear as I [*160] can be:

President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know
who they're calling and why... . Some important Democrats clearly disagree." n73 The White House calculated that
few Americans would question the legality of the NSA program if the administration made clear that the program
was designed to protect them from terrorists. n74 Having established a plan of action, in late December 2005
President Bush used the White House as a platform to begin the executive branch's assault on rising congressional
unease with the NSA program. n75 He explained in straightforward terms that the Constitution granted him
inherent authority to conduct the program. n76 Continuing to carry out the President's message, the DOJ in a
December 22, 2005 letter n77 followed suit by formally providing congressional leaders on the intelligence
committees a preview of the legal authorities it identified as supporting the program: (1) Article II, Section 2 or the
Commander in Chief Clause, n78 and (2) the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) Statute. n79
Additionally, the DOJ stressed that the administration continued to use FISA as "a very important tool" in addressing
the terrorist threat. n80 After a short reprieve during the December holidays, in the New Year the executive branch
resumed its defense of the program as well as its resistance to congressional inquiry into the domestic surveillance
program. Both DOJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and [*161] Department of Defense (DOD) Acting Inspector
General Thomas F. Gimble denied the request of Democrats to investigate the activities by the NSA. n81 The NSA
also articulated its legal justification for the program, explaining that former head of the NSA General Michael V.
Hayden had relied on Reagan-era Executive Order 12333 n82 as authority to run the intelligence program until
President Bush signed his own executive order in 2002 n83 specifically permitting the agency to eavesdrop without
warrants on the communications of individuals inside the United States whom the agency believed had links to

Despite its concerted efforts to keep executive branch agencies in line , on

administration hit a small roadblock when the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) broke ranks with the executive branch's party line. n85 The FBI
revealed that officials of the Bureau had complained to the NSA that the program
pointlessly intruded on the privacy of Americans . n86 One FBI official suggested that
the FBI broke ranks with the executive branch because it did not want to be the fall
agency for the program: "This wasn't our program... . It's not our mess, and we're
not going to clean it up." n87 Indeed, the FBI official's statement may reflect a larger
turf battle between the FBI and NSA as the bureau struggles to define its
jurisdictional areas post-September 11th. Quickly moving on from the FBI's dissension, three days
terrorism. n84

January 16, 2006 the

later the executive branch once again presented a unified front when the DOJ released a forty-two page legal
analysis report in support of the NSA domestic surveillance program. n88 Challenging the findings of a [*162]
Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, which concluded that the President's authority to carry out the NSA
program may represent the "lowest ebb" n89 of presidential powers, n90 the DOJ sought to reframe the argument.
n91 The DOJ's analysis placed the President at "the zenith" n92 of his powers when he authorized the NSA domestic
surveillance program. n93 In furtherance of bolstering the executive branch against outside pressures, Vice
President Cheney also went on record to gain public support, stating that the program is "critical to the national
security of the United States." n94 To garner key support within Congress, he also gave a closed-door briefing to a
"Gang of Eight" n95 congressional leaders. n96 Even as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Senator Arlen Specter
(R-PA) prepared to hold the first Senate hearings on the NSA program, in early February 2006, Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) Director Porter J. Goss and Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte made one last effort to
shift the focus away [*163] from the impending hearings. n97 Framing the need for the NSA program in terms of
national security, Goss denounced the leaks of the program, stating that they had caused severe damage to CIA
operations and expressed the desire for a grand jury inquiry. n98 At the Senate hearing on the NSA program
conducted on February 6, 2006, Attorney General Gonzales largely dismissed efforts by senators to urge the
executive branch to engage Congress and the judiciary in oversight of the program. n99 Instead, Gonzales
maintained that the President had legal authority to act as he had, and remained evasive when asked pointed
questions about the program. n100 Even when told by Republican senators that they had not intended to authorize
the President to conduct warrantless domestic surveillance with AUMF, Gonzales responded that, regardless of the
senators' intentions, the written letter of AUMF nonetheless supported the President's actions. n101 The White
House only engaged Congress in minimal oversight after Chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on
Technical and Tactical Intelligence Heather A. Wilson called on the intelligence committees of both Houses to
conduct full investigations into the program. n102 The following day on February 8, 2006, the White House provided
a closed-door briefing for the full House Intelligence Committee and announced that it would brief the Senate
Intelligence Committee the next day. n103 In addition to providing briefings to the intelligence committees, the
administration also announced that the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility had started a formal inquiry of
internal dissension over the legal foundation of the program within the department. n104 The investigation was

While the executive

branch seemingly increased its cooperation with congressional inquiries into the
NSA domestic surveillance program, the administration simultaneously led a
[*164] in direct response to a letter sent by Democrats earlier inJanuary 2006. n105

behind-the-scenes effort to derail an investigation by the Senate Intelligence

Committee. n106 On February 16, 2006, the administration stated that it would not permit former Attorney
General John D. Ashcroft and Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey to testify about the program's

The White House also started a campaign

in favor of Senator Mike DeWine's (R-OH) proposal, which would exempt the NSA
program from the FISA court and instead place the program under the oversight of a
small congressional subcommittee. n108 On February 22, 2006, the executive
branch once again renewed its wall of resistance to congressional inquiry . n109 On
the eve before intelligence official General Hayden was scheduled to brief the full
House Intelligence Committee on the NSA program, White House Chief of Staff
Andrew Card stopped him. n110 Less than a week later, Attorney General Gonzales sent a letter to
legality before the Senate Intelligence Committee. n107

Senator Specter, attempting to clarify his testimony from the February 6th hearing. n111 He continued to dispute
the contention that warrantless surveillance violates statutes of the United States, and assured Senator Specter
that despite the existence of "inadvertent mistakes," there was "intense oversight both within the NSA and outside

In early March 2006, the Bush administration again skirted the issue
of any purported illegality on its own part and instead refocused the issue on
possible criminal wrongdoing by those officials who had reported the classified NSA
program to the media. n113 Accordingly, the administration launched FBI probes, conducted a polygraph
that agency... ." n112

investigation inside the CIA, and issued warnings from [*165] the DOJ, all in an effort to discourage government
employees from serving as media sources. n114

You can extend Kayyali 5/13 and Castro 15 from the 1AC that
says congress is the only branch capable of truly ending NSA
surveillance with backdoors through Bullrun. Their legislation
is key.
Theory: By running a topical CP, they are forcing the aff to argue against the
resolution. It is well established in debate that the aff debates for the resolution,
and the neg against. They skew aff ground by making us argue ourselves. Flow the
CP aff for fairness.

The aff solvency is patially about perception, passing a bill in a

gridlocked congress and getting the president to sign will send
the strongest message and best solve for our advatages

Congress is the best actor it is advocated for and would

prevent circumvention
Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, and Rand Paul 6/16/14 (Three Congress people,
The LA Times, "Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Rand Paul: How to end the NSA
dragnet," www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wyden-nsa-surveillance-20140617story.html)
One year ago this month, Americans learned that their government was engaged in secret dragnet surveillance,
which contradicted years of assurances to the contrary from senior government officials and intelligence leaders.

Congress and the administration know

that Americans will reject half-measures that could still allow the government to
collect millions of Americans' records without any individual suspicion or evidence of
On this anniversary, it is more important than ever to let

wrongdoing. It is time to end the dragnet and to affirm that we can keep our
nation secure without trampling on and abandoning Americans' constitutional
rights. For years, in both statements to the public and open testimony before the House and Senate, senior
government officials claimed that domestic surveillance was narrow in focus and limited in scope. But in June 2013,
Americans learned through leaked classified documents that these claims bore little resemblance to reality. In fact,

the NSA has been relying on a secret interpretation of the USA Patriot Act to
vacuum up the phone records of millions of law-abiding citizens. Under a separate program,
intelligence agencies are using a loophole in the law to read some Americans' emails without ever getting a
warrant. Dragnet surveillance was approved by a secret court that normally hears only the government's side of
major cases. It had been debated only in a few secret congressional committee hearings, and

many members

of Congress were entirely unaware it. When laws like the Patriot Act were reauthorized, a vocal
minority of senators and representatives including the three of us objected, but the secrecy
surrounding these programs made it difficult to mobilize public support. And yet, it was
inevitable that mass surveillance and warrantless searches would eventually be exposed. When the plain text of the
law differs so dramatically from how it is interpreted and applied, in effect creating a body of secret law, it simply
isn't sustainable. So when the programs' existence became public last summer, huge numbers of Americans were
justifiably stunned and angry at how they had been misled and by the degree to which their privacy rights had been
routinely violated. Inflated claims about the program's value have burst under public scrutiny, and there is now a

a society that trades

essential liberties for short-term security risks losing both . That is still true today, and even
the staunchest defenders of mass surveillance concede that reforms are inevitable . The
groundswell of public support for reform. Benjamin Franklin once warned that

debate over exactly what reforms should be made is likely to continue for at least the next few years as Americans

As an initial step, we
have worked with our colleagues in the House and Senate to build support for a
package of real and meaningful changes to the law that would promote the
restoration of Americans' constitutional rights and freedoms, while protecting
national security. This package of reforms includes overhauling domestic
surveillance laws to ban the bulk collection of Americans' personal information, and closing the loophole that
allows intelligence agencies to deliberately read Americans' emails without a warrant. It includes reshaping
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by installing an advocate who can argue for Americans'
continue to learn about the scale of ongoing government surveillance activities.

constitutional rights when the court is considering major cases, and by requiring that significant interpretations of
U.S. law and the Constitution be made public. And it would strengthen and clarify the government's authority to

These reforms would erect

safeguards against the further erosion of our right to privacy, and ensure greater
transparency and openness. We are encouraged by the broad bipartisan support
that this package of reforms has received and by the endorsements from both
privacy advocates and business leaders. Accordingly, we are disappointed by the House of
obtain individual records quickly in genuine emergency situations.

Representatives' recent vote to approve a revised version of the USA Freedom Act, with nearly all of the essential

the bill approved by the House is intended to

end bulk collection, we are not at all confident that it would actually do so . The bill
reforms either watered down or removed. Although

would require the government to use a "selection term" to secretly collect records, but the definition of "selection
term" is left vague enough that it could be used to collect all of the phone records in a particular area code or all of
the credit card records from a particular state. Meanwhile, the bill abandons nearly all of the other reforms
contained in the Senate version of the USA Freedom Act, while renewing controversial provisions of the Patriot Act

we will
vigorously oppose this bill in its current form and continue to push for real changes
to the law. This firm commitment to both liberty and security is what Americans
including the dedicated men and women who work at our nation's intelligence
agencies deserve. We will not settle for less .
for nearly three more years. This is clearly not the meaningful reform that Americans have demanded, so

There is no solvency -- Take years to happen

Mayer, Proff. Of Polt. Science Univ. of Wisconsin, 01 (Kenneth, ,
Princeton Univ., With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power,
p. 61, http://www.questiaschool.com/read/103282967?title=With%20the%20Stroke
%20of%20a%20Pen%3a%20Executive%20Orders%20and%20Presidential
%20Power, accessed: 7/9/13, ML)
In contemporary practice,

executive orders typically either originate from the advisory

structures within the Executive Office of the President or percolate up from
executive agencies desirous of presidential action. For particularly complex or farreaching orders, the White House will solicit comment and suggestions from
affected agencies on wording and substantive content. Simple executive orders
navigate this process in a few weeks; complex orders can take years, and can even
be derailed over an inability to obtain the necessary consensus or clearances .

Unfettered executive power causes nuclear war

Lambert, Ph.D, 2014
[Craig, March-April 2014, Harvard Magazine, Nuclear Weapons or Democracy,
http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/03/nuclear-weapons-or-democracy, 7/2/15 DOA,
DL]
the United States, a country formerly dependent on its population, its
now largely eliminated its
population and its legislature from the sphere of defense, and relies exclusively on
its executive. Nuclear weapons are monarchic. Along with other weapons of mass
destruction, they are what Scarry calls out-of-ratio weapons: ones that give a very
small number of people the power to annihilate very large numbers of people. An
out-of-ratio weapon makes the presence of the population at the authorization end
[of an attack] a structural impossibility, she writes. New weapons inevitably
change the nature of warfare, she says, but out-of-ratio weapons have changed
the nature of government. In a practical sense, the speed and scale of an incoming nuclear attack make
the notion of congressional authorization of war ridiculous; such arms are fundamentally beyond
democratic control. We had a choice: get rid of nuclear weapons or get rid of
Congress and the citizens, Scarry explains. We got rid of Congress and the
citizens. Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, American presidents have been well
aware that having a finger on the nuclear trigger gives them monstrous power that dwarfs
the petty squabbles of day-to-day political life. During the 1974 impeachment proceedings of
Richard Nixon, he told the press, I can go into my office and pick up the telephone,
and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead. The concentration of such
outsized violent force in the hands of the American president (and of the leaders of
the other eight nuclear powers) has, Scarry argues, largely undermined the three-part
design of government that the framers of the Constitution created to separate
legislative, judicial, and executive power. Instead, Washington has become like a
three-handed poker game in which one player holds all the high cards and billions of
chips. In Article I, Section 8:11, the Constitution insists on a congressional declaration for war to take place,
IN HER BOOK, Scarry asserts that

legislature, and its executive acting in concert for any act of defense has

Scarry says, yet, since the invention of atomic weapons, there has not been a formal congressional declaration of
war. (The closest case was Congresss conditional declaration for the Gulf War.) Thermonuclear Monarchy describes

the five cases of declared war in American history: the War of 1812, the Mexican War of 1846, the Spanish-American

THE AWESOME
POWER that nuclear weapons invest in the executive branch essentially disables the
legislative one, she writes. [O]nce Congress was stripped of its responsibility for
overseeing waras happened the moment atomic weapons were inventedit was,
in effect, infantilized.Now, six decades later, book after book has appeared describing Congress as
War, and the two World Wars. Scarry remarks on how majestic Congress was in those cases.

dysfunctional or dead. Once Congress regains its authority over war, however, there is every reason to believe it
will travel back along the reverse path, reacquiring the stature, intelligence, eloquence, and commitment to the
population it once had. Civic stature and military stature are intimately linked. Scarry points to the passage of the
Fifteenth Amendment, which enfranchised African-American men. It came on the heels of the Civil War, in which
180,000 black soldiers fought; given this, blacks could hardly be denied the right to vote. Similarly, the Twenty-Sixth
Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, was ratified after many teenaged soldiers had fought and died
in the Vietnam War. It is tempting to think that a country with monarchic arrangements in the realm of nuclear war
can maintain a more attractive form of government throughout the rest of its civil fabric, she writes. That would
be a mistake. A country is its arrangements for national defense. The Constitution and, more generally, the
social contract, purposely make it difficult to go to war. Scarrys book makes clear that the social contract arises
from the need to prevent the injuries that people living in groups so often cause one another. The solution involves
putting brakes on the concentration of power. The only way you can civilize force is to distribute it: give everyone a
small share, she says, adding that the Second Amendments insistence on the citizens right to bear arms
underlines this principle. Urging that military powers be held within the social contract, John Locke similarly warned,
she notes, that anyone is in a much worse condition, who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man, who has

Nuclear
weapons eliminate individual soldiers; they condense the injuring power that
formerly depended on thousands of soldiers into a single weapon, and place it at
the disposal of a solitary leader. Actions that cause major injury, like going to war, require collective
the command of 100,000, than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of 100,000 single men.

decisionmakingwhich gives a great braking power, she says. You dont want to put impediments in the way of
the good things in lifethings like liberty, lovemaking, party-going, studying, helping others. The social contract
puts impediments in the way of one thing: injury. War surely causes more injury and death than any other action
arising from human intentions, and the Constitution (written in the wake of the Revolutionary War) puts a double
brake on warfare. War must pass through two gates to become a reality. One is Congress, with its responsibility
(now shirked) to declare war. The second brake is the general population. The mere fact that you required the
citizens to fight meant that the citizenry could say yes or no, she explains. A war doesnt get fought if the
population doesnt want it fought. People like to say, Soldiers obeythey do what theyre told, she continues.
Its not true. Soldiers do what they are told, but they do it thoughtfullyand sometimes they dont. The War of
1812 ended when it did because the population, including soldiers and sailors, did not feel strong support for it.
There were soldier strikes all over England and Canada at the end of World War I; Winston Churchill wrote to Lloyd
George saying he wanted to go into Russia to support the Whites against the Reds, but the soldiers wont let me. A
big reason the South lost the Civil War was that 250,000 soldiers deserted; every time Robert E. Lee looked over his

THE SECRECY that cloaks nuclear policy and

the technical aspects of nuclear armswhat happens in the private huddles
between a president and his advisers, for examplekeeps these policies insulated
from any genuine, searching critique, she believes. Even the weapons themselves
remain sequestered in deep-sea waters, high in the sky, or at remote land locations
in Wyoming, Montana, or North Dakota, for example. It can be difficult even to
communicate with the military personnel trusted to oversee them. The USS Rhode
Island is one of 18 Ohio class submarines armed with nuclear ballistic or guided
missiles that patrol the worlds waters. Its armaments can destroy all human,
animal, and plant life on a continent. When deeply submerged, as in wartime or any moment of high
shoulder, he saw a smaller army. Soldiers ratify a war.

political tension, Scarry writes,it can o-n-l-y-r-e-c-e-i-v-e-t-i-n-y-a-m-o-u-n-t-s-o-f-i-n-f-o-r-m-a-t-i-o-n-v-e-r-y-v-e-r-ys-l-o-w-l-y. In fact, the first three letters of the hyphenated message would have taken fifteen minutes to arrive, and
the submarine would have had no way to confirm its receipt of the letters. The information gets conveyed, she
explains, in Extremely Low Frequency (or ELF) waves, giant radio waves each 2500 miles in length that can
(unlike any other band of the electromagnetic spectrum) penetrate the ocean depths. Until 2004, ELF waves were
launched by a giant antenna in Michigan and Wisconsin that is eighteen acres in size. (The Navy has not disclosed
the successor to ELF.) The nuclear-armed submarine, then, is an obscenely powerful engine of destruction and
death that, at the most critical moments, seems all but incommunicado. Thermonuclear Monarchy builds on this:
to say nuclear weapons are ungovernable is to say that they are unreachable by the human will, the

populations of the earth can have no access to them. The membrane that separates us from their lethal corridors
is one-directional: the weapons may suddenly unzip the barrier, erupt into our world, eliminate us; but we cannot,
standing on the other side, unzip the barrier, step into their world, and eliminate them. She elaborates: People
say, Once something is invented it cant be un-invented. What are we talking about? These things weve invented

The Ohio class

submarines nicely epitomize the furtiveness of the nuclear world. Eight new ones
were launched between 1989 and 1997, during the years of the so-called peace
dividend. Each of these subs carries nuclear weapons with eight times the total
blast power expended by all Allied and Axis countries in World War II. The 14 Trident
II SSBNs (ballistic-missile launching submarines) have, among them, the firepower
to kill all life on 14 continents. There are only seven continents, Scarry dryly remarks. Even so, news
can kill and destroy the whole earth, but we cant get rid of them? Of course we can.

reports did not cover the launching, christening, and commissioning of any of these submarines, even in the states
whose names they bore. The shroud of secrecy keeps the general citizenry ignorant of basic facts about the
nations nuclear arrangements. Most Americans do not realize that the country has a first-use policy. A 2004 poll
found that the majority estimated that the United States has 200 nuclear weapons; the actual current figure is
7,700. Meanwhile, 73 percent of Americans say they want the total elimination of nuclear weapons, as do similar
proportions of Russians and Canadians. The United States and Russia are now reducing their stockpiles of nuclear
warheads in accordance with negotiated agreements. This is a positive step, Scarry says, though she cautions that
the reductions in forces may simply be a way to retire obsolete weapons to make way for newer ones. (Twelve
more Ohio class submarines are slated for construction between 2019 and 2035.) RECENT SCIENTIFIC WORK on the
nuclear winter (the hypothetical climate change following a nuclear exchange), Scarry reports, indicates that any
country launching a nuclear attack would be committing suiciderendering the weapons, in effect, unusable.

An

exchange that exploded as little as 0.015 percent of the worlds nuclear arsenal say,
between lesser nuclear powers like India and Pakistancould leave 44 million dead immediately
and one billion more people likely to perish in the following month, given the effect
on food supplies and the disruption of agriculture. During the Cuban missile crisis, President John
F. Kennedy stated that the United States had no quarrel with the Cuban people or the Soviet people. But, Scarry
says, These

weapons are not designed for a showdown of political leaders. They are
going to massacre the citizens. No weapon ever invented has remained unused.
Does anyone think that in the next 100 years, one of these governments that has
them, wont use them? In a 2005 Foreign Policy essay, Apocalypse Soon, Robert McNamara bluntly
declared, U.S. nuclear weapons policy [is] immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and
dreadfully dangerous. Scarry agrees, and declares, Nuclear weapons have to be gotten rid of, worldwide.
But this cannot be done if the United States is just sitting there with this huge arsenal, which dwarfs what any other
nation has. We worry about Iran and North Korea and the huge existential threat if these countries get nuclear
weapons. What is mysterious, though, is that we fail to see the huge existential threat that we pose to the world
with what is by far the most powerful nuclear arsenal anywhere. In 1995, 78 countries asked the International
Court of Justice to declare nuclear arms illegal. In response, the U.S. Departments of Defense and State jointly
argued that using, and even making first use of, nuclear weapons does not violate any treaty regarding human
rights or the environment. Nor would the death of millions via a nuclear attack violate the 1948 UN convention on
genocide; they asserted that genocide applies only to the annihilation of national, ethnic, racial, or religious
groups.

Also: Their Castro and McQuinn Card says that congress should
pass the legislation. Their own cards supports the perm.
Our solvency says why congress needs to be actor. Extend
Solvency.
Williams Card only talks about creating exec agencies.
Completely unrelated, no NB.

PTX
Congress supports NSA reform the freedom act proves
Dan Froomkin 6/2/15 (Dan Froomkin is a reporter, columnist, and editor with a
focus on coverage of U.S. politics and media. An outspoken proponent of
accountability journalism, he wrote the popular White House Watch column at The
Washington Post from 2004 to 2009. During a nearly three-decade long career in
journalism, which started in local news, he has served as the senior Washington
correspondent and bureau chief for The Huffington Post, as editor of
WashingtonPost.com, and as deputy editor of NiemanWatchdog.org. He lives in
Washington, D.C., The Intercept, "USA Freedom Act: Small Step for Post-Snowden
Reform, Giant Leap for Congress," https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/02/onesmall-step-toward-post-snowden-surveillance-reform-one-giant-step-congress/)
The USA Freedom Act passed the House in an overwhelming, bipartisan vote three
weeks ago. After hardliner Republicans lost a prolonged game of legislative chicken, the Senate gave its
approval Tuesday afternoon as well, by a 67 to 32 margin . The bill officially ends 14
years of unprecedented bulk collection of domestic phone records by the NSA ,
replacing it with a program that requires the government to make specific requests to the phone companies. After
Snowdens leak of NSA documents revealed it, the program was repeatedly found to violate the law, first by legal
experts and blue-ribbon panels, and just last month by a federal appellate court. Its rejection by Congress is hardly
a radical act it simply reasserts the meaning of the word relevant (the language of the statute) as distinct from
everything (how the government interpreted it). At the same time, the Freedom Act explicitly reauthorizes or,
rather, reinstates, since they technically expired at midnight May 31 other programs involving the collection of
business records that the Bush and Obama administrations claimed were authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot
Act. In fact, even the bulk collection of phone records, which was abruptly wound down last week in anticipation of a
possible expiration, may wind up again, because the Freedom Act allows it to continue for a six-month transition
period. And while the Freedom Act contains a few other modest reform provisions such as more disclosure and a
public advocate for the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, it does absolutely nothing to restrain the
vast majority of the intrusive surveillance revealed by Snowden. It leaves untouched formerly secret programs the
NSA says are authorized under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, and that while ostensibly targeted at
foreigners nonetheless collect vast amounts of American communications. It wont in any way limit the agencys
mass surveillance of non-American communications. As I wrote after Sunday nights legislative action, which paved
the way for Tuesdays vote, this marks the end of a vast expansion in surveillance authorities that began almost
immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks. Indeed, the Freedom Act represents the single greatest surveillance
reform package since the 1970s. But thats a low bar. After 14 years of rubber-stamping executive-branch requests

Congress had an extraordinary moment of

opportunity to pass genuine reform . The Snowden revelations had changed the publics attitude about
for pretty much anything related to terrorism,

government surveillance. And three provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire. The provisions did expire after
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly failed to stampede the Senate into extending them as is. Loath
to vindicate Snowden, McConnell and most of the Republican majority took a position even more extreme than that
of the White House and the intelligence community, both of which had declared themselves satisfied with the
modest changes in the defanged compromise legislation. McConnell and other fearmongers issued dire warnings
until the very end. The Senate is voting to take away one more tool from those who defend this country every
day, he said Tuesday. McConnell tried to get support for some discrete and sensible improvements to the
Freedom Act on Tuesday, but failed. In one last stand before his final defeat, he refused to allow debate on several
amendments that would have given the reforms more teeth. President Obama wasted no time in announcing his
plans: Spitfire Strategies, a communications and campaign management firm, compiled the following responses to

In passing the USA Freedom Act, Congress has made a

significant down payment on broader surveillance reform. Today marks the first time
since its enactment in 1978 that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has
been amended in a way that reflects privacy rights enshrined in our history,
the passage of the bill: Google:

tradition, and Constitution Todays vote represents a critical first step toward
restoring trust in the Internet, but it is only a first step. We look forward to working with Congress on
further reforms in the near future. Susan Molinari, Vice President, Americas Public Policy and Government
Relations ACLU: The

passage of the USA Freedom Act is a milestone. This is the most important
surveillance reform bill since 1978, and its passage is an indication that Americans are no
longer willing to give the intelligence agencies a blank check . Its a testament to the
significance of the Snowden disclosures and also to the hard work of many principled legislators on both sides of
the aisle. Still, no one should mistake this bill for comprehensive reform. The bill leaves many of the governments
most intrusive and overbroad surveillance powers untouched, and it makes only very modest adjustments to
disclosure and transparency requirements. Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director
Center for Democracy & Technology: This is a generational win for privacy and transparency, said CDT President &
CEO Nuala OConnor. Weve

successfully restricted government surveillance, protecting

the privacy of Americans and strengthening transparency, while preserving our
national security. The era of casually dismissing mass surveillance as unimportant to
liberty is over even in Congress. OTI: It took two long years of intense debate and negotiation, but
Congress has finally put a stake in the heart of the NSAs program to collect the
phone records of millions of innocent Americans. Although USA FREEDOM is a compromise bill
that doesnt include every reform that will ultimately be necessary to rein in mass surveillance, it is a historic
victory for privacy rights and the first step on the long road to comprehensive
reform. Without a doubt, this is the strongest new regulation of Americas intelligence agencies since the spying
scandals of the 70s, and it is the result of a broad bipartisan majority of Congress responding
to the average Americans clear demand: do not spy on us , said Kevin Bankston Policy
Director at New Americas Open Technology Institute.

Multiple major tech companies are pushing for reform

Geller, the Daily Dot, 3/26(Eric, 3-26-2015, "Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook,
and Microsoft call for surveillance reform," Daily Dot,
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/google-facebook-microsoft-join-reform-governmentsurveillance/)//GLee
The tech-industry group Reform Government Surveillance joined other organizations
in signing a letter to executive-branch officials and congressional committee leaders
that called for comprehensive changes to the U.S. surveillance apparatus.
Reform Government Surveillance's members include AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Evernote,
Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo. At the end of May, Section 215 of
the Patriot Act will expire. Civil liberties groups want Congress to include measures in their reauthorization bill that
significantly limit what the section allows the government to do. The Patriot Act, a sweeping national-security law
that Congress passed after minimal debate on Oct. 26, 2001, serves as the legal basis for nearly every control
government surveillance program in existence. Section 215, also known as the "business records" provision, grants
the government access to "tangible things" for the purposes of obtaining "foreign intelligence information." In the
years since the Patriot Act was passed in the immediate and uncertain aftermath of 9/11, Section 215 has been
used to justify the bulk collection of telephone records, including those of American citizens. "There must be a
clear, strong, and effective end to bulk collection practices under the USA PATRIOT Act, including under the Section
215 records authority and the Section 214 authority regarding pen registers and trap & trace devices," the letter
reads. "Any collection that does occur under those authorities should have appropriate safeguards in place to

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, explained

that the search giant wasn't trying to dismantle surveillance altogether ; it
only wanted a better balance between privacy and security . "We have a
responsibility to protect the privacy and security of our users data ," Drummond
wrote on the company's blog. "At the same time, we want to do our part to help
protect privacy and users rights."

governments keep people safe." "We have little doubt that Congress can protect
both national security and privacy while taking a significant, concrete step toward
restoring trust in the Internet," he added. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the most ardent civilliberties advocates in Congress, recently told the Daily Dot that he and his allies considered the expiration of
Section 215 a key moment for their cause.

Public wants NSA change- the issue on ending surveillance

is bipartisan
Ackerman, national security editor for the Guardian, 5/18 (Spencer 5-18-2015,
"NSA surveillance opposed by American voters from all parties, poll finds,"
Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/18/us-voters-broadlyopposed-nsa-surveillance )//GLee
With five days in the legislative calendar remaining before a pivotal aspect of the Patriot Act expires, a new poll
shows widespread antipathy to mass surveillance, a sense of where the debate over the National Security Agencys

Commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union

and carried out by the Global Strategy Group and G2 Public Strategies, the poll of
1,001 likely voters found broad opposition to government surveillance across
partisan, ideological, age and gender divides. Sixty percent of likely voters believe
the Patriot Act ought to be modified, against 34% that favor its retention in its
current form. The NSA uses Section 215 of the Patriot Act as the legal basis for its daily collection of all
powers stands outside of Washington.

Americans phone data, as the Guardian revealed in June 2013 thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, a practice
that a federal appeals court deemed illegal on 7 May. Opposition to reauthorizing the Patriot Act without
modification cuts against a bill by the GOP Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The poll found 58% of
Republicans favor modification, the subject of a rival bipartisan bill that recently passed the House, with only 36% of
them favoring retention.

Self-identified very conservative voters favor modification by a

59% to 34% margin. The margins for Democrats are similar to those for
Republicans. Independent voters, however, are even less enthusiastic about mass
domestic surveillance: 71% want the Patriot Act modified, versus 22% who favor
keeping it as it is, which pollster Greg Strimple called intense . More than three-quarters
of likely voters the poll interviewed opposed related aspects of current surveillance authorities and operations.
Eighty-two percent are concerned about government collection and retention of their personal data. Eighty-three
percent are concerned about government access to data stored by businesses without judicial orders, and 84%
want the same judicial protections on their virtual data as exist for physical records on their property. The same

Consensus
on this issue is bipartisan, said Strimple. Theres real concern about what
the governments accessing about your personal life.
percentage is concerned about government use of that data for non-counter-terrorism purposes.

Obama is using his newly acquired political capital on Cuba.

Milbank, Washington Post staff writer, 7/1/15
[Dana, 7/1/15, Washington Post In his presidential homestretch, Obama regains the
momentum, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-regains-themomentum/2015/07/01/43a6b932-203c-11e5-aeb9-a411a84c9d55_story.html date
accessed 7/2/15 Evann]
The good tidings of the past week have been arguably more luck than achievement
for Obama, but he deserves credit for his effort to use the momentum of his
victories to revive what had been a moribund presidency. When you earn political
capital, as George W. Bush liked to say, you spend it. This is why it was shrewd of
the surging Obama to be in the Rose Garden on Wednesday morning, demanding

new action from Congress on Cuba. Americans and Cubans alike are ready to move
forward; I believe its time for Congress to do the same, he said, renewing his call
to lift the travel and trade embargo. ... Yes, there are those who want to turn back
the clock and double down on a policy of isolation, but its long past time for us to
realize that this approach doesnt work. It hasnt worked for 50 years. ... So Id ask
Congress to listen to the Cuban people, listen to the American people, listen to the
words of a proud Cuban American, [former Bush commerce secretary] Carlos
Gutierrez, who recently came out against the policy of the past. Fifteen minutes
later, Obama lifted off from the South Lawn in Marine One on his way to Nashville,
where he tried to use the momentum generated by the Supreme Court Obamacare
victory to spread the program to states where Republican governors have resisted.
What Im hoping is that with the Supreme Court case now behind us, what we can
do is ... now focus on how we can make it even better, he said, adding, My hope
is that on a bipartisan basis, in places like Tennessee but all across the country, we
can now focus on ... what have we learned? Whats working? Whats not working?
He said that because of politics, not all states have taken advantage of the options
that are out there. Our hope is, is that more of them do. He urged people to think
about this in a practical American way instead of a partisan, political way. This
probably wont happen, but its refreshing to see Obama, too often passive,
regaining vigor as he approaches the final 18 months of his presidency. The energy
had, at least for the moment, returned to the White House, where no fewer than six
network correspondents were doing live stand-ups before Obamas appearance
Wednesday morning. There was a spring in the presidents step, if not a swagger, as
he emerged from the Oval Office trailed by Vice President Biden. Republican
presidential candidates were nearly unanimous in denouncing the plan to open a
U.S. embassy in Havana. But Obama, squinting in the sunlight as he read from his
teleprompters, welcomed the fight. The progress that we mark today is yet
another demonstration that we dont have to be imprisoned by the past, he said.
Quoting a Cuban Americans view that you cant hold the future of Cuba hostage to
what happened in the past, Obama added, Thats what this is about: a choice
between the future and the past. Obama turned to go back inside, ignoring the
question shouted by Bloombergs Margaret Talev: How will you get an ambassador
confirmed? That will indeed be tricky. But momentum is everything in politics
and for the moment, Obama has it again.

DA Not Intrinsic
Disad not intrinsic A logical policymaker could pass the plan
and the agenda itembills are considered separately.

No Link Bottom of the docket

No Link Bottom of the docket The plan is placed at the
bottom of the legislative docket so it doesnt drain political
capital this would be normal means

No Link Winding Way

No link Winding Way The plan has to work its way through
committees and readings before it makes it to the oor and
bills dont draw fire or require political capital until before the
final oor vote means that Obama doesnt have to spend
political capital in the near-term
Presidents PC will still be used even in XO, not an NB to PTX.

Dehumanization

1 Death Outweighs Dehum

Cosette 2011 -- Cosette, Andre. "Chapter 15." The Art of Debate. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 64-65. Print.
a permanent impact that cannot be reversed is more
serious than an impact that can be reversed. Death and species extinction
cannot be reversed, but a loss of rights and dehumanization can because
you can get rights back, and feel more like a human being than before, but
you cannot come back to life, and extinct species cannot return. Therefore
death outweighs dehumanization on reversibility.
One more impact comparison is reversibility, this means that

3 Dehum outweighs source irrelevant to Case

**Only for Montagu and Matson 83**
Montagu 94 (Touch the Future: A conversation with Ashley Montagu, Michael
Mendizza, https://ttfuture.org/files/2/members/int_montague.pdf)

The way in which our culture has changed over the last fifty years was

the subject of another book, The Dehumanization of

Man

. Most of us are no longer really human, we have been deprived of our humanity. We have been dehumanized by the processes of conditioning, upbringing and socialization. We are no longer the organized authentic self,

is
Television
robbed children of their childhood and replaced it with an amalgam of
mal-adult, mal-feeling, mal-thinking, sick feeling, violence and creates an
incapacity for young people to think for themselves. I call television the
lobotomy-box.
which we were once capable of being. We substitute power in our search for what

missing - if I get a lot of money, if I get a lot of power - then I can get people to love me, and it never works.

, for

example, has

If you put an electroen-cephalograph on the head of the average viewer you would not get any reaction whatsoever. Because hes given over all cognitive processes, all evaluative

processes to this machine. Look what we have done to sports. It is a corruption of the spirit, a game of big business in which a person who can hardly read or write gets a contract of $26 million for years because he can hit a ball.
Here are the successes we imitate. And all these children who make a $1,000 a day selling drugs. This is the education they get. Well, it isnt education. Its corruption of the human spirit, and this is what were suffering from.

Analysis: Their Dehum outweighs all evidence is from a book

written about Television. Television is completely irrelevant to the
resolution, and thus their dehum outweighs all claim must be
removed from the flow.

Circumvention
1. NSA will comply with the plan
Ackerman, The Guardian, 15
(Spencer, 6/1/2015, The Guardian, Fears NSA will seek to undermine surveillance
reform, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/nsa-surveillance-patriotact-congress-secret-law, Accessed 7/5/15, DR)
Despite that recent history, veteran intelligence attorneys reacted with scorn to the
idea that NSA lawyers will undermine surveillance reform . Robert Litt, the senior
lawyer for director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said during a public
appearance last month that creating a banned bulk surveillance program was not
going to happen. The whole notion that NSA is just evilly determined to read the
law in a fashion contrary to its intent is bullshit, of the sort that the Guardian and
the left but I repeat myself have fallen in love with. The interpretation of 215
that supported the bulk collection program was creative but not beyond reason, and
it was upheld by many judges, said the former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker,
referring to Section 215 of the Patriot Act. This is the section that permits US law
enforcement and surveillance agencies to collect business records and expired at
midnight, almost two years after the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed to the
Guardian that the Patriot Act was secretly being used to justify the collection of
phone records from millions of Americans. With one exception, the judges that
upheld the interpretation sat on the non-adversarial Fisa court, a body that
approves nearly all government surveillance requests and modifies about a quarter
of them substantially. The exception was reversed by the second circuit court of
appeals. Baker, speaking before the Senate voted, predicted: I dont think anyone
at NSA is going to invest in looking for ways to defy congressional intent if USA
Freedom is adopted.

2. Circumvention will be near impossible in the post-Snowden

era no company cooperation, tighter security, and distrust
Seltzer, Zero Day contributing editor, 14
[Larry, 1-10-2014, ZDNet, Enterprise computing in the post-Snowden era,
http://www.zdnet.com/article/enterprise-computing-in-the-post-snowden-era/,
Accessed: 7-10-2015, ACS]
It seems implausible that nothing will change in the NSA as a result of Edward
Snowden's leaks of their practices. But those practices didn't affect just the
government. In light of all that has happened you have to reexamine how your own
business operates. John Dickson, a Principal at Denim Group, a security consulting
and services company, has proposed six reasons why the Snowden leaks are your
problem as well as the NSA's. I'm more struck by some than others, and I have
some to add. Companies will be more wary to cooperate with governments
Oh yeah, big-time. If the government came to you and asked for you to do

something to undermine customers you might well have said now anyway, but now
your confidence in the government keeping it a secret can't be what it was before.
And as Dickson says, it's not just the US government; anyone who thinks the
average European government is more trustworthy is fooling themselves. Tighter
cooperation between security, privacy and corporate counsel will occur
This makes sense superficially, but I'm less certain than Dickson that it will bring
about significant actual change. Companies will review and update their
public privacy statements I agree with Dickson that many in the public believe
mistakenly that companies are cooperating voluntarily, even enthusiastically, with
the government to compromise their own products. But it's not clear to me that a
change in the privacy statement will make a difference to anyone in the public; it's
just about satisfying corporate counsel's sense of the company's exposure. CEOs
will question why companies keep certain sensitive customer data at all This is a
good prediction and a good question for executives to ask, but the reason has more
to do with data breaches generally and not with the NSA. Legislation to cooperate
with the US Federal Government on Information Sharing is likely dead It's as dead
as J Edgar Hoover. The government will have to make do with what mechanisms
they have now. International clients will ask American IT companies tougher
questions Yes, of course this is true, but what answers can they really expect?
And why would they believe that non-US products and services are more
trustworthy? In the end, I think the market impact of this will be small, limited to
symbolic anecdotes, mostly in the purchases of other governments. But why stop at
international clients? I'm sure US customers will be asking US IT companies more
about the security of their products and services, although they too can't
reasonably expect informative answers. Another potential outcome Dickson doesn't
address is the vulnerability of your own employees. If Edward Snowden can get
through the NSA's contractor process, what kind of traitorous scoundrels work in
your own IT department? You need to think about who you trust with the company
jewels and perhaps to narrow that circle of trust to a few people who you can
scrutinize more thoroughly. Another prediction worth making is that this is all good
for the business of security consulting and penetration testing. If you assume that
the government has bugged us all, you probably have to look for the bugs more
often and more assertively. Of course, you have to assume that your consultants
and pen-testers aren't really working for you-know-who...

3. First you can extend kayalli and Castro from the 1AC that
say Legislation is key to ending these backdoors and will
completely end the project bullrun.
a. Not only will this be government enforced, but also
enforced by businesses. No longer will the government be able
to require businesses to install back doors. This solves for
business innovation
b. On top of that our advantages are largely perception
based. This means that passing the plan and having the
government sign it will send a strong signal to consumers
increasing consumer confidence.

A2: Mueller 10
They talk about low risk should be treated as no risk. Low risk is directly addressed
in our warrant in our card, a fraction of inifite impact is infinity. Prefer our evidence

Framework for all Ks

Interpretation the affirmative must defend the desirability of
a topical post-fiat policy.
Heres some definitional support:
The agent and verb indicate a debate about hypothetical
government action
Jon M Ericson 3, Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts California
Polytechnic U., et al., The Debaters Guide, Third Edition, p. 4
each topic contains certain key
elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented
propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---The United States in The United States
should adopt a policy of free trade. Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent
is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb shouldthe first part of a verb phrase that urges
action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here
means to put a program or policy into action through governmental means. 4. A
specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions,

example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing
tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future
action. Nothing has yet occurred.

The entire debate is about whether something ought

to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer
sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.

Resolved implies a policy

Louisiana House 5 http://house.louisiana.gov/house-glossary.htm
Resolution A legislative instrument that generally is used for making declarations,
stating policies, and making decisions where some other form is not required. A bill includes the
constitutionally required enacting clause; a resolution uses the term "resolved". Not subject to
a time limit for introduction nor to governor's veto. ( Const. Art. III, 17(B) and House Rules 8.11 , 13.1 , 6.8 , and
7.4)

Prefer:
Law learning about the state is key to ensure movements do
not unintentionally reinforce it- understanding about the
masters tools helps us destroy the masters house and build
our own
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
Masters Tools Bring Down Empire?, http://www.acme-journal.org/vol7/SKo.pdf?
q=within)//TL

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

this masters tool is toxic. When we use it we may appear to take tiles off of the masters
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
masters 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 masters
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 masters house .
empire, but

house, but we unintentionally reinforce the foundations, the systems of domination that prop up empire.

Deliberation Having a deliberative model to promote problem

solving and conict mediation is key to generate real social
change
Ralston 11 (Shane, interdisciplinary teacher-scholar-practitioner with graduatelevel training in Philosophy, Political Science, Public Administration, Human
Resources and Labor Relations. He teaches Philosophy at the Hazleton campus of
Pennsylvania State University. He has also worked in city government and private
business. . Deliberating with Critical Friends. Teaching Philosophy 34 (4):393-410)
democratic theory has undergone a deliberative
revolution.-' In what John Dryzek terms the "deliberative turn," many democratic theorists and
practitioners have shifted their models of democratic legitimacy to
account for "the ability or opportunity to participate in effective
deliberation on the part of those subject to collective decisions." This
deliberative turn or revolution has been motivated in large part by the
need to create complements or alternatives to purely aggregative models
of democracy, which reduce democratic decision-making to registering
privately formed preferences through majoritarian voting procedures ." One
of the core commitments of deliberative democratic theory is what might be called the public justification tenet. It
states that in order for a political decision to be democratic and
legitimate, the views and interests expressed in it must withstand the test
of deliberation, wherein each participant publicly justifies his position and
preferences to his fellow deliberators." In other words, through the process of
discussing and contesting each other's claims, deliberators face the
prospect of arriving at qualitatively improved or enlightened collective
choices. As a corollary to this tenet, citizens of a deliberative democracy must be capable of changing their
In the last twenty years,

own and other citizens' preferences about the issues under discussion; meaning that when subject to the test of
public justification the outcomes one prefers are presumed to be negotiable and open to transformation.

Even if

preferences do not submit to the transformative effects of deliberation,

participants may still be more sympathetic to accepting the decision if
they feel their voice has been heard. Also, deliberation may constitute a
search for right solutions to shared problems (sometimes referred to as its epistemic
function) promoting creative inquiry, problem solving and conict mediation

The impact outweighsdeliberative debate models impart

skills vital to respond to existential threats
Christian O. Lundberg 10 Professor of Communications @ University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, Tradition of Debate in North Carolina in Navigating
Opportunity: Policy Debate in the 21st Century By Allan D. Louden, p. 311
The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and democracy is that it

the democratic
capacities built by debate are not limited to speechas indicated earlier, debate builds
capacity for critical thinking, analysis of public claims, informed decision making,
and better public judgment. If the picture of modem political life that underwrites
this critique of debate is a pessimistic view of increasingly labyrinthine and
bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid scientific and technological change outpacing the
capacities of the citizenry to comprehend them, and ever-expanding insular special-interest- and
money-driven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that these
conditions warrant giving up on debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to
rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the
citizenry's capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that
theorists of democracy such as Ocwey in The Public awl Its Problems place such a high premium
on education (Dewey 1988,63, 154). Debate provides an indispensible form of education in the modem
articulation of democracy because it builds precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to
research and be informed about policy decisions that impact them, to sort through
and evaluate the evidence for and relative merits of arguments for and against a policy
in an increasingly information-rich environment, and to prioritize their time and
political energies toward policies that matter the most to them.
presumes that the primary pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But

The merits of debate as a tool for building democratic capacity-building take on a

special significance in the context of information literacy . John Larkin (2005, HO) argues that
one of the primary failings of modern colleges and universities is that they have not
changed curriculum to match with the challenges of a new information environment .
This is a problem for the course of academic study in our current context, but perhaps more important,
argues Larkin, for the future of a citizenry that will need to make evaluative choices
against an increasingly complex and multimediated information environment (ibid-).
Larkin's study tested the benefits of debate participation on information-literacy skills and concluded that in-class
debate participants reported significantly higher self-efficacy ratings of their ability to navigate academic search
databases and to effectively search and use other Web resources:

To analyze the self-report ratings of the instructional and control group students, we first conducted a multivariate
analysis of variance on all of the ratings, looking jointly at the effect of instmction/no instruction and debate topic . .
. that it did not matter which topic students had been assigned . . . students in the
Instnictional [debate) group were significantly more confident in their ability to access information and less likely to
feel that they needed help to do so----These findings clearly indicate greater self-efficacy for online searching
among students who participated in (debate).... These results constitute strong support for the effectiveness of the
project on students' self-efficacy for online searching in the academic databases. There was an unintended effect,

however: After doing ... the project, instructional group students also felt more confident than the other students in
their ability to get good information from Yahoo and Google. It may be that the library research experience
increased self-efficacy for any searching, not just in academic databases. (Larkin 2005, 144)

Larkin's study substantiates Thomas Worthcn and Gaylcn Pack's (1992, 3) claim that debate in
the college classroom plays a critical role in fostering the kind of problem-solving skills
demanded by the increasingly rich media and information environment of
modernity. Though their essay was written in 1992 on the cusp of the eventual explosion of the Internet as a
medium, Worthcn and Pack's framing of the issue was prescient: the primary question facing today's student has
changed from how to best research a topic to the crucial question of learning how to best evaluate which
arguments to cite and rely upon from an easily accessible and veritable cornucopia of materials.
There are, without a doubt, a number of important criticisms of employing debate as a model for democratic

the evidence presented here warrants strong support for

expanding debate practice in the classroom as a technology for enhancing democratic
deliberative capacities. The unique combination of critical thinking skills, research
and information processing skills, oral communication skills, and capacities for
listening and thoughtful, open engagement with hotly contested issues argues for
debate as a crucial component of a rich and vital democratic life. In-class debate practice
both aids students in achieving the best goals of college and university education, and serves as an
unmatched practice for creating thoughtful, engaged, open-minded and self-critical
students who are open to the possibilities of meaningful political engagement and
new articulations of democratic life.
deliberation. But cumulatively,

Expanding this practice is crucial, if only because the more we produce citizens that
can actively and effectively engage the political process, the more likely we are to
produce revisions of democratic life that are necessary if democracy is not only to
survive, but to thrive. Democracy faces a myriad of challenges, including: domestic and
international issues of class, gender, and racial justice ; wholesale environmental
destruction and the potential for rapid climate change ; emerging threats to
international stability in the form of terrorism, intervention and new possibilities for great
power conflict; and increasing challenges of rapid globalization including an increasingly
volatile global economic structure. More than any specific policy or proposal, an informed and
active citizenry that deliberates with greater skill and sensitivity provides one of the
best hopes for responsive and effective democratic governance, and by extension,
one of the last best hopes for dealing with the existential challenges to democracy [in an]
increasingly complex world.

Switch-sides debate debating both sides solves their offense

and is vital to real world decision-making and problem-solving.
Muir 93 (Star, Prof. Comm. George Mason U., Philosophy and Rhetoric, A
Defense of the Ethics of Contemporary Debate, 26(4), pp.284-287)
A second objection to debate as values clarification, consonant with Ehninger's
concerns about gamesmanship, is the separation of the educational process from the
real world. A significant concern here is how such learning about morality will be used in the rest of a
student's life. Some critics question whether moral school knowledge "may be quite separate from living moral
experience in a similar way as proficiency in speaking one's native language generally appears quite separate from
the knowledge of formal grammar imparted by school."^^ Edelstein discusses two forms of segmentation: division
between realms of school knowledge (e.g., history separated from science) and between school and living

Ehninger's point, that debate

becomes a pastime, and that application of these skills to solving real
problems is diminished if it is viewed as a game, is largely a reection on
institutional segmentation. The melding of different areas of knowledge, however, is a particular
experience (institutional learning separate from everyday life).

benefit of debate, as it addresses topics of considerable importance in a real world setting. Recent college and high
school topics include energy policy, prison reform, care for the elderly, trade policy, homelessness, and the right to
privacy. These topics are notable because they exceed the knowledge boundaries of particular school subjects, they
reach into issues of everyday life, and they are broad enough to force students to address a variety of value
appeals. The explosion of "squirrels," or small and specific cases, in the 1960s and 1970s has had the effect of
opening up each topic to many different case approaches. National topics are no longer of the one-case variety (as
in 1955's "the U.S. should recognize Red China"). On the privacy topic, for example, cases include search and
seizure issues, abortion, sexual privacy, tradeoffs with the first amendment, birth control, information privacy,
pornography, and obscenity. The multiplicity of issues pays special dividends for debaters required to defend both
sides of many issues because the value criteria change from round to round and evolve over the year. The
development of flexibility in coping with the intertwining of issues is an essential component in the interconnection
of knowledge, and is a major rationale for switch-side debate. The isolation of debate from the real world is a much
more potent challenge to the activity. There are indeed "esoteric" techniques, special terminologies, and procedural
constraints that limit the applicability of debate knowledge and skills to the rest of the student's life. The first and
most obvious rejoinder is that debate puts students into greater contact with the real world by forcing them to read
a great deal of information from popular periodicals, scholarly books and journals, government documents, reports,
newsletters, and daily newspapers. Debaters also frequently seek out and query administrators, policy makers, and
public personae to gain more data. The constant consumption of material by. from, and about the real world is
significantly constitutive: The information grounds the issues under discussion, and the process shapes the
relationship of the citizen to the public arena. Debaters can become more involved than uninformed citizens
because they know about important issues, and because they know how to find out more information about these
issues. A second response to the charge of segmentation is the proclivity of debaters to become involved in public
policy and international affairs. Although the stereotype is that debaters become lawyers, students seeking other
professional areas also see value in the skills of debate. Business management, government, politics, international
relations, teaching, public policy, and so on, are all significant career options for debaters. In surveys, ex-debaters
frequently respond that debate was the single most educational activity of their college careers.'" Most classes
provide information, but debate compels the use, assimilation, and evaluation of information that is not required in
most classrooms. As one debate alumnus writes: "The lessons learned and the experience gained have been more
valuable to me than any other aspect of my formal education."" It is no wonder, then, that surveys of Congress and
other policy-making institutions reveal a high percentage of ex-debaters.'^ The argument that debate isolates
participants from the "real world" is not sustained in practice when debaters, trained in research, organization,
strategy, and technique, are consistently effective in integrating these skills into success on the job. Even the
specialized jargon required to play the game successfully has benefits in terms of analyzing and understanding
society's problems. Consider the terminology of the "disadvantage" against the affirmative's plan: There is a "link"
between the plan and some effect, or "impact"; the link can be actions that push us over some "threshold" to an
impact, or it can be a "linear" relationship where each increase causes an increase in the impact; the link from the
affirmative plan to the impact must be "unique," in that the plan itself is largely responsible for the impact; the
affirmative may argue a "turnaround" to the disadvantage, claiming it as an advantage for the plan. Such
specialized jargon may separate debate talk from other types of discourse, but the ideas represented here are also
significant and useful for analyzing the relative desirability of public policies. There really are threshold and brink
issues in evaluating public policies. Though listening to debaters talk is somewhat disconcerting for a lay person,
familiarity with these concepts is an essential means of connecting the research they do with the evaluation of
options confronting citizens and decision makers in political and social contexts. This familiarity is directly related to

third point
switch-side debate develops habits of the mind
and instills a lifelong pattern of critical assessment . Students who have
debated both sides of a topic are better voters, Dell writes, because of "their
habit of analyzing both sides before forming a conclusion ."^^ O'Neill, Laycock and
Scales, responding in part to Roosevelt's indictment, iterated the basic position in 1931: Skill in the use of
facts and inferences available may be gained on either side of a question
without regard to convictions. Instruction and practice in debate should give young men this skill.
the motivation and the ability to get involved in issues and controversies of public importance. A
about isolation from the real world is that

And where these matters are properly handled, stress is not laid on getting the speaker to think rightly in regard to

Reasons for not

taking a position counter to one's beliefs (isolation from the "real world," sophistry) are
the merits of either side of these questionsbut to think accurately on both sides.^^

largely outweighed by the benefit of such mental habits throughout an

individual's life. The jargon, strategies, and techniques may be alienating to "outsiders," but they are also
paradoxically integrative as well. Playing the game of debate involves certain skills, including research and policy
evaluation, that evolve along with a debater's consciousness of the complexities of moral and political dilemmas.

This conceptual development is a basis for the formation of ideas and

relational thinking necessary for effective public decision making, making
even the game of debate a significant benefit in solving real world
problems.

Debate inevitably involves exclusions making sure that those

exclusions occur along reciprocal lines is necessary to foster
democratic habits and critical thinking---this process of
intellectual exchange outweighs the content of the aff and
doesnt link to any of their offense
Amanda Anderson 6, prof of English at Johns Hopkins The Way We Argue Now,
25-8
substantive normative guidance is an issue of debate.
through appeal to the principles of respect and
reciprocity that he claims are inherent in linguistic practices geared toward reaching understanding. Attempting to redress
the overwhelmingly negative forms of critique characteristic of both the Frankfurt School
and poststructuralist traditions, he argues that the logocentrism of Western thought
and the powerful instrumentality of reason are not absolute but rather constitute a
systematic foreshortening and distortion of a potential always already operative in
the communicative practice of everyday life. The potential he refers to is the potential for
mutual understanding inscribed into communication in ordinary language . 7
Habermas acknowledges the dominance and reach of instrumental reasonhis project is
largely devoted to a systematic analysis of the historical conditions and social effects of that
dominanceyet at the same time he wishes to retrieve an emancipatory model of
communicative 26 reason derived from a linguistic understanding of
intersubjective relations. As Benhabib argues, this form of communicative action, embodied in the highly controversial and
25 Whether such a procedural approach actually helps to yield any
Habermas has sought to justify communicative ethics

pervasively misunderstood concept of the ideal speech situation, entails strong ethical assumptions, namely the principles of universal moral respect

he does not believe any metaphysical

grounding of such norms is possible; he insists instead that we view the normative
constraints of the ideal speech community as universal pragmatic
presuppositions of competent moral actors who have reached the postconventional stage of moral reasoning. Habermass theory
and egalitarian reciprocity (SS, 29). Habermas has famously argued that

combines a weak transcendental argument concerning the four types of validity claims operative in speech acts with an empirical reconstruction of

Benhabib, though she, too, appeals to socialization processes, distinguishes her

promoting a historically self-conscious universalism
that locates the ethical principles of respect and reciprocity as constituents of
the moral point of view from within the normative hermeneutic horizon of modernity (SS, 30). Benhabibs work thus
constitutes, like Habermass, a strong defense of specific potentialities of modernity. She differs
from him in two key respects , besides the emphasis already outlined. First, she believes that Habermass emphasis on
consensus seriously distorts his account of communicative ethics. Like others who have
argued against the conation of understanding and consensus, Benhabib
champions instead a discourse model of ethics that is geared toward keeping the
conversation going: When we shift the burden of the moral test in
communicative ethics from consensus to the idea of an ongoing moral conversation,
psychosocial development derived from Lawrence Kohlberg.

position from Habermass weak transcendental argument by

we begin to ask not what all would or could agree to as a result of practical
discourses to be morally permissible or impermissible , but what would be
allowed and perhaps even necessary from the standpoint of continuing and sustaining
the practice of the moral conversation among us. The emphasis now is less on rational
agreement, but more on sustaining those normative practices and moral relationships
within which reasoned agreement as a way of life can ourish and continue. (SS, 38)8
27 The second significant difference between Habermas and Benhabib is that Benhabib rejects Habermass rigid opposition between justice and the

Benhabib

good life, an opposition that effectively relegates identity-based politics to a lower plane of moral practice, and that for
undercuts our
ability to apprehend the radical particularity of the other. While she believes in the importance of self-reflexive interrogations of conventional identities and

opposes any ethics or politics that privileges the unencumbered or detached self over
the concrete, embodied, situated self. She argues in particular against those liberal models that imagine that conversations of
roles, she strongly

moral justification should take place between individuals who have bracketed their strongest cultural or social identifications and attachments. Instead

she promotes what she calls an interactive universalism: Interactive universalism

acknowledges the plurality of modes of being human, and differences among
humans, without endorsing all these pluralities and differences as morally and politically valid. While
agreeing that normative disputes can be settled rationally, and that fairness,
reciprocity and some procedure of universalizability are constituents, that is,
necessary conditions of the moral standpoint, interactive universalism regards difference as
a starting point for reflection and action. In this sense, universality is a regulative
ideal that does not deny our embodied and embedded identity , but aims at
developing moral attitudes and encouraging political transformations that can
yield a point of view acceptable to all. Universality is not the ideal consensus of
fictitiously defined selves, but the concrete process in politics and morals of the struggle of concrete, embodied selves,
striving for autonomy. (SS, 153) This passage encapsulates the core of Benhabibs position, which attempts to mediate
between universalism and particularism as traditionally understood. On the one hand,
universalisms informing principles of rational argumentation, fairness, and
reciprocity adjudicate between different positions in the ethicopolitical realm ,
enabling crucial distinctions between those notions of the good life that promote
interactive universalism and those that threaten its key principles . It insists, in other words, that
there is a specifiable moral standpoint from whichto take a few prominent examplesSerbian aggression, neo-Nazism, and gay bashing can be

On the other hand, universalism regards difference as a starting

point. It understands identity as embodied and embedded and promotes encounters with
otherness so as to nurture the development of a moral attitude that will yield a point of view
acceptable to all. Of course it must simultaneously be recognized that the
all here cannot coherently include those who have, according to universalisms own principles,
forfeited their place as equal participants in the ethicopolitical 28
community. Ironically, then, Benhabibs redefinition of universalism insists on inevitable
exclusion, but not in the sense that many poststructuralist and postmodernist cultural critics
do, as the hardwired effect of universalisms false claims to inclusiveness , and as
victimizing those disempowered by race, class, gender, or sexuality. Against naive
conceptions of inclusiveness and plurality, which ultimately prove self-undermining in
their toleration of communities, individuals, and practices that exclude others arbitrarily ,
interactive universalism claims that certain exclusions are not only
justified, but indeed required by the principles of recognition and respect
that underpin democratic institutions and practices.
definitively condemned.

Minimal guidelines to ensure a relative balance in the debate

are necessary to effectuate democratic engagement--intersubjectivity can create provisional meaning while
combating the worst excesses of Cartesian rationality---the
process of argumentative exchange is the best way to solve
their offense and they cant critique it without linking to their
offense
Lincoln Dahlberg 5, The University of Queensland, Center for Critical and
Cultural Studies, Visiting Fellow, The Habermasian public sphere: Taking difference
seriously?, Theory and Society (2005) 34:111-126
this critique of power, transparency, and the subject is largely based upon a poor
characterization of Habermas position. There are three main misunderstandings that need to be cleared up here, to do
with power as negative, as able to be easily removed, and as able to be clearly identified. First, Habermas does not define
power as simply negative and as therefore needing to be summarily removed from the
public sphere. The public sphere norm calls for coercion-free communication and not
power-free communication. Habermas emphasizes the positive power of
communicative interaction within the public sphere through which participants use words to do
things and make things happen.60 Communicative rationality draws on the force of better
argument to produce more democratic citizens, culture, and societies. Subjects are
indeed molded through this constituting power, but their transformation is towards
freedom and autonomy rather than towards subjugation and normalization. As Jeffrey Alexander points
out, to act according to a norm is not the same as to be normalized .61 The
public sphere norm provides a structure through which critical reection on
constraining or dominating social relations and possibilities for freedom can take place. As
Chambers argues, rational discourse here is about the endless questioning of codes, the reasoned questioning of
normalization.62 This is the very type of questioning critics like Lyotard, Mouffe, and Villa are
engaged in despite claiming the normalizing and repressive power of
communicative rationality. These critics have yet to explain adequately how they escape
this performative contradiction, although they may not be too concerned to escape it.63 The form of power
that is to be excluded from discourse in the public sphere is that which limits and disables
democratic participation and leads to communicative inequalities. Coercion and
domination are (ideally) excluded from the public sphere, which includes forms of
domination resulting from the maldistribution of material and authoritative resources that
lead to discursive inequalities. This emphasis on the ideal exclusion of coercion introduces the second point of clarification, that the domination free public sphere is an idealization for the purposes of critique. Habermas is more than aware of the fact
that, as Nancy Fraser, Mouffe, and Young remind us, coercive forms of power, including those that result from social inequality, can
never be completely separated from the public sphere.64 Claims that such power has been removed from any
really-existing deliberative arena can only be made by ignoring or hiding the operation of power. However, this does not mean
that a reduction in coercion and domination cannot be achieved. Indeed, this is precisely what a
democratic politics must do. To aid this project, the public sphere conception sets a
critical standard for evaluation of everyday communication. Chambers puts this nicely:
Criticism requires a normative backdrop against which we criticize. Crit-icizing the ways
I believe

power and domination play themselves out in discourse presupposes a conception of discourse in which there is no [coercive] power and domination. In
other words, to defend the position that there is a mean- ingful difference between talking and fighting, persuasion and coercion, and by extension, reason
and power involves beginning with idealizations. That is, it involves drawing a picture of undominated discourse.65 However, this discussion of the
idealizing status of the norm does notanswer claims that it invokes a transparency theory of knowledge. Iwould argue that such claims not only fall prey to
another performa-tive contradiction of presupposing that the use of rational discourse can establish the impossibility of rational discourse revealing truth

In
contrast to the metaphysics of presence, the differentiation of persusion from
coercion in the public sphere does not posit a naive theory of the transparency of
power, and meaning more generally. The public sphere conception as based upon
communicative rationality does not assume a Cartesian (autonomous,
disembodied, decontextualized) subject who can clearly distinguish between persuasion
and coercion, good and bad reasons, true and untrue claims, and then wholly re-move
themselves and their communications from such influence. For Habermas, subjects are always situated
within culture. The public sphere is posited upon intersubjective rather than
subject-centered rationality. It is through the process of communicative
rationality, and not via a Cartesian subject, that manipulation, deception, poor
reasoning, and so on, are identified and removed, and by which meanings can be
understood and communicated. In other words, it is through rational-critical communication
that discourse moves away from coercion or non-public reason towards greater rational communication and
a stronger public sphere. The circularity here is not a problem, as it may seem, but is in fact the very essence of democratization:
and power but are also based on a poor reading of Habermas theory of communicative rationality. This is the third point of clarification.

throughthe practice of democracy, democratic practice is advanced. This democratizing process can be further illustrated in the important and
challenging case of social inequalities. Democratic theorists (bothdeliberative and difference) generally agree that social inequalities al-ways lead to some
degree of inequalities in discourse. Thus, the ide-alized public sphere of full discursive inclusion and equality requires that social inequalities be eliminated.

The idealization seems wholly in-adequate

given contemporary capitalist systems and associated social inequality. However,
it is in the very process of argumentation, even if awed, that the
identification and critique of social inequality, and thus of communicative
inequality, is able to develop. Indeed, public sphere deliberation often comes into existence when and where people
Yet how is social inequality to befullyidentified,letaloneeliminated?

become passionate about social injustice and publicly thematize problems of social inequality. Thus the negative power of social inequality as with

This is not to say that subjects

are merely effects of discourse, that there are no critical social agents acting in the process. It is not to say that
125 subjects within discourse cannot themselves identify negative forms of power, cannot reflexively monitor their
own arguments, cannot rationally criticize other positions, and so on. They can, and
in practice do, despite the instability of meaning. The point is that this reasoning and
understanding is (provisionally) achieved through the subjects situatedness in
discourse rather than via a pre-discursive abstract subject. As Kenneth Baynes argues, it is through discourse that subjects
achieve a degree of reective distance (what we could call autonomy) from their situations, enabling
them to revise their conceptions of what is valuable or worthy of pursuit,[and]to assess
various courses of action with respect to those ends. 66 Democratic discourse generates civicoriented selves, inter-subjective meanings and understandings, and democratic
agreements that can be seen as the basis of public sovereignty . How-ever, the idea of
other forms of coercion is brought to light and critique by the very discourse it is limiting.

communicatively produced agreements, which in the public sphere are known as public opinions, has also come under ex-tensive criticism in terms of

The starting
point of discourse is disagreement over problematic validity claims.
However, a certain amount of agreement, or at least mutual understanding,
is presupposed when interlocutors engage in argumentation . All communication
presupposes mutual understanding on the linguistic terms used that interlocutors use the same
terms in the same way.67 Furthermore, in undertaking rational-critical discourse, according to Habermas formal pragmatic reconstruction,
interlocutors also presuppose the same formal conditions of argumentation.
These shared presuppositions enable rational-critical discourse to be
undertaken. However, as seen above, meaning is never fixed and understanding is always
partial. Understanding and agreement on the use of linguistic terms and of what it means to be reasonable, reflexive,
sincere, inclusive, non-coercive, etc. takes
excluding difference, criticism that I wantto explore in the next section. The ends of discourse: Public opinion formation

Econ controls every other facet of deterrence solves multiple

hot spots for war
Gelb, CFR president emeritus, 2010
(Leslie, GDP Now Matters More Than Force, Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec, ebsco)

the United States continues to be the world's power balancer of choice. It is

the only regional balancer against China in Asia, Russia in eastern Europe, and
Iran in the Middle East. Although Americans rarely think about this role and foreign leaders often deny it for
internal political reasons, the fact is that Americans and non-Americans alike require these
services. Even Russian leaders today look to Washington to check China. And Chinese
leaders surely realize that they need the U.S. Navy and Air Force to guard the world's sea
and trading lanes. Washington should not be embarrassed to remind others of the costs and risks of the United States'
Today,

security role when it comes to economic transactions. That applies, for example, to Afghan and Iraqi decisions about contracts for
their natural resources, and to Beijing on many counts. U.S. forces maintain a stable world order
that decidedly benefits China's economic growth, and to date, Beijing has been getting a free ride. A NEW APPROACH In this
environment, the first-tier foreign policy goals of the United States should be a strong economy and the ability to deploy effective
counters to threats at the lowest possible cost. Second-tier goals, which are always more controversial, include retaining the military
power to remain the world's power balancer, promoting freer trade, maintaining technological advantages (including
cyberwarfare capabilities), reducing risks from various environmental and health challenges, developing alternative energy supplies,
and advancing U.S. values such as democracy and human rights . Wherever possible, second-tier goals should
reinforce first-tier ones: for example, it makes sense to err on the side of freer trade to help boost the economy and to invest in
greater energy independence to reduce dependence on the tumultuous Middle East. But no overall approach should dictate how to
pursue these goals in each and every situation. Specific applications depend on, among other things, the culture and politics of the
target countries. An overarching vision helps leaders consider how to use their power to achieve their goals. This is what gives policy
direction, purpose, and thrust--and this is what is often missing from U.S. policy. The organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy should
be to use power to solve common problems. The good old days of being able to command others by making military or economic
threats are largely gone. Even the weakest nations can resist the strongest ones or drive up the costs for submission. Now, U.S.
power derives mainly from others' knowing that they cannot solve their problems without the United States and that they will have
to heed U.S. interests to achieve common goals. Power by services rendered has largely replaced power by command. No matter the
decline in U.S. power, most nations do not doubt that the United States is the indispensable leader in solving major international

This problem-solving capacity creates opportunities for U.S. leadership in

everything from trade talks to military-conict resolution to international agreements on
global warming. Only Washington can help the nations bordering the South China Sea
problems.

forge a formula for sharing the region's resources. Only Washington has a chance of pushing the Israelis and the Palestinians toward
peace. Only Washington can bargain to increase the low value of a Chinese currency exchange . rate that disadvantages almost
every nation's trade with China. But it is clear to Americans and non-Americans alike that Washington lacks the power to solve or
manage difficult problems alone; the indispensable leader must work with indispensable partners. To attract the necessary partners,
Washington must do the very thing that habitually afflicts U.S. leaders with political hives: compromise. This does not mean
multilateralism for its own sake, nor does it mean abandoning vital national interests. The Obama administration has been criticized
for softening UN economic sanctions against Iran in order to please China and Russia. Had the United States not compromised,
however, it would have faced vetoes and enacted no new sanctions at all. U.S. presidents are often in a strong position to bargain
while preserving essential U.S. interests, but they have to do a better job of selling such unavoidable compromises to the U.S.
public. U.S. policymakers must also be patient. The weakest of nations today can resist and delay. Pressing prematurely for
decisions--an unfortunate hallmark of U.S. style--results in failure, the prime enemy of power. Success breeds power, and failure
breeds weakness. Even when various domestic constituencies shout for quick action, Washington's leaders must learn to buy time in
order to allow for U.S. power--and the power of U.S.-led coalitions--to take effect abroad. Patience is especially valuable in the
economic arena, where there are far more players than in the military and diplomatic realms. To corral all these players takes time.
Military power can work quickly, like a storm; economic power grabs slowly, like the tide. It needs time to erode the shoreline, but it
surely does nibble away. To be sure, U.S. presidents need to preserve the United States' core role as the world's military and

economics
has to be the main driver for current policy, as nations calculate power more in
terms of GDP than military might. U.S. GDP will be the lure and the whip in the
international affairs of the twenty-first century. U.S. interests abroad cannot be
adequately protected or advanced without an economic reawakening at home.
diplomatic balancer--for its own sake; and because it strengthens U.S. interests in economic transactions. But

Economic decline causes global war

Royal, U.S. Department of Defense, 10
(Jedediah, 2010, Department of Defense, Economic Integration, Economic
Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises, p. 213-215 Accessed 7/6/15 JMB)

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of
external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of
attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour
of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic,
dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the
systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on
leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated
with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from
one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic
crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that
leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation
(Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could
lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to
challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows
that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the
likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests
that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security
conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000)
theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a
significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of
states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from
trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if
the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items
such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be
inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be
the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers
protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the
link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level.
Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and
external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn . They write: The
linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and
mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in
turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the
extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other.
(Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an
increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which
has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore,
crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory"
suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting

governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to

create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg,
Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline
and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and
Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary
tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that
democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office
due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing
that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak
Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In
summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration
with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science
scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic , dyadic and
national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed
conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves
more attention.

A strong economy is necessary to enter a take-off phase of

sustainable transitionfinancial investment, government
reform, and public concern are negatively affected by
economic decline
Geels, University of Manchester Sustainable Consumption
Institute System Innovation and Sustainability Professor, 13
[Frank W, September, European Commission European Research Area, The impact
of the financial-economic crisis on sustainability transitions: Financial investment,
governance and public discourse, www.foreurope.eu, accessed 7/7/15, GE]

the take-off phase in sustainability transitions After a decades-long emergence process, some
green niche-innovations are gathering momentum in certain countries. Sustainability
transitions may therefore be entering a new phase, moving from a pre-development phase (with an emphasis on R&D and
experimentation) to a take-off phase (with more emphasis on real-world deploy ment and
installation of green solutions). In the agri-food sector, for instance, the niche-innovation of organic food has
gathered pace (Table 1). In the energy sector, renewable energy has a share of 9% of primary
energy in the European Union, with several countries scoring much higher (Norway. Sweden.
Austria) and lower (UK. Netherlands. Malta) (Table 2). For electricity, the European share of renewable power is higher, about 18% in 2009 (Fig- 3). In
the US transport sector, sales of various 'green' cars (Hybrid-Electric Vehicles. Plugin Hybrid- Electric Vehicles, Extended
Range Electric Vehicles and Battery-Electric Vehicles) peaked in 2007 (Fig. 4). reaching between 2 and 3% of overall sales.11 Sales in Europe
are lower, but also dominated by hybrid-electric vehicles. 22. Wider challenges in the take-off phase With some green nicheinnovations entering the take-off phase of sustainability transitions in certain
countries, new kinds of challenges will gain importance. Firstly, greater amounts of
financial investment are needed to facilitate on-the-ground deployment of green
options. Whereas govern- ment R&D. complemented with some private equity and venture capital, tend to dominate in the pre-development phase,
up-scaling and deployment in the take-off phase tend to draw on other types of finance such
public equity markets, credit markets, mergers and acquisition, and government
2.1. Entering

subsi- dies (Fig. 5). The challenge for sustainability transitions is to mobilize large sums
of money, as Giddens (2009: 123) notes: "The role of businesses, small and large, is going to be
absolutely crucial in respon- ding to climate change , not least because they will
have to supply a good deal of the funding and also pioneer new technologies ". The
availability of these types of finance is shaped by economic conditions, financial
regulations, and investor confidence. The second challenge in the take-off phase
concerns changes in policy and institutional frame- works. In the pre-development phase green nicheinnovations are sheltered, nurtured and protected from adverse regime conditions. But in the take-off phase, they face multidimensional struggles with incumbent regimes. On policy dimensions, the odds are
often stacked against niche-innovations, because formal institutions have been
adjusted to the needs of incumbent actors (Walker, 2000}. Niche-innovations often face a 'mis-match' with existing
institutions (Freeman and Perez. 1988). So, further breakthrough and wider diffusion depends on
changes in policy and institutional frameworks . This is especially the case for
transitions towards sustainability, which refers to collective goods (with associated free rider problems).
Because private actors have no immediate incentive to address sustainability
problems, public authorities have to change economic frame conditions and formal
institutions (regulations, subsidies, incentives, taxes). That is why many green growth reports not
only call for more investment, but also for stronger policies. UNEP (2011: 2). for instance, claims that: "there is a need
for better public policies, including pricing and regulatory measures, to change the
perverse market incentives that drive this capital mis-allocation . (...) To make the
transition to a green economy, specific enabling conditions will be required . (..,) At a
national level, examples of such enabling conditions are: changes in fiscal policy ; reform and reduction of
environmentally harmful subsidies; employing new market-based instruments: targeting public
investments to 'green' key sectors; greening public procurement; and improving environmental
rules and regulations as well as their enforcement ." The OECD (2011: 8) also argues for changes in fiscal and
regulatory settings (such as tax and competition policy), innovation policy, environmental policies, which "include a mix of price-based instruments (for
instance environmentally-related taxes)and non-market instruments such as regulations, technology support policies and voluntary approaches".

Making and implementing such institutional changes will be a difficult political

process. Firstly, there is the normal problem of reluctance to change, related to institutional inertia and institutional path dependence (Pierson.
2000; Barbier, 2011). Secondly, there will be active resistance and lobby- ing from powerful
incumbent interests aimed at hindering institutional change or creating loopholes
that reduce the effectiveness of policies. Corporate interests have much influence as Levy and Newell (2000: 14) note:
'The European commission undertakes business roundtables on a regular basis to consult with leading industrialists. The European Roundtable of
Industrialists, made up of chief exec- utive officers from 45 leading European companies, is arguably the most influential interest group in Brussels. (...)
Although environmental groups may exercise influence in setting the agenda, when the point of decision is reached, large multinational companies and

As
green innovations begin to compete with existing regimes, it is likely that incumbent
players will flex their economic and political muscles even more to protect their
interests. Following a useful distinction by Hall (1993). this political struggle will be played out at three levels: (a) The precise setting of policy
the organizations that represent them have key access to members of the commission, ministers, and heads of government in mem- ber states."

instruments: there will be struggles over the strictness of environ- mental regulations, height of carbon taxes etc. (b) The kinds of policy instruments;
many industries and policymakers have a preference for market- based instruments rather that regulatory instruments, and have actively lobbied for the
former in the last 10 years. But since some of these market-based instruments (e.g. European emissions trading) have not delivered what was promised,
struggles may ensue about the implementation of other policy instruments. (c) The overall goals that guide policies in particular fields and the associated
belief systems (what Hall calls a policy paradigm). In the last few decades, many (Western) governments operated on the basis of a neo-liberal policy

the financial crisis and exacerbating environmental problems have given

rise to doubts about the efficiency and capacity of markets to deliver with regard to
public goods. Hence, there are pleas for changes in governance structures and a
stronger role for governments in sustainability transitions. Scrase and MacKerron (2009:
232-233) claim that: "Market efficiency and driving down costs have their place, but governments must now become much
more active in steering societies through the necessary transitions to a low carbon
future." And Meadowcroft (2011: 71) argues that: "State intervention and governance reform are
paradigm. Both

essential. To put this in another way: markets may drive the uptake of the iPhone (...). but they will
not produce a carbon emission-free energy system (...). Changes to law - modifying
the regula- tory frameworks within which economic actors conduct their affairs (for
example, by introducing a carbon tax of a GHC emissions cap and trade system) and a significant expenditure of social revenue (for example, to accelerate development and deployment of new
technologies and to ease societal adjustment to new patterns of production and consumption) are essential to encourage
sustainability transitions." The third challenge in the take-off phase entails securing
wider public support and cultural legit- imacy (Geels and Verhees. 2011). This is instrumentally important because
"whatever can be done through the State will depend upon generating widespread
political support from citizens" (Giddens, 2009: 91). Urgent demands from public opinion can offer politicians incentives to jockey
for green agendas (Burnstein, 2003). Major policy shifts are therefore often accompanied by shifts in
public opinion and cultural discourse, which, in turn, are shaped by social
movements, media, industry asso- ciations, and special-interest groups (Hilgartner and Bosk,
1988). The literature on issue-attention cycles offers interesting ideas in this respect. The basic proposition is that social problems ('issues') have dynamics

Concerns about social problems tend to emerge in civil

society, then affect public opinion, subsequently spill over to political debates, and
possibly lead to policies (Fig. 6). The introduction of substantive legislation often coincides with a peak in public concern (Y-axis in Fig.
6). Issue-attention cycles do not necessarily progress linearly through all phase. Public attention and concern may also decline
before substantive legislation is introduced. Downs (1972) warned that such declines may happen when publics realize
that the costs of solving the problem are very high or may require sacrifices by
large groups in the population. This realization may cause three reactions: "Some people just get discouraged. Others
feel positively threatened by thinking about the prob- lem: so they suppress such thoughts. Still others become bored by the issue" (p.
40). He also notes that attention to issues may decline because of competition with other
prominent issues (see also Hilgartner and Bosk. 1988. who developed a conceptual model in which social problems compete for attention in
public arenas). These considerations may be relevant for contemporary sustainability transitions, where the financial-economic crisis is potentially an issue that
competes with sustainability concerns.
of their own and go through several phases.

Infinite growth is possible

Harford, Senior columnist for the Financial Times, 14
[Tim, 1/24/14, FreakNomincs Can Economic Growth Continue Forever? Of Course!
http://freakonomics.com/2014/01/24/can-economic-growth-continue-forever-ofcourse/ Accessed 7/7/15 JMB]

Can economic growth continue forever? The internet seems to be full of physicists explaining that economists are clueless on this
topic. Theres the late Albert Bartletts hugely popular videos or Tom Murphys article Exponential Economist Meets Finite
Physicist.

The key issue is that exponential growth will eventually take you to
impossible places. And by eventually, the physicists mean sooner than we expect. Exponential growth is
any kind of growth that compounds like interest payments. The classic example is the rice on the
chessboard. According to an old story, the inventor of the game of chess was offered a reward by a delighted king. He requested a
modest-sounding payment: one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, doubling
each time. Yet this is actually a colossal amountmany times the annual rice production of the entire planet. The chessboard prize

it all
becomes trouble eventually, because each little bit of growth will itself be multiplied
by growth in the future. As Albert Einstein, yet another physicist, is famously said to have declared (but probably did
not), the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest. The implication
for economic growth seems obvious. Our economy grows at a few percent a year.
was 100 percent growth per square; but 10 percent, 1 percent or even 0.0001 percentits all exponential growth. And

That hasnt presented many insuperable problems so far. But growth of a few per cent a year is nevertheless exponential growth,

physicists worrywell reach a square on the economic chessboard

that we just cant fill. Economists understand this point perfectly well. One of the very first people to be called an
and eventuallythe

economist was the Reverend Thomas Malthus, who died almost two hundred years ago. Malthus was worried about exponential

in the short term technological progress

was faster than population growth. More recently population growth has been
slowing down dramatically. Theres every reason to believe that the population of
the planet is going to stabilize. I dont think anybody believes zero population
growth is unsustainable. You might well respond that even if population growth stops, growth in the economy in GDP
will continue, and fall foul of the rice-on-the-chessboard problem. But I think that here we find a serious gap in the
logic of the exponential doomsayers. Theyre looking at exponential growth in
physical processesthings like heating, cooling, lighting, movement . This is understandable,
because they are, after all, physicists. Tom Murphys blog post is particularly startling on this point. He points out that if our
energy consumption grows at 2.3 percent a year less than historical rates but enough to increase
population growth, and his math was incontrovertible. Fortunately,

energy consumption tenfold each centurythen the entire planet will reach boiling point in just four centuries. Its not the
greenhouse effect at work; its irrelevant to Professor Murphys point whether the energy comes from fossil fuels, solar power or

given off, inevitably, when we use energy to do useful

work. And its pretty hard to argue with the laws of thermodynamics. The calculation
sounds shocking, but its just the rice on the chessboard all over again. Heres the
logic lapse: energy growth is not the same as economic growth. GDP merely
measures what people are willing to pay for, which is not necessarily connected to
the use of energy, or any other physical resource. True, since the beginning of the
industrial revolution the two have tended to go hand in hand, but theres no logical
reason why that tendency needs to continue. Indeed, it appears to have stopped
already. Would you like to take a guess at energy growth per person in the United
States over the last quarter of a century? Its not just less than 2.3 percent. Its less
than zero. The same is true for other developed economies such as Germany, Japan
and the United Kingdom. Now this is partly due to offshoring to China but the
offshoring effect just doesnt seem big enough to explain what is going on. Its also
about the changing nature of what is bought and sold in a modern economy
fairy dust. This is simply about the waste heat

Transition will fail shutdown of the economy will and cause

extinction
Cobb, 11/23/2014 Kurt, after and author of the peak oil-themed thriller Prelude, Nuclear war: A
forgotten threat to human sustainability http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-11-23/nuclear-war-a-forgottenthreat-to-human-sustainability

Once a machine civilization has been in operation for some time , the lives of the
people within the society become dependent upon the machines . The vast
interlocking industrial network provides them with food, vaccines, antibiotics,
and hospitals. If such a population should suddenly be deprived of a substantial
fraction of its machines and forced to revert to an agrarian society , the resultant
havoc would be enormous. Indeed, it is quite possible that a society within which
there has been little natural selection based upon disease resistance for several
generations, a society in which the people have come to depend increasingly upon
surgery for repairs during early life and where there is little natural selection
operating among women, relative to the ability to bear children--such a society
could easily become extinct in a relatively short time following the
disruption of the machine network. The modern global economy is like a

shark; it has to move forward or it dies. The widespread adoption of just-in-time

inventory has resulted in acute vulnerabilities from even very short disruptions. The modern
global machine now requires continuous inputs of energy and materials and
continuously operating global freight transportation or it starts to break
down. Even partial destruction, say, 15 to 20 percent of the industrial plant in the
world, might be enough to make the global economic system inoperable .
Because self-sufficiency has become a dirty word in our free-trade crazed political
culture, countries have become so specialized in their manufacturing that it might
not be possible to reproduce the necessary facilities nearer home quickly enough to
prevent a global systemic breakdown. We would not simply revert back to the
level of economic activity of, say, the 1950s. Instead, we could experience a total
breakdown that leads to our inability to restart modern technical
civilization after even a limited nuclear war.